Paste Magazine ranks its 50 best albums of 1994. The music of our youth is truly the best music; there are some bands on here I’ve never heard of, which is why these stupid lists are sometimes valuable.
They sound awesome, but good goddamn, we’re getting old.
My good friend Matt sent me a text asking if I’d been to a Soul Coughing show at Bohagers with him back in ’97, and I said, Yes! I was there! They were throwing board games out into the audience! Turns out there’s a recording of the show on the Internet Archive. It’s not recorded through the board, but the sound is good enough. Bohager’s is long gone now; it got razed and developed into a parking garage about five years after that show. And, here’s the inspiration for the name of this website.
To my incredulous surprise, I read this morning in the Madrid airport that Soul Coughing, the excellent 90’s era band who wrote a song this website is named after, has reunited after 25 years of acrimonious bickering. They are planning a US tour and I’ve signed up for the ticket sale even though I’ll be in Portugal and have zero chance of winning one.
(previously)
The short version of the story is, I started writing Soul Coughing music again. I called up Soul Coughing and said, “Do you want to do this?” I got back a hot plate of crazy.
Huh. Mike Doughty has spent the last 20 years slagging Soul Coughing and is now releasing an album that was supposed to be the follow-up to Ruby Vroom, from 1994.
I’m spending the first couple of days with a gift from Santa: The Hamilton field watch I’d picked out months ago appeared under our tree, and I’ve been wearing it since Christmas day. My first impressions: It’s bigger and heavier than my Field Watch. Overall, I like the dimensions, and I’m getting used to the extra weight. The stock wristband is made for a bigger wrist than mine, which means it likes to slide down behind the far side of my hand, so I put one of the bands from my old watch on it. It looks great, and the crystal is slightly beveled instead of flat. The knob is about three times the size of the one I’m used to, which means it tends to get snagged more on my sleeves. The biggest issue I have with it, though, is the fact that it’s a manual-wind watch, something I didn’t notice on the listing. That’s not a dealbreaker. It just means I have to remember to wind it in the morning and in the evening. I like it a lot. It fits my aesthetic, and I’m keeping it.
In the meantime, my buddy Rob (he of the Seiko modding underground) clued me in to the huge eBay market in replacement watch parts. I did a quick search in the summer and found handfuls of replacement crystals which should fit my trusty Field Watch, so I’m going to drop off the watch and the parts with him to see if he can help me out.
I also found a Benchmade Mini Griptillian in my stocking, as a sidekick to–but not replacement for–my Skeletool. I’ve carried a Leatherman around for the past four years (my first was the original, now residing in the toolbox of the Scout), and I can’t begin to explain how many times I’ve used them for different things.
The Benchmade is lightweight, solid, and compact. The blade is razor-sharp and I’ve used it for ten different things this weekend. The action is smooth, and the locking mechanism is rock-solid and impossible to accidentally release. It’s got a pocket clip that reverses to either side based on your preference. I’m still taking the Skeletool most places I go, but the Benchmade will be my slimmed-down companion.
I’ve been trolling the ‘Best-of’ lists and plugging a lot of the individual songs into Spotify to find some new music. One of the tunes on constant repeat is Mike Doughty’s new single ‘Light Will Keep Your Heart Beating In the Future‘, which starts out with an odd banjo figure but slides hypnotically into Soul Coughing free-association wordplay territory from there. I’ve always been a fan of MD, in spite of his spite of Soul Coughing, and I really dig this tune.
I have a love/hate of Aphex Twin from back in the day, but ‘minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]‘ from Syro is another heavy rotator. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was a masterful album, but I had a hard time going in some of his more exotic directions. This tune is somewhere in the comfortable middle.
‘Brill Bruisers‘ from the New Pornographers is a third favorite. They have a distinctive sound, which is to say, none of their songs sound the same. This one is a loud stadium sing-along that always gets Finn moving.
This list was something I was thinking about the other day while chopping the stumps out of the front flowerbed, listening to the radio on the Scout and thinking about live music. What are the best ten shows I’ve been to see, when was it, and why? So, here goes.
