Summary: For Soundcheck's occasional series Pick Three, we ask guests to share a playlist of three favorite songs. Sounds simple right? Well, music nerds tend to be talented, high-achieving types, and so they tend to make the task more difficult by selecting a theme. Enter Moby, The musician, songwriter and DJ joined us recently to perform songs from his new album Innocents live in our studio. The acoustic set reveals Moby's deep love of folk, gospel and other American roots music -- the genres he has successfully blended with electronic sounds since 1999's Play. But when asked to compile a Pick Three, Moby's choices were decidedly New Wave circa 1979. His theme: "Three songs that I discovered exclusively through the world of college radio and public radio." Around 1979, Moby was a teenage punk rock fan growing up in Darien, Conn., who snuck into New York to see concerts and buy records -- by locking himself in the restroom of Metro North trains, he could skip the fare and save enough money to buy albums, he told host John Schaefer. He discovered new music via noncommercial stations, including public and college outlets around Connecticut and WNYU's legendarily adventurous "New Afternoon Show." Three decades later, Moby pays homage to the airwaves that helped shape his early years with this Pick Three. Moby's Pick Three Cowboys International, "Thrash" Cowboys International was a band from the late '70s. In a weird way it was almost like a new wave supergroup. They had this quasi-hit song called "Thrash." I think they only made one album. It's like a greatest hits album for songs that no one's actually ever heard. but the songs are so well written and so catchy and remarkable you just wonder why it never became this huge successful record. I would come home from high school and I would put a tape in my little tape recorder and I would sit there with 'pause' and 'record.' If I liked a song I would hit the pause button and start recording. So 99% of my favorite songs growing up, I never knew what the beginning sounded like. Tuxedomoon, "No Tears" Because I didn't have a lot of friends, I was able to spend a lot of time in front of my cassette deck recording songs off the radio. This song, I just never heard anything like it. It's just one of these songs that sonically, lyrically, everything about it sounded like music from a time and place I couldn't even conceive of. One of the wonderful things about public radio or college radio back then was that it was one of the only ways to hear new music. Magazine, "Because You're Frightened" WNYU here had this show called The New Afternoon Show that my friends and I would listen to obsessively. I'm pretty sure that's where I first heard ["Because You're Frightened"]. It's just an amazing song.
