A NIGHT OUT WITH

Damian Loeb and Moby

Life Imitating Art

Imitating Life

August 1, 1999

By ANTHONY LAPPE

At Damian Loeb's spare TriBeCa studio on a recent Saturday night, Mr. Loeb, a painter, was putting some final strokes on a work for an upcoming show in London. His best friend, Richard Hall, the electronic music star known as Moby, zoned out before a large-screen television hooked up to a spy camera, allowing him to watch people walking by on the street, a form of entertainnient that Mr. Loeb prefers to real television.

When they get together, the two friends refer to themselves as a sort of "Beavis and Butt-head" of the downtown art scene. The sophomoric humor, fits of giggles and talk of hot babes that followed through this night could have been called an episode of "Moby and Loeb."

Mr. Loeb, tall, lean and handsome, and Moby, short, wiry and elflike, have been buddies since they met at a church dance in Greenwich, Conn. Moby was a fledgling deejay, Mr. Loeb a gawky teen-ager too, shy to dance. In 1987, they packed up a U-Haul and headed to New York to find fortune and fame. Now, they both have.

On this night, Moby, 33, was preparing to embark on a world tour for his critically acclaimed new CD, "Play." For Mr. Loeb, 28, after a decade of scraping by, he hit it big this year, with a sold-out show at the Mary Boone Gallery in January and a flurry of attention. (Moby is still one of Mr. Loeb's biggest collectors. "By default," Mr. Loeb said. "He helped me pay the rent, so when my paintings were worth something, I started paying him back.")

On the way to a dinner party on Gramercy Park, they stopped at a deli. Mr. Loeb, in gray slacks and beaded sandals, picked up a pack of Dunhill cigarettes. Moby, in a pair of cutoff corduroy shorts and a T-shirt, bought a 12-pack of toilet paper as a hostess gift. "This isn't going to be house-o-vegans is it?" Mr. Loeb asked Moby, who is an animal-rights activist and a vegan and says he is a descendant of Herman Melville.

In the taxi, the voice of Nicole Miller urged them to buckle up. "Hey, she's got one of my paintings!" said Mr. Loeb, who seemed surprised by his newfound success.

At the party, an intimate gathering in the apartment of Tatiana Von Furstenberg, where a filmmaker friend of Moby's was house-sitting, the hostess read aloud from a psychiatric desk reference. Moby asked whether there was any explanation for the panic attacks he suffers from the idea of romantic commitment.

With that, three more men arrived, bringing the count to 8 men and 1 woman. Moby commented that the party was starting to resemble a Promise Keepers meeting, and the two restless bachelors said their goodbyes. They went to Gavin Brown, a bar on West 15th Street that has disco lights in the floor and is popular with artists. After one drink and a round of "Simpsons" trivia they moved their party back to Moby's loft, on Mott Street. En route, they stopped at another deli for supplies: Mr. Loeb bought whole grain cereal and a bag of chips; Moby got a rubber ball, which he whacked against the walls of buildings.

On Moby's roof, the two sat in a hammock. Moby talked about what he was going to play on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" several days later. Mr. Loeb munched on Doritos and remarked on how ridiculous it is that the chips ad features a sexy model. "No hot women ever eat Doritos," he said. "It makes your breath stink and your fingers turn orange." Moby pointed out a penthouse that he said Sting is building a few blocks away. "There goes the neighborhood," Mr. Loeb said, grabbing his cereal boxes and heading home.

Photo by Aaron Lee Fineman