‘Punk Rock Vegan Movie’: Ahead of his movie premiere, Moby reflects on being vegan and animal rights activism
The Animal Liberation Front, definitely, to a very large extent had its roots in the hardcore scene. Putting on a black hoodie and wearing a black face mask and sabotaging a vivisection lab.
NICK RUSKELL: Before he became a million-selling electronic artist in the ’90s, Moby was a mover and shaker in New York’s legendary ’80s hardcore scene. As well as spawning killer music by bands like Cro-Mags, Gorilla Biscuits, Youth Of Today, Bad Brains, the Misfits and countless others from in and outside the city, the scene also turned the then-teenaged Moby on to the activism that ran parallel to the music. It was partly the influence of the scene and its messages that Moby quit meat and went vegan. Three-and-a-half decades on, he remains so, these days proudly sporting the words ‘Vegan For Life’ on his neck, and ‘Animal’ down his right arm, and ‘Rights’ down the other in thick, block capitals. It was this that helped Kerrang! identify him in a vegan restaurant in Los Angeles last summer (“Thank you for realising it was me,” he laughs when we tell him. “You wouldn’t believe how many people get disappointed when they realise I’m not Michael Stipe from REM…”).
This weekend, Moby’s premiering his directorial debut, Punk Rock Vegan Movie, at the Slamdance Film Festival in Salt Lake City. In it, he examines the history of American punk and hardcore, and its intersection with veganism and animal rights activism, via interviews with the original British punk vegans like Crass’ Steve Ignorant and The Damned’s Captain Sensible, the old guard with whom he used to run like Ray Cappo and Porcell from Youth Of Today/Shelter, Cro-Mags’ John Joseph, Rob Zombie, Walter Schriefels from Gorilla Biscuits/Rival Schools, Sepultura’s Derrick Green and Minor Threat/Fugazi frontman Ian McKaye, as well as those who were inspired by them, like Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath, Fall Out Boy drummer Andy Hurley, Arch Enemy singer Alissa White-Gluz and Refused’s Dennis Lyxzén. Being a work of activism, Moby’s also giving the film away for free immediately after the premiere. SOURCE…
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