Move aside, and let the man go through
Let the man go through
The post-Covid concert nostalgia tour continues! I saw Soul Coughing the first time they came through, at the Trocadero in 1996. They were everything my crew and I loved in a band– off the beaten track, delightfully weird, with a tendency to get lost in swirling beats and experimental nonsense– with a song that sampled a Looney Tunes cartoon, to boot. (Naturally, that song is my favorite, and I was stoked when they opened with it.)
For reference, here’s the cartoon “Bus to Beelzebub” sampled:
The “We Said It Would Never Happen” Tour – An Evening with Soul Coughing stopped at Franklin Music Hall in Philadelphia PA, October 3 2024. Unbeknownst to me, there was no opening band, and when I arrived at 6:55, just in time for doors opening at 7, I got the next to last spot in the adjoining lot and there was a line stretching through the lot and around the block.
I was shocked that a band I remembered as a pretty niche favorite had such a draw all this time later, almost a quarter century after it had broken up. (Frontman Mike Doughty has been steadily releasing new music, but I don’t know how broadly known that was.)
Spanning the crowd, it seems that a core group of fans brought along their friends, their spouses, or best of all, their kids to see the band we so fondly remembered, and that a new generation has embraced Soul Coughing’s music, whether they were introduced to it by their parents or on their own.
It seems that Soul Coughing’s brand of delightfully weird stream of consciousness rap-jazz is timeless, and they delivered a solid, swirling, fun performance to their fans. Towards the end, Mike Doughty skewered my least favorite part of any concert, explaining (I’m paraphrasing here): “This is the next to last song. At the end, I’m going to say this is the last song of the evening, but it’s not. We are all going to go away and pretend we’re not coming back, and you’re going to clap, and then we’re going to come back and everybody is going to act surprised.”
They didn’t even go away, he just went and retrieved a different guitar from the back of the stage.
We weren’t surprised, but we were happy.
All members of the band really seemed happy to be there with us. It was a wonderful evening.
Some videos below, more on my YouTube channel.
Setlist:
- Bus to Beelzebub
- Down to This
- Soft Serve
- White Girl
- Moon Sammy
- True Dreams of Wichita
- I Miss the Girl
- Collapse
- Disseminated
- St. Louise Is Listening
- Casiotone Nation
- The Idiot Kings
- Lazybones
- Misinformed
- Sugar Free Jazz
- Blue Eyed Devil
- Rolling
- Circles
- Screenwriter’s Blues
- Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago
- Super Bon Bon
