Any Soul Coughing/Mike Doughty people in the house?

Cafe Society
1

I’ve been going through the Soul Coughing catalog, along with Mr. Mike Doughty’s exquisite solo album Skittish. I find myself thinking ‘I forgot how fning good this is’ with almost every track.

In the beginning there was Ruby Vroom. Sitting shotgun in the car of a guy who turned out later to be the personification of Short Man/Big Dick Syndrome, I heard “Supra Genius” (“Will you shoot the blue earth down?/In the space station/polishing the ray gun/You say correlation is not causation…”) and had to have more. I practically mainlined the album for the next year. Swingy loose beats and eccentric nonsense lyrics interspersed with moments of blue white clarity (“flips an ash like a wild loose comma” among other lyrical gems in “City of Motors”) drew me in. “Screenwriter’s Blues”, “True Dreams of Wichita” and “Uh Zoom Zip” are three of my favorite songs from anything ever.

Anyway, after RV came Irresistable Bliss, which I got - on TAPE! - the day it came out, with the same (I was mmmmmaybe sixteen, homeless queer kid when we met, he was definitely twenty-four with evil on his mind; I moved in after a month, oh yeah baby, he was a great decision, but musical taste he did have) jackass driving his ridiculous Ford Fiesta to the Borders in the mall. (I couldn’t get out of that town fast enough).

I unwrapped it and stuck it in the tape deck in the Fiesta (it’s like a giggle of a car), heard that hot low hook and tight vocal on “Super Bon Bon” (“Some kind of verb/some kind of moving thing/something unseen/some hand is motioning/to rise, to rise, to rise”) and knew that me and Soul Coughing would totally be BFF.

And I had no idea. I was still to meet “Soft Serve”, “Lazybones”, one of the most beautiful songs I know (“When all the noise has left your head will someday you rise off the bed”), and “Sleepless”, which for personal reasons I find moving and chilling, though I’m curious how others hear/interpret it.

Like IR, El Oso had me right away, though it took time to get into some of it. The first track “Rolling”, “St. Louise is Listening” (“oh he’s like milk to you/half Swedish and half Asian”), “I Miss The Girl” (“I dream that she aims to be the bloom upon my misery”), and “The Incumbent” because I was halfway into my life in NYC and kind of bitter. Plus “So Far I Have Not Found the Science” is a great song title, and a good song. They all are, I’m just mentioning off the top of my head.

Any other fans around? What songs/lyrics/albums do you especially dig? When/how/where and so on? Pretend I’m going to put this interview in my zine, which was one of the things that was really happening when I first got into SC. Did you see them live before the big sad breakup? Do you like Doughty’s solo stuff? Is this thing on? ;j

2

I love SC and have Haughty Melodic as well, great stuff all around and you are right on the money with the lyrical strangeness/clarity side.

3

HUGE Soul Coughing fan. Discovered them when they opened for Jeff Buckley.

*Ruby Vroom *still my favorite.

4

There used to be a local station (WLIR/WDRE) that did a good job of introducing new bands. It was Spring 1994, on my way to work one morning when I heard “Screenwriter’s Blues” for the first time. I can’t believe it’s been almost a dozen years since I got that chill up my spine hearing “…It is 5AM & the sun has charred the other side the world & come back to us - And painted the smoke over our heads an imperial violet…”

I made it a point to stop by Tower on my lunch break and pick up ‘Ruby Vroom’. A great album from beginning to end. ‘Irresistable Bliss’ was a little bit of a let-down; but that opinion could very well be due to a unconscious sophmore jinx expectation. El Oso was very good.

I had no idea Doughty has 3 albums and (at least) 1 solo EP. After previewing Haughty Melodic, I’m gonna add it to my shopping list.

5

Opened…for…sorry, I was staring into space for a while there. For Jeff Buckley, you say. That must have been…nice, he understated. Share with the class?

RV is still my favorite too.

