Soul Coughing, like Mr. Bungle, had a very strong impact on me in my teenage years. I was first introduced to them via a CMJ sampler cd in their monthly retail magazine. It had the song "Down To This" and, after a few listens, I found myself intrigued. There was also a full page ad featuring the girl from the "Ruby Vroom" cover with the large text reading "This shit will fuck your head up!". Needless to say, I now had to find this album. At the time I was living in a very small country town with a run-down, independent record store that had a crappy selection and charged too much. The owner wasn't the nicest person but the people who ran the store on a day-to-day basis were cool and they special ordered the disc for me. After a long week or two, it arrived and I made a mad dash to grab it. Upon receiving this much-desired item, I preceded to play the shit out of it at loud volume and all hours of the night at home, at my job washing dishes in the back of a local pizza joint, at school when I could hang out in the library and to anyone that would listen. I was really enthralled by "Ruby Vroom" and proceded to collect every piece of information about Soul Coughing that I possibly could. Now remember, this is about 1994 and file sharing was practically non-existant. You could download small clips of songs from select artists' web sites, but they were always low quality and, because you probably went online via dial-up, it took forever no matter how small the file was. Downloadable video was even worse and everyone thought that putting crappy, overly compressed videos on cd-roms was the way of the future. Oh, how far we have come.
Apart from finding a few interviews and oddball promos, I didn't hear much about Soul Coughing until 1996 when I heard "Super Bon Bon" on a late night alternative radio show in Cleveland and it happened all over again. I was blown away and knew I needed to get whatever came next. There was quite a delay between then and the release of their second album, "Irresistible Bliss", but I got by with the X-Files soundtrack cd which featured a new song by the Cough, and eventually grabbed the album on the same day as Prince's "Chaos and Disorder", a cd which I loved at the time but now have matured enough to say, without mincing words, sucked. I didn't care for "Irresistible Bliss" too much though compared to "Ruby Vroom". It sounded far too polished and lacked a lot of the weirdness that so appealed to me about "Ruby Vroom". It's grown on me a lot over time and has some tracks I've always really enjoyed, but a lot of my friends started catching onto the Cough about then and it pissed me off. I'd been down from day one! Or two, or whatever it really was. The point was, in my immature teenage ways, I felt I'd been there first and they didn't know how cool Soul Coughing really was. I wanted redemption!!!
Redemption came a few years later with the release of "El Oso". Most everyone talked about how great "Irresistible Bliss" was but everyone complained "El Oso" was too weird. I thought it was perfect! The Cough had nailed the craziness all over again and I blasted "El Oso" and the first two albums all summer long. It also seemed like Soul Coughing was finally starting to blow up and get appreciated for their individuality and creativity, with lead singer Mike Doughty publishing some of his poetry, drummer Yuval Gabay getting involved with the then-burgeoning jungle/drum'n'bass scene out of England, keyboard sampler Mark Dr Gli Antoni working on his solo album for John Zorn's label and bassist Sebastian Steinberg playing with people like Neil Finn and working on a band with Yuval Gabay called UV Ray. That's when the bottom dropped out though, as the band broke up and little was heard for quite a while. Doughty was especially quiet, for a while, until around 2000 he went on tour all by his lonesome playing acoustic sets in rented cars all over the country. It turns out he'd been suffering through a very bad case of drug addiction and the band's break-up had been anything but amicable, but he turned around and got his life back together. The topic of a potential reunion has been mentioned a few times but Doughty says it's unlikely, despite the rest of the band reuniting as an instrumental group named Tempo Team at one point. Doughty continues to tour and record on his own, still performing many Soul Coughing classics either acoustic or with his new band.
When the band broke up, there was a sizeable collection of unreleased material left over as well as a completely different version of the "Irresistible Bliss" album, then tentatively named "Lust In Phaze", a name later applied to a best-of compilation. The band let a few tracks find release as free downloads via their official website, but Warner Brothers eventually asked them not to give anything away as there may have been a future release of these tracks. That never happened though, so fans have been trading the goodies that they could get their hands on since. I've seen a few of these comps online and was disappointed to find a lot of the tracks either mislabled or attributing a track performed by someone else with Doughty on vocals to Soul Coughing. Don't get me wrong, I love to have tracks like those, I just like to know the correct details, so I figured, hey, I run a site dedicated to rare and unreleased music, why not post a collection that would clarify some things once and for all?
Soul Coughing - These Are The Reasons: Rarities
DISC ONE:
01 Bus To Beelzebub (Original Intro)
This is the unused introduction to "Bus To Beelzebub". Where this short intro ends the track as featured on "Ruby Vroom" would begin.
02 I Shot Lily Brick Down
03 Michael Jackson
04 Jersey Devil
There tracks are from a demo tape prior to Soul Coughing being signed with Slash. At this point they were playing live regularly and these songs were all featured in their sets along with several recorded for "Ruby Vroom". Their sound was clearly less than fully developed at the time. Some of the lyrics from "Jersey Devil" were reused in "The Brooklynites".
05 I Got To Get Right With This
06 Brooklyn Girls By Train
Both of these are live tracks from around the same time as the aforementioned demos. They still sound kind of rough and Mark De Gli Antoni's samples are fairly absent from the performances.
07 I'm Living On Baby Food
08 Theme From Rachel's Sitcom
These are both outtakes from "Ruby Vroom" that were featured on a Warner Brothers promotional single in their "Soil X Samples" series.
09 Buddha Rhubarb Butter
This appeared on several promotional compilations before finally gaining an official release on the "Lust In Phaze" compilation. This was a "Ruby Vroom" outtake which was a strong contender for the album. It would have been included if the band hadn't felt the album was already pretty long at just over an hour.
