FREQUENTLY

Soul Coughing is extremely New York City; they have a cosmopolitan

hipster sound that could only come from such an eclectic town. The band met

in The Knitting Factory, a NYC club known for producing innovative new bands.

M. Doughty was the doorman and formed the band with drummer Yuval Gabay,

bassist Sebastian Steinberg, and keyboardist / sampler, Mark De Gli Antoni.

“Not many bands come along that are as innovative as Soul Coughing.

Mixing billions of musical influences, they’re sort of a hip-hop/jazzy/

cartoon-style thing with either totally crazy or incredibly colorful

lyrics read and sung over them.” – By Ryan Schreiber

Ruby Vroom (Sept 27, 1994) – LP

Down To This (Apr 25, 1995) – Single

Screenwriter’s Blues (1995) – Single

Sugarfree Jazz (Sept 28, 1995) – Single

Irresistible Bliss (July 09, 1996) – LP

Soundtrack to Mary (Nov 08, 1996) – Single

Super Bon Bon (Mar 30, 1997) – Single

Soft Serve (1997) – Promo Only Single

El Oso (Sept 29, 1998) – LP

Circles – Single

Rolling – Single

St. Louise is Listening – Single

Several soundtracks, compilation, and other CDs also have unique tracks.

Songs that have been covered by Soul Coughing and which appear on official

releases are as follows:

Song Title: Original Artist: Where Found:

————————————————————————–

I Will Always Love You Dolly Parton Casiotone Nation

(Whitney Houston covered)

The Lemon Tree Peter, Paul and Mary Janine (performed by

Rachel Benbow Murdy)

Suzy Snowflake Sid Tepper/Roy C Bennett Holiday Promo

Recent songs that have not been released, and perhaps never will be,

include A Milkshake, Tears Welling Up.

Songs that have never been released officially as Soul Coughing songs:

Angels Are 2 Men on a Mission

Blues She Blew

Brooklyn Girls by Train

Don’t Go Wreck the Car

Drumsville

Freelancer

Genius of Displacement

Good Thursday Blues

Henry Rollins Has A Very Large Neck Indeed

I Got to Get Right With This

I Shot Lily Brick Down

It Don’t Mean a Thing

Jersey Devil

Laugh On Fat Boy

Like You Did

Little King of Misery

Michael Jackson

Target of Design

Thank You F-Train

What Can I Do?

Wooly Imbibe

You Lucky Dog

Yuval Gabay

Mermaid (Finally released on Mark De Gli Anotoni’s Solo CD entitled “Horse Tricks”)

– but never as a Soul Coughing song.

“And this record it’s Daryl Hall! [The Tori Amos samples are]

in two songs, ‘City of Motors’ and ‘Mr. Bitterness’ and when I listen to it,

it’s so loud and clear, but I’ve never been called on it. You know, she does

a cover of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and you know, it’s so melodramatic…

actually, it’s a really great cover. She’s amazing until like two-thirds of the

way through and then she gets into one of those [mimics wispy vocals] and it

just falls apart, but until that moment, it’s like ‘Wow, this is a really

sick, great version of the song. The way she sings ‘I feel stupid’ is so

overwhelming. I used it and tried not just to treat it as her saying that

directly, but I tried to break up the phrase a little bit and treat it like

a woman singing. But with the second record it’s Daryl Hall. I don’t wanna

say where it is on this record yet, because I did a lot of inviting last time.

I made a big point of saying, ‘Hey, I sampled Tori Amos,’ and didn’t get caught.”

-Mark (1996)

Also sampled by Soul Coughing is Raymond Scott. The songs which contain large

Raymond Scott Samples are ‘Bus To Beelzebub’ and ‘Disseminated’ use

‘The Pengiune’ by Raymond Scott.

‘Down to this Samples?’

“It’s from the Andrews Sisters and it’s just ‘Don’t sit under the apple tree with

anyone else but me, no no no,’ and it’s kind of an old World War II song” – Mark

‘The Bug?’

Allegedly you can hear “George Cloony is Satan” at the end of this song.

‘4 our of 5’

Has a Theremin, played by Walter Sear. It’s in the left channel.

The Theremin follows Doughty’s melody lines in the second verse:

“Sometimes I was drifting on a coffee buzz,” and “Quantify my

luck, I need a mercy fuck.” As he sings those two lines you’ll hear a

high-pitched warbling sound following the melody he sings, just to the

left of the mix. That’s the theremin. It sounds like it’s also following

the melody of the synth throughout the song (more noticeably during the

choruses) but it really stands out in the second verse.

