Soundtrack of the Summer

Moby's LP 'Play' for the last 25 years of my life

I was 20 years old in the summer of 1999 when I moved to New Brunswick, NJ. I signed a June lease with two of my close friends from high school. All three of us dropped out of the colleges our parents sent us to after high school because we were struggling in one form or another. Honestly I left my school in Ohio first, due to immaturity and home sickness, and these girls essentially followed me because they were also home sick and jealous that I got to return home to Jersey. We all applied to Rutgers, we all got in, and we moved into a decrepit second floor apartment in a house on Richardson Street. Out of curiosity, I just googled it to see how it looked. Nothing’s changed.

After a few months of trying to acclimate, I realized I was depressed. Prior to moving in I told myself once I got there things would take a turn. They did, but not how I wanted them to. I hoped, subconsciously, moving into this apartment would feel like the end of one thing, and the beginning of another. I wasn’t cognizant of these feelings. At this point, I was already on autopilot, in some sort of survival mode, the very early stages of my life completely falling apart. In a lot of ways it very much was the end of one thing (me being a happy young person with optimism) and the beginning of another (endless, unnamed dread) but I hoped it’d be something else. Good living. My own place. No supervision. Future memories with my girlfriends. Moving on.

The only thing that brought me any peace was being in my room and listening to music. My mom painted my room a soft lavender when I moved it, and she let me bring my furniture from the bedroom I kept in her house: a huge dresser with a massive mirror, a coffee table pushed against the wall with my TV, VCR and stereo. My walls were adorned with art, posters, post cards, mementos, picture collages, pictures of the NY Knicks, stuff I’d ripped out of magazines. I had so many movies, books, and CD’s. And what I was playing the most was Play by Moby.

Play felt like it belonged to me because nobody else I knew was listening to it. I bought it at Sam Goody after my brother in law played it at his house. I’d never heard a Moby song before this record but I knew his name. Mainly because I hung around in record stores a lot. There were several near my house— Tunes on Church Street across from the Court Tavern, Vintage Vinyl, Cheap Thrills, but Curmudgeon in Edison was my favorite. It was small, cramped, had great $1 records, and rows and rows of CD bins. I would start at A and thumb through every single section, making a stack to buy based on curiosity, wish list, or a clerk’s suggestion. Moby’s music caught my eye, plus— I read music magazines— Spin, Rolling Stone.

I also spent countless hours on the internet in online spaces like LiveJournal where, long before words like ‘streaming’ and ‘downloading’ were a part of the lexicon, people shared their interests in online communities. Hobbies, beliefs, personal lives, thoughts, ideas, and inevitably, music, movies, and books.

There were the people who spent time outside their house, living a real life, and then there were people like me who, isolated inside, on the internet, in the room, playing music.

I liked to keep my TV on mute and listen to this record. I skipped a lot of songs to be honest. The commercial hits really didn’t do much for me, the Gwen Stefanie duet, the Fatboy Slim ripoff ‘Body Rock,’ — they got skipped. However the record’s anchor, in my opinion, is the song ‘Porcelain.’ It’s probably one of my all time favorite songs. The first time I heard this song was actually before I bought the cd— prior to Play being released this song was used in a club scene for an independent movie in 1998 with Angelina Jolie and Ryan Philippe. I saw it in the movie theater. It was called Playing By Heart. ‘Porcelain’ is faint in the background but it stood out to me, so when I played it from the cd on my stereo in my car or bedroom, the sweeping melodic baseline was familiar to me, already inside me.

The melody, the structure, the production, the muted singing, the lyrics, it all fit. It’s pretty, it’s sad, the title juxtaposed with the lyrics— the delicate nature of ego, insecurity, gut feelings, the whisper of knowing the love you have isn’t real.

Now when I hear it, which is pretty often because I never skip it when Spotify shuffles it on, it just reminds me of where I was living 25 years ago when I first heard it, the bullshit I put myself through, and also that bedroom. I moved a lot when I lived in New Brunswick— revolving leases, landlords, friends, apartments. But I always had my own room, painted a pretty color, decorated with my things, and music.

Culturally 1999 was pretty cool, as was some of the surrounding years. The Sopranos and Sex and The City were on HBO, independent and mainstream studio movies were still incredible— I think I went to the movies 2-3 times a month from 1999 to about 2012. Moby had his songs in many of these movies.

There are several instrumental songs on Play, and they’re my favorite.

‘Rushing’ is the 5th track— I could not tell you how many times I have listened to this song. The samples, beat, piano, I have played this on repeat in my car, I have played it on repeat as I wrote drafts of essays and poetry, I’m listening to it right now as I type.

I didn’t know it when I first bought this cd, but low-fi demo style music remains as some of my favorite. You can hear the vinyl scrapping on this track. It sounds like a demo. It sounds like he sampled something and you can literally hear the vinyl snapping. It sounds like how Kathleen Hanna describes the Julie Ruin record— “It sounds like bedroom culture. It sounds like something a girl made in her bedroom.” You can hear Moby’s fingerprints all over this record— this song especially.

In 1999 there was a movie production company called Focus Features. It was kind of like now, when you see something by Neon films or A24 flash on your screen before you see a trailer you may think like ooooh this looks good maybe? but in the 2000’s if Focus Features flashed on the screen, I was going to see it. To name a few: being john malkovich. wonderland. traffic. gosford park. mulholland drive. moonlight mile. the swimming pool. 21 grams. lost in translation. eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. the door in the floor. the motorcycle diaries. pride and prejudice. brokeback mountain. reservation road. atonement. in bruges. somewhere. one day. tinker tailor soldier spy. the place beyond the pines.

I thought We Don’t Live Here Anymore was a Focus feature but it wasn’t— it was a Warner film. Anyway. Movies in 2004 were incredible. Mark Ruffalo was in We Don’t Live Here Anymore with Naomi Watts, Laura Dern and Nate from Six Feet Under. This is a wife swapping infidelity movie that used the Moby song ‘Everloving’ in the trailer but also— I think? a movie promotional music video featuring scenes of the movie. I can still see clips of that trailer in my mind when I am listening to this song.

This song also sounds like a demo. Another instrumental favorite of mine is ‘Guitar Strings and Flute.’ It’s less lo-fi, more polished. It’s simple, ambient, and meditative. I’m a little shocked I liked these obscure instrumentals so obsessively, alone and depressed in my college bedroom, but also— not really that surprised. That sums up who I became, the version of myself I transformed into after my inner child years sort of fell asleep.

Moby wrote, recorded, and produced Play from 1997-1998 in his Mott Street studio in New York. He just threw all he had into making what he considered would be the last record ever because his previous album failed and he just went rogue on Play. The sheer beauty that exists in what he assumed would be his last record, his fuck it to his career, him making something he wanted to love— it’s why it’s so good. It’s actually timeless, even though it’s an electronic/edm record. I mean, I assume it’s timeless. It is to me. I play it all the time, still.

Maybe it’s just timeless to me, it’s been there all along. However annoying or embarrassing Moby has become in recent years, this record has been my soundtrack. Laying on my bed in the dark, in candlelight, deliberately emo. Background music as I write. Loud in the car driving home from my parents house on Christmas eve. Coursing through my air pods while I lay under an umbrella on the beach. While I was getting my make up done on my wedding day. As I drive aimlessly around Essex County in my beat up Honda Civic. It’s stayed the same for me over 25 years as I have grown, died, and been reborn again a handful of times.