A new stage

Moby liked drinking. Some in the recovery or temperance communities surely will frown on him for saying this, but the DJ/performer/songwriter/electronic-music star found sucking down booze to be fun. On at least one tour following the astonishing success of his 10-million-selling 1999 album, "Play," he says, Moby had an assistant whose main job was arranging parties (i.e., opportunities to drink).



"I had a 15-year period when I was basically drunk," says Moby, born Richard Hall, whose stage name grew from his middle name, Melville. As a result, he says, "I played a lot of places I don't remember. I think I played Albany."
Well, Loudonville: In full flush of his "Play" success and excess, Moby performed a concert at Siena College in 2000. He plays Albany proper this weekend, when he headlines the 28th annual LarkFest. The free event, taking place from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday on a blocked-off Lark Street, from Madison Avenue to Washington Avenue and the segment of Washington from Lark to Henry Johnson Boulevard, will feature more than 30 acts performing on five stages, plus arts, crafts, food, drink and family fun.

Moby is scheduled for the Washington and Lark stage from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m. (Although many think of him as a DJ, he will appear with a full band.) If the weather cooperates, organizers are predicting a crowd of at least 80,000, of whom, given the physical limitations of Lark Street and its stages, perhaps 5 percent might actually be able to lay eyes on Moby while he's performing.

Still, even that number would be one of the larger crowds Moby will entertain on the six-week North American leg of a world tour to promote his latest album, "Wait for Me," released in June. Although in this country he's gigging at 1,000- to 2,000-seat venues like the House of Blues in Boston, during three months in Europe over the summer Moby repeatedly played to stadiums stuffed with 50,000 people per show, capacity crowds he'll encounter later in the tour as it winds through the Far East.

"I've never been as big here, even though it's my home country," he says. (Neither have the techno and electronica he practices.)

"Wait for Me," a collection of moody, atmospheric, gorgeous and at times heart-rendingly emotional songs recorded in Moby's New York home studio with a collection of talented but unknown friends doing the singing, is his most personal album in years, he says. Absent are fun dance tracks. "It's more of (something to listen to on) a rainy Sunday morning."

Reviews have been mixed, sales moderate. "By 2009 standards, (sales) are pretty good," he says. "By 1999 standards they're abysmal, but (for) today they're OK."

Having an Everest like "Play" happen in the middle of his career was, Moby says, "disconcerting, strange and anomalous." It made him wealthy; besides stellar sales, every song on the album was licensed for TV, movies and advertising. But, he says, "The biggest problem and greatest liability of selling that many records is you attract people professionally who want you to continue selling that many records -- they don't want the gravy train to stop."

He, however, did. "There's that deathbed question," he says. "When I'm lying there, do I want to be able to say that I accommodated the marketing needs of a major record label or that I made the music I loved. … There's really only one answer."