“Brooklyn like a sea in the asphalt stalks
Push out dead air from a parking garage
Where you stand with the keys and your
cool hat of silence, where you
grip her love like a
driver’s license.
Engine sputters ghosts
out of gasoline fumes
They say ‘You had it but you sold it’
You didn’t want it, no,
I’m half drunk on the babble you transmit
through your
true dreams
of Wichita…”

6

It was the last time I saw Jeff. The concert that’s available on DVD. SC is not on the DVD.

7

Should I get it? I suspect the answer is Yes. Jeff is of course a whole other thread to himself, but basically if you’re a fan and you say yes get it now, that is what I’m going to do.

8

I absolutely adore the BT single with Mike Doughty on lead vocals, “Never Gonna Come Back Down,” which is an electronica/dance song with Doughty doing a stream-of-consciousness ramble equal parts a paean to a hot DJ chick and a religious revival. If Soul Coughing’s work is anything like this, I might just be a fan.

9

It isn’t like that, but it’s just as good. I love that track as well (got it on right now, tyvm). “This one goes out to English girls named Cherise!”

For other non-album goodness, lurkers should check out “Unmarked Helicopters” on the first X-files soundtrack.

10

I haven’t seen the DVD; I would break down. But the show was pretty great. Ask Equipoise, she was there too.

11

Your Cadillac breathes 400 horses between blue lines.
You are going to Ricida to make love to a model from Ohio
whose real name you don’t know.
You spin, like the Cadillac was overturning down a cliff,
on television…
Actually, the whole song is f*cking brilliant.

12

Was a huge fan of Soul Coughing from the first, despite the complete lack of airplay in Oz, not just for Dougherty, but because they used a double bass in the time of grunge…

13

For those old Soul Coughing fans in here that haven’t yet bought Haughty Melodic, you should do so immediately. This may be heresy, but I really think this is the best thing that Doughty’s ever done. And for what it’s worth…Haughty Melodic is an anagram of Michael Doughty.

A couple cool lines from that one that I dig…

I Hear The Bells
You snooze, you lose. Well, I have snost and lost.

Sunken-Eyed Girl
Sunken-eyed girl on Delancey Street
Bulletproof glass in the KFC to
Keep the man safe in his paper hat
Keep the wrong hands off the biscuit fortune.

14

I’ve been talking them up on the SDMB for years.
And again!
Triple play!

:smiley:

Yes. I love Soul Coughing.

15

Songs in the Key of X, I dont know if you would find it in the sound track section or not but it has quite a few great tracks on it and has the distinction of being the only Cd in history (afaik) with a truly hidden track. 2 in fact, you had to start the cd, then hold down rewind and rewind PAST the begining of track 1 til it stopped then release and you would hear a couple more tracks. none of this way out at the end of a bunch of silence crap.

16

Ditto – as a matter of fact, that song’s what inspired my Doper name (actually, I had a hard time choosing between “Doom Slinger” and “Dope Beat Stinger”).

17

A friend of mine out Sunkeneyed Girl on a mix CD a few months back, and since then I’ve bought Skittish/Rockity Roll & Haughty Melodic. I haven’t heard any Soul Coughing, though- what’re they like compared to Doughty’s solo stuff?

Also, whenever I hear Down on the River by the Sugar Plant, I think of boobs, because that song was used in the Suicide Girls DVD.

18

Love em/him.

Lazy Bones

If I could stay here under your idle caress, and not exit to the world of phoniness and people…

I always found that line very comforting for some reason.

IR is my favorite so far, though I’ve not heard much from RV.

Collapse

*Mid-level manager
Says he heard about
Some mulatto girl
Shot him in the mouth,

And left him a hotel Near the mid-south offices.
He worked in distribution,
Regional vice-president.

Collapse, unload it, pop! pop!
I must accumulate, unload it,
Pop! Pop! I must accumulate.*

Great stuff!