Moby is something of an oddity, so perhaps it was to be expected that this last gig of his short UK tour would be full of curiosities, touches of musical genius and occasional frustrations too.
Not that the performance wasn't great. It was. He was. Moby bounded on stage like Tigger and kept on bouncing, banging his bongos with the vigour of a man being sustained by illegal narcotic substances. Which he most definitely wasn't because Moby is dead against things like drugs, and doesn't much care for alcohol or meat either.
In eight years and five albums, he has mixed a bewildering number of genres (house, trance, ambient, hard-rock, goth-metal, soul) and been feted for bringing something fresh to every one. Play, his current CD, is a gem that hasn't been dulled by constant airplay or the fact that it provides the theme tune to Leonardo di Caprio's latest and unloved film,The Beach.
Moby's cross-section of styles seemed reflected in the make-up of his audience: clubgoers past and clubgoers present, men in trenchcoats and winkle-pickers, women in denim, a youth wearing a panama hat. So which Moby came out to play? They all did. He gave us a little bit of everything.
The Forum came alive when the band played Porcelain and the gig bubbled on just fine for the next 80 minutes without, in truth, ever threatening to boil over. The thrash through the James Bond theme was inspired; the homage to Bruce Springsteen (Moby sang the first verse to I'm on Fire) less so. He teased us with guitar riffs from Lenny Kravitz and jokes about his DJ, a rotund figure called Sinbad.
Moby is a brilliant musician and showman but some ingredient was missing and the gig never quite reached the heights. Perhaps the run through Moby's portfolio was to blame. It left me craving a bit less of everything, and a little more of something. Or perhaps the timing of the gig was the key. Moby was on surprisingly early - 8.30.
When he dismissed the band to play a second encore on his own, the Forum waited for something special. Moby took centre stage, standing behind a keyboard. The biggest, thumpiest, tranciest beat swelled around him, speeding up as he pounded the air with his fists. The backlights flickered in time, making him glow like a messianic figure as the track reached a ear-numbing crescendo. Silence. Then it began again. Faster, harder, this time with Moby, bald and bare-chested, standing on the keyboard, raising his arms slowly heavenwards, celebrating a triumphant climax.
At 4am in a dance tent at some summer festival with the sun lifting over the horizon, this would probably have been a magical meaning-of-life moment. But it was 10.10 on a cold evening in Kentish Town. The punters could have been back in the pub well before last orders and home in time to see the second half of Match of the Day.
