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Soul Coughing

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Soul Coughing (1992–2000) was a New York-based band founded by vocalist and guitarist Mike Doughty (who billed himself at the time as 'M. Doughty'), a folk singer (he attended Eugene Lang College with Ani DiFranco, where they studied with Sekou Sundiata and played around the school together), slam poet, sometime music writer, and doorman at the old Houston Street location of The Knitting Factory, then a nexus for such avant-garde artists as John Zorn and Marc Ribot.

Doughty put the band together from instrumentalists he met as they came through the club; he met sampler player Mark De Gli Antoni (recently graduated with a composition degree from Mannes College of Music) when they both participated in a performance of Zorn's "game piece" Cobra. This same ensemble also featured Jeff Buckley. Doughty brought a stack of CDs over to De Gli Antoni's house one afternoon and had him sample iconic riffs from Raymond Scott, Carl Stalling, Howlin' Wolf, and The Andrews Sisters, among others. These, along with samples from De Gli Antoni's own orchestral works, became the foundation of Soul Coughing's musical identity, powering Doughty's half-sung, half-spoken vocals.

De Gli Antoni, Doughty, Boston-based upright bass player Sebastian Steinberg, and Israeli drummer Yuval Gabay (a collaborator with Zorn, and David Linton) played their first gig, as "M. Doughty's Soul Coughing," at the Knitting Factory on June 15, 1992, a late-Monday night slot that Doughty cadged from his boss because nobody else wanted it. In 1993, he founded a club night called "SLAW" at CBGB's 313 Gallery, which was meant to emulate the popular jazz and hip hop club Giant Step, but eventually became a showcase for Soul Coughing. Posters for SLAW were headlined "Deep Slacker Jazz" (a parody of The Who's slogan "Maximum R&B"), which became an enduring description of the band's sound.

The band was signed within a year to Warner Brothers subsidiary Slash Records, and released three albums: Ruby Vroom (1994), Irresistible Bliss (1996), and El Oso (1998). They enjoyed minor hit singles with "Circles," "Super Bon Bon," and "Screenwriter's Blues." They also had songs featured in the movies Batman and Robin, Tommy Boy and Spawn (a song called "A Plane Scrapes Its Belly on a Sooty Yellow Moon", a collaboration with drum and bass artist Roni Size.) Also released following their breakup was Lust in Phaze (2002), a greatest hits complilation including a few b-sides and other rarities that featured extensive biographical and background liner notes written by Doughty.

The band broke up in 2000, after years of feuding over songwriting credits and publishing money. Doughty continued as a solo artist, collaborating with techno producer BT on the hit single "Never Gonna Come Back Down" in the summer of 2000. Dropped by Warner Brothers that same year, Doughty toured as a solo artist for three years, playing acoustic shows, driving alone throughout North America, and selling an acoustic CD, Skittish, from the front of the stage after gigs. He returned to the major leagues in 2005 with the release of Haughty Melodic on friend Dave Matthews' label ATO; the single "Looking at the World from the Bottom of a Well" became a radio hit, notably played on the soundtrack to Grey's Anatomy.

Mark De Gli Antoni moved on to soundtrack work; Gabay formed the band UV Ray and has worked with Roni Size; Steinberg has played with David Byrne, Neil Finn, and Yerba Buena.

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