Album of the Day — November 4
Soul Coughing — Ruby Vroom
Soul Coughing — Ruby Vroom
04.November.2020
Soul Coughing
Ruby Vroom
1994
New York City’s Soul Coughing’s debut album Ruby Vroom is one of those weird albums that, when reading about it, will have you scratching your head. Maybe even after one listen.
It shouldn’t work, but it does.
A blend of beat poetry and quirky sounds, hip hip, humor, improvisation, jazz, etc, you’d think it’s a recipe for disaster …and it’s just not.
Soul Coughing, contextually, is a bit like The Flaming Lips, free form Jazz, with some ZZ Top and William Burroughs tossed in to spice shit up.
Seriously, it shouldn’t work, but it does. And almost 30 years on, it’s still fun to listen to.
Soul Coughing was made up of:
Mike Doughty (billed as “M. Doughty”) — vocals, guitar
Sebastian Steinberg — bass guitar, upright bass, backing vocals, sampler
Mark de Gli Antoni — keyboards, programming
Yuval Gabay — drums, programming
Soul Coughing is kind of like that Tom Hanks SNL sketch David S. Pumpkins in that “it’s its own thing.” Or as Mike Doughty called the bands music, “deep slacker jazz,”
Ruby Vroom so flawlessly samples from across genres. Some of the samples include:
Toots and the Maytals
Howlin’ Wolf
The Andrews Sisters (?!)
The Roches
Thelonious Monk
Bobby McFerrin
Joan Armatrading
Admittedly, those were different days, when the rule of thumb was “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission” when it came to sampling.
I only recall three songs getting marginal airplay, “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago,” “Bus to Beelzebub,” and “Screenwriter’s Blues.” It’s the last song that contains the classic lyric:
You live in Los Angeles
And you are going to Reseda;
We are all in some way or
Another going to Reseda
Someday
To die
If you “get” the album, you like the album. Not that there’s much to “get” — it’s not deep, it’s just …odd. And sometimes odd is just odd, but fun.
To wit:
Producer Tchad Blake (he spells his name Tchad — FLAG) stuck a microphone in a car muffler, and had lead singer Doughty yell improvised lyrics on “Casiotone Nation” while singing into a cheap amp system — basically a bullhorn on a stick.
It shouldn’t work, but it does.
CRITICS:
Michael Azerrad wrote in Rolling Stone: “Doughty samples ’90s culture, finding magic in even the most banal elements of the collective consciousness. Over the bruising swing of “Casiotone Nation,” Doughty name-checks pay-per-view TV, nipple clamps and Milton Bradley before quoting the old Schoolhouse Rock TV spots….Soul Coughing make pop music for the Information Age.”
Robert Christgau ACTUALLY gave it an A: “If it was down to M. Doughty’s hipster cynicism and summer-stock declaiming, this would be a novelty act not unlike Tonio K., whose shouted studio speed-rock provided a nonpunk corrective to Jackson Browne. But the music isn’t just second-rate poetry-with-fusion backup. Standup bassist Sebastian Steinberg (dig his “Misterioso” under “Casiotone Nation”) and chopswise drummer Yuval Gabay (hear him threaten to fly off the track on “Blueeyed Devil”) remain up front, while keyb man M’ark De Gli Antoni (that’s what it says) orchestrates synthesizer and sampler for atmosphere, commentary, and plain old cheap thrills. Not that the music isn’t more compelling when Doughty hits his satiric targets, the easy ones included.” [what does all of that even mean?]