Soul Coughing

Judging from the crowd at Raleigh, NC's Pour House Music Hall, Mike Doughty is still quite the revered alt-rock figure. Ten years removed from the heyday of Soul Coughing, it's becoming clearer to me that Doughty's verbose psuedo-rap rants and stylish songwriting were more than the crux of the band's short-lived success - they were the band's lifeblood. With his solo jaunts, Doughty has created a more direct line of communication between he and his fans. Over the past 8 years, the shows have become notorius for spirited conversations between performer and audience, plus borderline stand-up comedy from Mike at times.

Soul Coughing, the now-defunct NYC band whose career was far too short, found an awful lot of music during their brief time together. There are not enough adjectives in the human vocabulary to describe their sound. With only three (spectacular) album releases to their credit and one “best of” compilation on the shelves, the band unintentionally left their fan base without much to remember them by. The band members have gone on to other things, but the yearn that a Soul Coughing fan feels for the band is similar to that of a Phish fan during hiatus. Various live recordings have surfaced recently, along with a handful of front man Mike Doughty’s solo adventures, and the community was briefly satisfied with the small cache of bootlegs that circulate.