Porcelain

A Memoir

By: Moby

Narrated by: Moby

From one of the most interesting and iconic musicians of our time, a piercingly tender, funny, and harrowing account of the path from suburban poverty and alienation to a life of beauty, squalor, and unlikely success out of the NYC club scene of the late '80s and '90s.

There were many reasons Moby was never going to make it as a DJ and musician in the New York club scene. This was the New York of Palladium; of Mars, Limelight, and Twilo; of unchecked, drug-fueled hedonism in pumping clubs where dance music was still largely underground, popular chiefly among working-class African Americans and Latinos. And then there was Moby—not just a poor, skinny white kid from Connecticut, but a devout Christian, a vegan, and a teetotaler. He would learn what it was to be spat on, to live on almost nothing. But it was perhaps the last good time for an artist to live on nothing in New York City: the age of AIDS and crack but also of a defiantly festive cultural underworld. Not without drama, he found his way. But success was not uncomplicated; it led to wretched, if in hindsight sometimes hilarious, excess and proved all too fleeting. And so by the end of the decade, Moby contemplated an end in his career and elsewhere in his life, and put that emotion into what he assumed would be his swan song, his good-bye to all that, the album that would in fact be the beginning of an astonishing new phase: the multimillion-selling Play.

At once bighearted and remorseless in its excavation of a lost world, Porcelain is both a chronicle of a city and a time and a deeply intimate exploration of finding one’s place during the most gloriously anxious period in life, when you’re on your own, betting on yourself, but have no idea how the story ends, and so you live with the honest dread that you’re one false step from being thrown out on your face. Moby’s voice resonates with honesty, wit, and, above all, an unshakable passion for his music that steered him through some very rough seas.

Porcelain is about making it, losing it, loving it, and hating it. It’s about finding your people, your place, thinking you've lost them both, and then, somehow, when you think it’s over, from a place of well-earned despair, creating a masterpiece. As a portrait of the young artist, Porcelain is a masterpiece in its own right, fit for the short shelf of musicians’ memoirs that capture not just a scene but an age, and something timeless about the human condition. Push play.


Song Credits:
‘Saints’ (p) 2013 by Little Idiot (from the album Innocents)
‘Slow’ (p) 2011 by Little Idiot (from the album Destroyed)

Why did it have to end!?

I am a lover of music which made this book all the more fascinating to listen to. It would have been a good book even if you aren’t into his music.

Hearing more about the musician and the state of mind he was in as he created music was a treat. This book was really about moby first and music second. But music is what moby cares about so the whole thing fed on itself. He did a good job maintaining a mostly linear timeline but weaving things from his past at certain moments where they would have more impact.

It was fun hearing about all his adventures on tours and in clubs. He came across deeply honest with his failures and insecurities which always makes a book more personable.

I could imagine listening to this book a second time maybe in a year or so.

As he told his story I would stop the book and listen to whatever song he had just created and then go back to the story. To be honest this is my only disappointment, I wish his songs where in there to listen to with his stories. I assume lawyers and music contracts would not allow that but it’d be neat if it were possible or if there’s a sequel.

A bit of irony .

The part where Moby’s mother dies reminded me its been 1 year since I lost my own mother. How ironic? Moby is a great storyteller. Im going to listen to his next memoir now.

Fantastic!

Having known nothing about Moby before getting this book I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it. I even got my wife to listen to it on a long trip and we were laughing as we drove.

A Raw and Honest Memoir

It's not easy to be so open about your worries and shortcoming specially you are writing them down as a memoir and the book will stay around for a long time. Porcelain is strong, raw, honest, sometimes impressive, sometimes ugly, much like the life itself. Moby fan or not you may still appreciate the story of a not-so-fortunate kid and his struggles, while becoming one of the best musicians of his genre.

I took one star away from it because most of the book is about his social interactions and fears. There is very little space for inspiration and creativity.

Overall it's a good listen and Moby does a great job narrating it himself.

Bleak

I was enthralled with the book, a bleak stark narrative with little mention of Plays success