Moby sees sophistication in youth these days

Not long ago, Moby and I were talking, and we discussed a trendy topic: We Generation Xers are playing Internet-information catch-up to The Young Ones Who Are Younger Than Us.

“I’m 48,” Moby (who DJs Saturday at Hakkasan nightclub) said. “I’m completely stating the obvious, but when we were growing up, we didn’t have that much access to information.”

That is no joke. We Generation Xers had to look things up in big, heavy, dusty reference books whose pages cut our delicate little Gen X fingers, sometimes while we were in (dun-dun-dun) libraries!

People used to have bar fights over factual disagreements because they didn’t have Google to settle disputes over things as stupid as baseball players’ RBI stats.

“I feel like a lot of kids today are more sophisticated than we ever were, because they had access to so much information at an early age,” Moby said.

One serious outgrowth of all that information is: It’s harder for people to get away with publicly lying and behaving repulsively, Moby said.

“In the olden days, someone could say something ignorant and ill-informed and you couldn’t really challenge them. Now when someone says something ignorant and ill-informed, there are a million people jumping down their throat saying, ‘What you just said was ignorant and ill-informed.’ ”

We’re looking at you, “Duck Dynasty”/Paula Deen/Alec Baldwin/whomever said something idiotic on Twitter today.

“So a lot of prejudices, a lot of stereotypes, a lot of negative assumptions based on false information is falling by the wayside,” Moby said.

I agreed. Who wouldn’t agree? Moby is a political liberal, so he thinks Tea Party people are a good example of people who get called out for stretching truths.

“There is that right-wing echo chamber where they turn a deaf ear to facts and information. But I feel like most of the world has access to information, so it’s becoming generally a more tolerant, open, educated world.”

I CAN’T QUIT MORGAN PAGE

Morgan Page returns to Vegas yet again to DJ Saturday at Surrender nightclub in Encore.

I know I just ran a feature on Page, but I really dig his style and, quite frankly, he is one of my top five favorite DJs to interview. He’s smart and fun. Moby is in that same top-five list, incidentally.

Anyway, Page is in his third year of gigging at the Wynn-Encore nightclubs. He was not one of the DJs who abandoned the Wynn last year for bigger money at new clubs Hakkasan and Light, several of whom have returned to the Wynn this season.

XS and Surrender weathered the Hakkasan-Light storm and remained arguably the top club in Vegas. Light is probably XS’ biggest competitor now as far as attracting people people, which is the top metric in clubbing, to be honest.

“The Wynn has been able to stay relevant. They’re just smart businesspeople. They sell it out every weekend,” Page said.

The Wynn-Encore clubs have stayed relevant by mixing up their sounds beyond electronic dance music to more open-format and urban DJs. That is 2014’s club trend, which opens up clubs for various performers.

“There’s more room for stars now — medium stars” in the DJ scene, Page said.

’Tis true.

OH CALVIN

I used to really like Calvin Harris. (He DJs Friday at Hakkasan.) Before he made it big, I encouraged people to go to his shows and to listen to his original songs.

But then he got more commercial. I’m not against commercialized electronic dance music, not in the least. But Harris’ pop stuff just doesn’t pop, as far as I’m concerned.

However, I haven’t seen him DJ in so long, it is possible/probable he still puts on a good live show.

Harris started small and worked his way up very quickly in the past few years. I keep thinking of him as a down-to-earth guy whose skills were too good for the world to ignore.

But I was talking to an insider the other day, someone who told me this about Harris these days:

“Calvin Harris is making $30 million a year. He feels obligated to spend money on having a driver and a private jet.”

Oy. You know, I like rooting for people to make it. But at some point, you just stop relating to some musicians you used to like.

Doug Elfman’s column appears on Page 3A in the main section on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He also writes for Neon on Fridays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.