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| Interviews: Ash |
Voulez Vous the
Cough? Soul Coughing's M. Doughty: 18 January 1995 fritz did this interview with doughty in the basement of the black cat club in d.c. on january 18, 1995 - his 19th birthday. the transcript is really funny, but this is what i can find. a drasticly shortened (about half) version of this article ran in the diamondback shortly thereafter. The last year has been a year of firsts for the New York foursome Soul Coughing: the band signed its first record deal (with Slash Records, a Warner subsidiary); they recorded and released their first album (the intoxicating Ruby Vrrroom) for that label; they played their first gigs outside of New York City (opening for Cop Shoot Cop, Shudder To Think and Sunny Day Real Estate); and last Wednesday, the band embarked on its first ever tour as the headliner, beginning its top-billed dates at the Black Cat C lub in Washington D.C. Ironically, the band also played its first ever show outside of New York at the Black Cat last fall, opening for Shudder To Think. "To play in a city we had never played in before, [that show] was really good," said Soul Coughing singer M. Doughty before last week's show. "I was worried about touring with them and when we toured with Cop Shoot Cop, going out and getting audiences like, 'What the hell are these guys doing here,' but it was totally mellow. Actually, it was live here last time. People were dancing around, up front at least - that space five feet from the stage where we can see people moving around." Still, the band has higher expectations for its audience. "We always hope for a drunken erotic frenzy, which always happens in Cleveland, funny enough," Doughty said. "Whenever, we go to Cleveland, it's like AAAAHHHH! People are jumping up on stage and cl othes are being thrown all over the place and all kinds of weird shit. That's what we're looking for, but we don't always get that. We get people going (strokes chin) 'Hmmmm.' That's awful - a deep listening audience." Doughty (who insists on being called just that), admitted to being nervous about the tour, but said the transition to headliners shouldn't have too much of an effect on the venues the band plays. "We're playing the same size places, we're just getting lar ger audiences," he said. "The word is beginning to spread." Indeed. The band got its life about two and a half years ago when Doughty worked at the famous Knitting Factory club in New York. He got to know drummer Yuval Gabay and keyboardist/sampler guy M'ark De Gli Antoni while they were in other bands that played at the club. Bassist Sebastian Steinberg joined the band soon after, replacing the original bassist. "The way New York works is that everybody plays in half a different bands at once, so [Soul Coughing] was sort of one in everyone's list of 50 million things they were doing in a given week," he explained. "As time went on, it kind of gained its own sort of life." Due to the band's gigging and crossover appeal, the band soon gained a large following and decided to make a record for the Knitting Factory's in-house label. Then fate stepped in. "By the time we were talking to them about [the deal] and trying to hash a ll that shit out, Slash showed up and we just decided to go with them," Doughty said. He acknowledged that it's rare for a band to graduate to the big time without having any releases to their credit, but he also stressed that Slash gave the band the freedom to do its own thing. "They haven't fucked with us in the least," Doughty said. "We handed them in the record and they were like, 'Okay. Cool.' Nobody came into the studio and looked over our shoulders to make sure we making big pockets about cars and chicks and guns. It was totally cool." The label's hands-off attitude also extends to the band's singles and videos, Doughty said. The first single, "Screenwriter's Blues," is a perfect example. "What happened [with the first single] was this big radio station in Los Angeles just started playi ng 'Screenwriter's,' so we just said, 'Fuck, they're playing it, let's do that,'" Doughty said. "But [the choice of singles] is our decision. [Slash is] real artist-oriented. But it's really strange having to do this pop marketplace type thing. It's like, pick the one song - the Big Hit!" The marketplace itself doesn't seem to know where to put the band. Various reviewers have called the band everything from "a cubist bebop beat combo" to "alternative neo-beatnik rock." The band itself doesn't seem to know where it fits in, or even care. " There are people [who call it poetry], and there are people who call it a hip-hop band, and there are people who actually think it's a jazz band, which I find particularly laughable," Doughty said. "I mean, It's not really our job to figure out what it is . We just do it. You gotta take that shit with a grain of salt. Whatever people want to perceive it as ... " he shrugged. Still, the band knows what it wants at its shows. "I really want a diverse crowd," Doughty said. "In New York, we have a pretty substantial hip-hop audience - we have a fair amount of Blacks at our shows. But pretty much everywhere else we go in the count ry - granted, we've been opening for Shudder To Think and Sunny Day Real Estate, who are 'traditional' alternative rock bands - it's an all white audience. "I realize in this country, people judge music by association. It's a sub-cultural identity thing as it is, 'I listen to this and it moves me.' I think it's a little bit less so than it was ten years ago, but nonetheless, the best thing we can hope for is that people will hear the record and have an honest reaction to it," Doughty said. The audience could be a reflection of Slash's marketing, which has focused on the usual alternative outlets, though, and Doughty admits he helped make that decision, with regrets. "One thing that really bothers