Last November I shared some Soul Coughing releases here & here.
Head honcho, obnoxious frontman, & stream-of-consciousness poet for Soul Coughing was one Mike Doughty. Love him or hate him, most all will agree that he creates / writes / plays some damn fine music. Recently he has been lending his skills to Ghost of Vroom. GoV has much more of the Soul Coughing vibe than Doughty's solo work, imho.
Doughty sez:
"Scrap (Andrew Liningston) and I had been doing this thing where we were improvising during songs, using an adapted, simplified form of the game pieces I learned from John Zorn in the 1990s. Hand signals for changes in the music: starting and stopping individual players, simplifying and creating complication, changing the volume, dropping into chaos and suddenly switching back to order. And we loved doing it. It transformed us into a nimble, live-remixing machine. So we wanted to try a without-a-net version - some pieces started with grooves we'd worked out beforehand, some totally freeform. We did this weekly residency, every Friday for two months at Harvard and Stone, in Thai Town, Los Angeles, using people we'd worked with and players from around L.A. that we loved. It was absolutely thrilling, and mesmerizing for the audience to watch, and to hear. I guess this is what we want to do when we grow up."
Here are Vroom 2, 1, & 3...
1918
Rona Pallona
Chief of Police
Side A -
More Bacon Than the Pan Can Handle
Memphis Woofer Rock
50,000 Bonus Miles
Revelator
Beat Up Born Where I Come From
Send a Letter to the Moon
Side B -
I Hear the Ax Swinging
Miss You Like Crazy
Bad Credit No Credit
James Jesus Angleton
They Came in the Name of the People
Pay the Man
Still Getting it Done
Let Up
As the Kid Goes for Broke
Yesterday in California
Reign of the Hummingbird
Your Bones in the Mud
Raincheck Jones
Cold Smoke
Slipping Off Your Wrist
I Had to Do It
Stalagmite
Here are a couple live gigs from the bands recent residency at Harvard & Stone in Thai Town, Los Angeles February 2022.
Set 1 -
Entrance
Soul in the Void Alright
Very Quiet Chaos
Now Is an Appropriate Time to Ingest Your Ketamine Lozenges
I Hold that Winning Hand
Otherwise I'm Slipping
Set 2 -
Entrance
Waiting for the Heat to Come On
Don't Hurt Yourself
As Long as We Know Where the Other One Is
Viva the Salamander Man
NØ