10 A Murder Of Lawyers
Another "Ruby Vroom" outtake. This was released on a compilation named "Offbeat" which was part of the Red Hot series of releases.
11 Sugar Free Jazz (Cane Field Mix)
Unreleased remix of Sugar Free Jazz.
12 The Brooklynites
This was released on the "Blue In The Face" soundtrack. It may have been recorded during the "Ruby Vroom" sessions but that is unconfirmed.
13 My Ass Is In The Bronx
14 El Burro In The Underworld
15 Come On and Dig Me, Cause I'm The Fly Pygmy
16 Pounded Cub Scout
17 Sack Full Of Puppies
These tracks, in this order, were released as an EP available only to members of Hello Recording Club which was run by John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. They have not been released anywhere else. They are mostly instrumental except for some quiet vocals by Doughty on "Come On and Dig Me...".
18 Laugh On Fatboy
Another live track, most likely recorded in the period between "Ruby Vroom" and "Irresistible Bliss".
DISC TWO:
01 Unmarked Helicopters
This was recorded especially for the "Songs In The Key Of X" compilation which was a soundtrack of sorts for the X-Files television show. Doughty has said the recording of this song is where the band started to break up, as by this point the first version of "Irresistible Bliss" was finished but, pleased with the results of this song's recording, everyone but Doughty decided to try to re-record the album over a few days with Steve Fisk.
02 Blow My Only
03 Lemon Lime
These "Irresistible Bliss" outtakes were released on the Japanese edition of the cd.
04 Wooly Imbibe
This great track never gained an official release although it was featured in the background during part of the movie "Can't Hardly Wait". This studio version was available for a time as a free download from the band's website after the release of "El Oso". This version was listed as an alternate mix, but since the original hasn't been released how can it be an "alternate" version?
05 There's Only One Everything
This is a live recording of a song which eventually became part of the track "The Incumbent" from "El Oso". This was recorded at a show prior to the release of "Irresistible Bliss" where the band debuted a lot of material from the then-forthcoming album. A version of "Wooly Imbibe" which is almost identical to the studio version was played at the same show.
06 Super Bon Bon (Propellerheads Mezzanine Mix)
Great remix by the Propellerheads which got lots of play in the US. The edit of the track seems to show up quite often but this is the full-length version.
07 A Plane Scraped It's Belly On A Sooty Yellow Moon
This was a collaboration with jungle/drum'n'bass artist Roni Size. It was recorded for the "Spawn" soundtrack. Apparently the band wanted to record more with Roni Size and potentially release the results as an EP, but shortly thereafter, Mr. Size became quite the commodity overseas and said EP was not to be. This track is kind of a remix of a demo that Soul Coughing recorded in England and gave to Roni Size to complete.
08 16 Horses
09 The Bug
These tracks are from the "El Oso" era and both appeared on soundtracks, although "The Bug" may have been intentionally recorded for the soundtrack it appeared on. "16 Horses" appeared on the "X-Files: Fight The Future" soundtrack and "The Bug" appeared on the "Batman and Robin" soundtrack. Towards the end of "The Bug", Doughty can be heard proclaiming "hail satan" and "George Clooney is satan".
10 212
11 Rare Star Ball
These "El Oso" outtakes were featured on the Japanese release of the cd. "212" is part of what evolved into "The Incumbent", also from "El Oso". This version may actually be a remix as the original version of the song was played live regularly and featured complete lyrics.
12 Freelancer
13 Needle To The Bar
14 He's Got The Whole World In His Hands
These "El Oso" outtakes were briefly available via the band's official website. Part of the lyrics from "Freelancer" were used for the track "Never Gonna Come Back Down" by bt upon which Doughty performed the lead vocals. "Needle To The Bar" featured a guest rap by Casual of Heiroglyphics. "...Hands" is indeed a Soul Coughing-esque cover of the childrens song. It's rather rough and unformed showing exactly why it was left off the album.
15 Adolpha Zantziger
16 These Are The Reasons
These "El Oso" outtakes were released on a promotional 7" prior to the album's release. If I remember correctly, it was given away as a prize to fans via the band's official website. The backing track of "Adolpha Zantziger" was released on Mark's solo album "Horse Tricks".
17 Cirles (Ashley Beedle Remix)
18 Rolling (Grooverider Remix)
These remixes were never given a proper release, although they did appear on several compilations. The "Rolling" remix may have been released on Grooverider's own label as a remix at one point, but it was featured on a drum'n'bass compilation assembled by DJ DB.
19 Suzi Snowflake
This was released on the "Made Especially For You" cd, a promotional release which featured this and four live tracks. That's Yuval reading part of the track in Hebrew, if I remember correctly.
20 Coffee Song
This was recorded for a Frank Sinatra tribute cd which never came to fruition. Yuval handles lead vocals here. Warner Brothers were Sinatra's label for many years and this track would most likely have been seen as sacrelage had it been release, as it's far more parody than tribute, but it's great for fans of the Cough. If you're gonna make fun of "Old Blue Eyes", this is a good way to do it!
21 Rachel Benbow Murdy - The Lemon Tree
This is the infamous phone machine recording used in the background on "Janine". It's apparently a complete improvisation by Doughty's then-girlfriend that she performed at his request when he was writing "Janine".
PS - To the band... You think I could interview you guys for a book I'm going to propose to the 33 1/3 book series? I want to write a book on "Ruby Vroom". No, seriously. You can always drop me an e-mail. PLEASE???
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