me is that we had to pick if we were an alte rnative band or a hip-hop band. We said, 'Well, we're an alternative band because if you're an alternative band, you can tour and play clubs and stuff.'" However, Doughty has noticed that the band has had some trouble breaking into traditional alternative outlets. "We've been largely ignored by indie stores," he said, with just a hint of disappointment. "It's really strange. We go into Tower Records and th ere we are, but we go into some little indie store - where we'd be more comfortable being placed - and we're not there." Nevertheless, the band is clearly being accepted in many areas of the alternative scene. For example, the band was recently given a spotlight in Rolling Stone as a "Hot Band." "That was so strange," Doughty said. "We were in Los Angeles, and it was like ... I bought the magazine just to read it, and it's like, 'Oh, it's me!' I bought the New Yorker today to read in the van, and it's like, 'Oh, there's us!' I mean, I'm grateful. I think endorsements [from magazines and papers] are very important." The mood lightened considerably when Doughty began to discuss his rather, uh, unusual lyrics. "The lyrics come from everywhere: shit I overhear on the F Train, from things I rip off from TV shows ... all that stuff," he said. "I have a plastic notebook an d I just write shit down as soon as I think of it. Of course, I think of the really good stuff when I don't have it on me." A key part of Soul Coughing's sound is the mantra: "You get the ankles and I'll get the wrists" on "Down To This," the endless repetition of the titles during "White Girl" and "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago," and "Voulez vous the bus" during "Bus To Beezlebu b." "Sometimes I'll just be looking for some phrase to repeat over some groove and I'll go over a bunch of poems," Doughty said. "You just have to teach yourself how to get that line out of [those poems] and put it where it's gonna be useful." Then there is the question of influences on his lyric writing - toxic influences, that is. Doughty has admitted he conceived the main idea of the album's lead track "Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago" while tripping in that city. But what about lyrics like "Voul ez vous the bus/That's gonna take you back to Beezlebub/Voulez vous the bus/that's going to make you stop going rub-a-dub?" "I wasn't on acid when I wrote '[Bus to] Beezlebub,' but I was very, very stoned, and I just said it, and it was like, 'Hmmm, I have to remember that one,' Doughty said. Still, you can't just blame the chemicals if Soul Coughing lyrics are confusing and unclear. Doughty thinks it's really funny when listeners misinterpret his lyrics. In fact, the back of the promo single for "Down To This" lists his favorite mangling of the chorus. The top choices are "You get the eggrolls and I'll get the rice" and "You get Jim Backus and I'll get Koresh." "I love that shit [when people mess up lyrics], you know, who listens to pop songs for poetic inspiration anyway?" Doughty said. "My favorite Prince songs are the ones I don't understand the words to. I'm like, 'Oh yeah, that's what he's saying,' and I fi nd out two months later it's something totally different. "I also think it's really dry to have this lyric sheet you sit and read while you listen to the record - like there's some libretto to the record or something. Hopefully people will start to absorb [lyrics] over time, and hopefully they'll make up their o wn shit. I'm not trying to put any kind of big ideas across to anybody." As expected, his main stylistic influences include a wide mix of poets and rappers. "I guess if there's a tendency of influences in them, it's like 1991-92 hip-hop shit like Das FX and Tribe Called Quest, all that stuff that was totally freestyle and comp letely bugged-out, word play type stuff, and poets like Alan Dugan, who had that real, sorta measured kinda lyrical, rhythmic thing goin' on," Doughty said. And what does the future hold for the band? Well, they're busy getting ready for album number two while the tour continues. "We're always writing," Doughty said. "In any given set we'll have 2 or 3 songs that aren't on the record, at least. When we play N ew York we play half new songs because everyone knows all the stuff already." But are they ready to reenter the studio? "We could make the next album tomorrow if we had the chance," he said. "Got studio time, we're there!" And while they're not connecting with their growing live audience, the band members connect with their fans via the Internet. Soul Coughing's e-mail address was listed inside Ruby Vrrroom's cover and the band also has connections with America On-Line. "We get like 20 e-mail letters a day or something, so we right back to em," Doughty said. "We're into responding. It's really fun because you get to respond to people directly. We get stuff from all over the world: we occasionally get stuff from Europe, and we got a letter from Israel a couple of years ago. "We mostly get stuff like, 'Can you tell me information about the band Soul Coughing?' so I write back, 'Well, what would you like to know?' Then they'll be like, 'Oh, I didn't know it was actually you responding to this thing. How long has the band been together? How many records do you have out?' That sort of shit." Still, as the band gets bigger and the audiences keep increasing, one very important fan hasn't been able to see the group perform live. "My mom hasn't seen us yet," Doughty said. "My mom keeps wanting to come see us. She lives upstate in New York, and she wants to come to a New York date, but I'm like, 'Mom, wait ''til we play someplace larger. You do not want to be in some sweaty little dive on the lower east side with 500 people all packed around you sweating and stuff. Eventually, you know ... I really have to talk her out of the Wetlands gig we're doing on Saturday." |