Moby Dick

"The hard thing to talk about is how involved I was in the Kerry campaign. . . . It was a little bit painful. Not just to get beaten, but to be beaten so badly."

Endquote Moby, speaking of his debut in backing presidential wannabes, during a live in-studio session at KCRW’s Morning becomes Eclectic on Monday.

The producer-musician-songwriter talks of his involvement with MoveOn and Americans Coming Together—a relationship that continues, even after Election Day apparently. Laura Dawn, the "creative director" of MoveOn, in fact, sings on several tracks of Moby’s new album, Hotel.

Which is funny, of course, but less ironic than it seems. Moby knew Laura Dawn as a musician and fellow activist before she went to work for MoveOn to become event and cultural director, a job the MoveOn website says involves organizing artists, musicians, and filmmakers—work in which Moby seems to have been intimately involved.

Laura Dawn, Moby also says, was once a member of a New York underground (Moby’s word) band called Fluffer (I don’t want to know who’s word that is).

Another odd thing from the interview: Moby played a track called "Spiders," which he wrote when he heard that his idol David Bowie had suffered a heart attack. "I wrote this song thinking he was possibly going to die," said Moby.

So nice of him to release it then, considering Bowie didn’t die.