Doughty’s Disclaimer of Luv

-or-

Explaining the Explanations

We get accosted by a lot of stoned folks–lovely people, though–who quiz us about

the nuances of meaning and overarching thematic content in our songs. I guess our

purpose is to cater to the discriminating drug user, so I can’t complain. But mostly,

when I’m hashing out the lyrics, I’m thinking, “Ooh, nice word. Pretty word. Mm,

word tastes nice, I like.” So it’s mostly a sound thing, a musicality thing. Still, given

the couple of lucid flashes in the lyrics, I’ve been asked to discuss the songs.

Though personally, I’m more apt to dig the beats, and being that I can’t read or

write notation, you’ll only get the meatheaded metaphors here.

P.S. If you hear lyrics wrong and imagine some construction of words that doesn’t

really exist, please bring it to our attention and we’ll retool the lyrics to match your

mistake. We love that more than anything else. Also enclose any five percent

nations you may have.

-M. Doughty

The Japanese version if Irresistible Bliss contains two extra songs:

‘Blow my Only’ & ‘Lemon Lime.’

El Oso also has a Japanese counterpart, which contains two extra songs: ‘212’

and ‘Rare Star Ball.’

Since some people wonder where all those pictures come from in all the

releases, here’s a brief synopsis:

Ruby Vroom – Kenndal Lynn Andrew is the girl on the front cover &

was only seven years old at the time of the photo.

Irresistible Bliss – the front cover model is the man himself: Sebastian

El Oso – The idea came from this picture (http://www.soulcoughing.com/photos/OSO2.jpg)

The photo was taken my Mark and given graciously donated to Opus over at

the 5% Nation.

Soul Coughing was the title of a really, really bad poem that Doughty

wrote about Neil Young throwing up in the back of a bus. Everybody who

read it said, “Um, hey, nice name…” so he took it.

The first appearances were in mid June 1992 at the lovely Knitting Factory in NYC.

June 15, 1992 was supposedly the first public show ever.

M. Doughty:

b. Fort Knox, KY: June 10, 1970

Mark De Gli Antoni:

b. San Francisco, CA: June 20, 1962

Yuval Gabay:

b. Jerusalem, Israel: July 23, 1963

Sebastian Steinberg:

b. Boston, MA: February 20, 1959

Michael (honestly!)

Ruby Vroom – The producer of said album was Mitchell Froom, who is also

Suzanne Vega’s husband. They would bring their daughter,

Ruby Froom, by the studio from time to time, and with Yuval’s

accent it turned into the title we know and love.

Irresistible Bliss – It’s a takeoff on Doughty’s favorite Prince song of

all time, ‘Irresistible Bitch,’ the B-side to ‘Let’s

Pretend We’re Married.’

“…a lot of the lyrical themes on this record have

to do with wanting love and being terrified of it,

wanting a relationship and not knowing how to deal with

it, and sort of resisting the idea…” – Doughty

“…it’s more about resistance than bliss, and I would say,

for the other three, it’s more about bliss than resistance.

The tidal wave takes over no matter how many sandbags you

put on the beach.” – Doughty

El Oso – El Oso means The Bear in Spanish. There was an old Soul Coughing

tradition to draw bears on the set list, spurred by Sebastian who

would pout until a bear was added.

“Sebastian likes me to draw pictures of bears on his set list, after

we’ve all written it. The more notable recent bears–Champagne

Glass-Shaped Weeping Bear, Aerosol Bear, Shriner Fez Bear, Digital

Bear, El Oso con Queso y Jamon, Taco-Shaped Bear. People keep

stealing his set lists from him after the shows, and it really

bums him out. He likes the Bears as a souvenir. ”

– Doughty (11-94)

Wilbo Wright- Played bass before Sebastian in June of 1992.

Wilbo had to leave band due to large plot twist on the

Soap Opera he was also working on.

Cathrine Bent- Played cello around the same time as Wilbo and for a

similiar small time period.

Gus Brandt- Tour manager for the majority of the Irrestistable Bliss tour.

He was quite obsessed with the actress Claire Danes for quite a

while with due right.

Larry “Lars” Smith- Elusive soundman from Baltimore. Hasnt run the boards for

Soul Coughing since early 1999. Rumoured to have be the

soundman for the Baltimore bread glam band Kix back in the day.

“Gentleman” Jim Norton- Guitar tech extrortinaire. Perhaps one of the nicest, most

friendly and personable guys who hand guitars to the stars.

Also a fabulous deep tongue kisser.

Randall Davis Kaye- The man who originally signed Soul Coughing to Slash/WBR Records.

People Who Have Sat in with Soul Coughing:

Dave Matthews, John Popper, Redman, David Krakauer, John Zorn,

Anthony Coleman, Casual, Elliot Smith, Priest

“Um, I was working at the Knitting Factory and these cats just

came through in various bands, various projects, and I was looking to

get a collaborative thing together, so, you know…”

– M Doughty (1995)

Q: Are all you guys into 90210 or is that just Doughty?

