Soul Coughing: Whatever Happened To The Band Behind "Super Bon Bon", 'Circles'

Soul Coughing: Whatever happened to the band behind 'Super Bon Bon'
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In the mid-to-late 90s, Soul Coughing was an up-and-coming act that played a unique blend of alternative rock, electronic music, and hip hop. Late-night rotation of their music videos would help them amass a cult following, and they’d solidify their fanbase through airplay on alternative radio. Today, we’re going to explore whatever happened to Soul Coughing.
Soul Coughing was formed in New York City by vocalist and guitarist Mike Doughty (Dough-tee) in 1992, who was an aspiring music critic and poet at the time. By his own admission he was born to be an army brat (his father taught at west point.) Doughty wrote for McSweeney’s and Might and wrote a pretty scathing column called dirty sanchez for several years at the New York Press.
He would work as a doorman at the nightclub The Knitting Factory, a club that spin magazine referred to as and i quote “the mecca for avant garde experimentation.” It was at the knitting factory where Doughty showcased his distinctive spoken word poetry, and others soon took note. To flesh out his new project, Doughty (do-tee, recruited keyboardist Mark Degli (Deli) Antoni (Ant-tony), bassist Sebastian Steinberg, and israeli born drummer Yuval Gabay, all three of whom were regulars of the club, Doughty was significantly younger than the rest of his bandmates and he barely knew these musicians which would later lead to problems down the road.
The group’s percussionist, Gabay would perhaps have the most interesting musical background. Born to moroccan-jewish parents his home country of Israel didn’t really have a lot of rock and jazz when he grew up, but he would rather be inspired by different sounds he heard on the streets. Telling the Chicago Tribune "Even a faucet running, I'll tap my feet to it until somebody stops me..Mostly, I played weddings in Israel,". "There, to do that, you have to know how to play Moroccan music, or Yemenite music, or Russian songs, or music from Kurdistan. And if the couple is mixed--from different cultures." He would end up moving to new york and started playing with a percussionist trio playing polyrythmic experimental rock signed to a german record label touring across Asia, Europe and the US. He soon branched out to working with hip hop acts and even wrote and choreographed music for new york dance troupes.
The band’s name came from a slang for throwing up. Soul Coughing would rely on unconventional instrumentation including a(guitar, sampler, acoustic bass and drums) to create music that blended jazz, hip-hop, indie rock and noise experimentation. The band’s website would list influences ranging from black sabbath, bootsy collins, a tribe called quest and built to spill. The band’s songwriting style differed from other bands with Mark Deli Antoni telling billboard “we’re not one of those bands who sits down to write and the thing is in stone after a week. We write the music together and flesh it out in performance. Until it gets to that point which may take 10 to 15 performances it’s not really fleshed out. ” Those attending soul coughing’s live gigs never knew what they were in store for. Some gigs would have them playing completely brand new songs that weren’t recorded yet, while other gigs may have fan favourites. With the rising popularity and accessibility of the internet, Soul Coughing took advantage of technology as the band openly encouraged bootlegging of their concerts. Bootleg tapes would be openly traded on a folder dedicated to the band on America Online, something which Doughty himself would also partakes in.
In just one year, the band was signed to Slash Records. By this time, the label had become part of Warner Brothers, giving the band much-needed mainstream exposure,
Mike Doughty would tell the Baltimore Sun what strings came with being signed to a major label"You don't necessarily have to choose a category musically, but business-wise, you absolutely, positively have to choose one," he says. "And we were very upfront to everybody -- 'OK, we're an alternative rock band whether you like it or not.' So that's the box that they've thrown us in, radio-wise and marketing-wise.