Soul Coughing "Screenwriter's Blues"

For a good 15 years now, if asked, I'd name "Ruby Vroom" by Soul Coughing as one of my Top 5 All Time Favorite Albums.  It's a record I go back to regularly.

Maybe you've heard it, but wouldn't put it in your Top 5.  Or Top 25.  I get that.

Maybe you've heard it, but didn't like it at all.  I get that.

Maybe you even actively dislike it, and can't possibly see how anyone could like it.

I can even buy that position.

Unless your name is Mike Doughty.

But yes, Mike Doughty, the former lead singer of the now defunct band, hates the music of Soul Coughing.  And he's not shy about saying so.

In fact, he hates it so much that he's started a Pledge Music campaign, to raise money to re-record many of the songs from those Soul Coughing records, to put them in a more palatable form.

I am truly, legitimately confused about how to feel.  The creation that I love is hated by the creator.  And in doing so, it seems to cast doubt on my own personal taste


Hear the song on Youtube.

Soul Coughing "Uh, Zoom Zip"

When people talk about the Landmark sample-based records that middle America latched on to, where is Soul Coughing in that discussion?

The Beastie Boys "Paul's Boutique," the first 3 Public Enemy albums and De La Soul's "Three Feet High And Rising" are all seminal, in terms of ridding the prejudice against samples and beats. They met with varying levels of commercial success, but they are all records that people returned to years later for ideas and examples.

"Ruby Vroom" should be part of that canon, and I can't figure out why it isn't. It's such a smart record and it one-ups the others mentioned above, with lots of live playing---real drumming, a heavy bottom stand-up bass groove, and dense, imaginative lyrics that you could spend hours and hours parsing out.

It's an under-appreciated classic, to my mind.

Hear "Uh Zoom Zip"