Moby wasn’t as famous as the other equally boring, homophobic and tedious shock jocks who pollute FM radio nowadays…as FM radio dies. I know his schtick pre-dates Howard Stern, the king of loving his own voice, but was definitely after the rarely funny Steve Dahl.
When we moved to Houston in 1982, Moby was the region’s Andrew Tate, meaning many tweener and teen boys loved his morning show on 97 Rock. He annoyed me immediately by his bitching about Yankees moving to the area through his thick Southern accent. This didn’t help with my year of sadness of being away from my more familiar Springfield, IL surroundings. What little I was subjected to of his “comedy” was mostly off-color jokes you can’t tell in polite company anymore and mean digs at Monty Montrose, his surrogate to mock Houston’s gay community (Montrose remains the traditional neighborhood like the Castro district of San Francisco). In his defense, everybody mocked gay people, including the traditional Left and so did I. Thankfully, many of us got it together as we realized we were being cruel and we were hurting others. Lastly, I think being KLOL-101 fan, anything with 97 Rock just made me go, meh.
I still would see updates about Houston radio after we moved away to Indiacrapolis in 1984, the home of another boring duo called Bob & Tom. In 1984 or 1985, 97 Rock gave up and changed formats. Moby was signed to a non-compete for Houston so he took his act to Dallas but when the day the contract expired, KLOL sadly signed him. No idea how long he lasted that go round. I’m going to take a guess and say, not long. My friend Jeremy was living there until some point in the Nineties and said I didn’t recall Moby. I’d like to give the people of Houston credit for coming to their senses and demanding a more intelligent voice in the morning short of NPR.
It is sad how Moby died of stomach cancer only in early sixties and finishing his career being a Country DJ. However, I think the era for his type of crap alongside Stern, Dahl and Bob & Tom is long over, finally. Most people control their morning commute with better music and they have apps on their phones to monitor the traffic and weather. They never needed to hear some mean-spirited joke only appropriate for the grade-school playground.