A: “Hell no! That would be just Doughty. The man with the

television and nothing better to do.” – Sebastian

M. Doughty – Obsessed with Beverly Hills 90210 (duh!)

Yuval – Used to be the musical director of a New York City

dance company

Mark – composes independent film scores on his spare time

Sebastian – has performed on belly dance music recordings

Gus (old tour manager) – had a slight obsession with the actress

Claire Danes and had her on the guest list

to virtually every show. Also notice early

videos with Sabby’s bass amp reading:

“Claire- Call Gus”

The band has toured with many of people…to name a few:

Sunny Day Real Estate

Cop Shoot Cop

Trans Am

Poster Children

Dave Matthew’s Band

Jeff Buckley

Shudder to Think

Geggy Tah

Los Amigos Invisibles

Everclear

DJ Spooky

Lake Trout

“…the best president would be Yuval Gabay. Every day would be a party.

Every day would be lunch. There would be amazing food and he’s a great

host.” – Mark

(e.g. the large numeral 7 written largely on Sebastian’s amp, etc)

A: “7 is the number of foolishness…” – Sebastian

This work could not have been made possible without the generous

contributions (info and otherwise and love) from the following people:

Todd Steinman, Elise (the rad girl,) Rene Usdrowski, Anne Marie, Darc,

March Hare, J-Dude, Ryan Walsh, Stacy, Opus, Ythan Burstein, Rachael,

P. McPhail, Awapy (Lisa K), Jessie H, Eric Helms, Chris Holly & Mark

and, of course: the band of Soul Coughing, for their

inspiration, all that rock music, and for being so nice…

Double M is the name that Soul Coughing gave to the album they were set to record with Knitting Factory Press, the label based out of the club where they met. Before they actually got around to recording it, however, Slash/Warner came along and gave them a big label deal. For a long time, Double M was listed in Knitting Factory's catalog, leading fans to frantically chase an album that does not exist.

Some of Mark's solo classical compositions are on a CD called Construction and Demolition, under the group title Rough Assembalge, along with compositions of other modern composers. The label, Avant, is in Japan and the CD is very hard to get a hold of. I have recently been told of the website of the label where you can order your copy: follow this link to get to it.

More recently, Mark recorded and released Horse Tricks, his critically-acclaimed full-length solo debut. The disc features guest appearances by every member of Soul Coughing, along with Elliott Smith, Alan and Mimi Spearhawk and others. It's very good, and is available at soulcoughingdirect.com.

The name is taken from a poem Doughty once wrote about Neil Young throwing up in the back of a bus. Doughty claims the only good thing about the poem was its title, and so used it when forming his band. When Soul Coughing performed with Neil at the 1997 HORDE festival, neither party mentioned it.

The prodcer of said album was Mitchell Froom, who is also Suzanne Vega's husband. They would bring their daughter, Ruby Froom, by the studio from time to time, and with Yuval's accent it turned into the title we know and love.

The title sums up the feeling of most of the songs, which, Doughty says, are “…mostly paranoid love songs about hoping desperately someone will call you while at the same tie being incredibly afraid o the sound of the ringing phone.”

El Oso means The Bear in Spanish. There was an old Soul Coughing tradition to draw bears on the set list, spurred by Sebastian who would pout until a bear was added. Doughty started the practice, and it was later taken up by then-Tour Manager Gus Brandt. Each bear would be connected to their current city, such as El Oso De World Trade Center in NYC, or El Oso De Amish Guy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

I've had some letters from angry members of the Nation of Islam asking why I'm using this title. In their beleif, there will be a chosen 5% to lead the people. I have taken the title from the Soul Coughing song, "Casiotone Nation," which is not meant in any way as an insult to their religion. It's merely a listing of false gods an idols that America bows to.

Sigh. Some people just can't understand a joke. Soul Coughing has said this a few times, and even put "satanic" messages into their music. I can say that in all of the times I've spent with them I've never seen any goat's blood or cat sacrifices, okay?

Soul Coughing is prety lax about bootlegs, they don't mind at all if you record their shows and trade them among your friends. There are two disclaimers, though:

1) Don't ask Lars the soundmand for a line. He'll bite you.

2) Although Soul Coughing doesn't mind recordings, big thick-necked bouncers at clubs across America may not like it too much. They may try to pummel you or confiscate your tape and/or equipment. Be warned.

Uh, sure, I guess. (Answer provided by Sebastian Steinberg)

El Oso is the creation of cartoonist and bizzarre fella Jim Woodring. It is hightly suggested that you head over to his website and check it out... it's mind-altering and free.