1. The Scofflaws – 8×10 (1999 or so): This one bookended a huge part of my life in a lot of ways. At some point early in my junior year, a friend of mine from the design department and I were in the computer lab, and he offered me his Walkman to listen to a song: a ska version of the Pee-Wee Herman theme. We got to talking, made some plans for the weekend, and he later became one of my best friends and roommates. Fast forwarding to 1999, on the eve of his departure to San Francisco, we were out celebrating in Federal Hill. Splitting up early and on our way back to our cars, he heard the sounds of ska coming from the 8×10 and ran over to investigate. Running after us (we were almost in the car), he told us the Scofflaws were playing THAT VERY MINUTE. We all bought tickets and caught the end of the show.
2. Soul Coughing – 8×10 (Irresistable Bliss tour): I remember this being on a Sunday evening, tickets being around $15, and having an absolutely incredible time. the 8×10 holds about 175 on a crowded evening, and there were about 100 tops, so we were right up on the stage. The band played a fantastic set.
(Interestingly, the Soul Coughing Underground site has no mention of this show; they do list the Bohagers show I saw in 1997, however).
3. Lungfish – West Side Firehouse (unknown date): My memory of this is a little hazy. It was held on the top floor of a studio doubling as a performance space. The stage was set up at the back wall, and people sat on the floor and mingled before the show started. The guitarist quietly plugged in, tuned up, and then started noodling a repetitive, hypnotic riff. The bassist followed him, and built on the riff. The drummer came on next, and joined in, and finally Daniel Higgs came onstage. By this time we were all standing, swaying in time with the music. They built to a thundering crescendo and then he started singing; we were hooked. The cops came after about an hour to shut the show down, and he calmly walked over and talked them into letting the band finish three more songs. THAT is showmanship.
4. Billy Joel – Madison Square Garden (1986, The Bridge tour): Hate all you want; he put on a fantastic show. This was the first big arena show my parents let me go see, with two of my sister’s good friends from high school. I remember standing on the seats singing along to just about every song he played, and both encores.
5. The Sundays – JHU (1992, Blind tour): What can I say; I’ve always loved Harriet Wheeler’s voice. The band was tight and the sound was beautiful.
6. Unnamed Blues Band – Danbury (1995?): This was the best cover band I’ve ever seen, hands down. Probably fifteen members–an R&B rhythm section, five horns, keys, percussion, three backup singers and a short frontman in a three-piece suit who was able to channel Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, and Wilson Pickett at the drop of a hat. I kept returning to our table to do shots so that I could return to the floor and keep dancing.
7. Smashing Pumpkins – WUST Music Hall (Mellon Collie tour): Before Billy got really really annoying, and before the album had exploded the way it did. Their set was loud and fast and tight and he blessedly kept his annoying stage banter to a minimum.
8. Fugazi – Steelworkers Hall (1992): My knowledge of Fugazi at this point was minimal, but the set was good and tight and the energy was high. I caught a boot to the nose in the pit and had to head to the bathroom until it stopped bleeding. On my way back to the floor, the clot fell onto the back of my tongue, so I spit it out into a garbage can next to two goth chicks sharing a cigarette, who screamed and ran away.
9. Almighty Senators – MICA (1989): The school put on a show at some point my freshman year in the big studio at the back of the Main Building. They came prepared. They had a projectionist showing art-films, live dancers, and a good sound system. It was like nothing I’d ever seen or heard before, and it opened up my eyes to the possibilities of what you could do vs. what everyone else was doing.
10. Buddy Guy – Philly Jazz Fest (1995?): The band was on stage, waiting. In the center sat a chair, a guitar, and a highball glass filled with brown liquor over ice. He shuffled out, sat down, sipped on the drink. His band tensed, waiting. He picked up the guitar, strummed some chords, and launched into “Boom Boom Boom”. What followed was a master class in the blues, accented with the scent of marijuana smoke wafting out of the audience.
This afternoon I’m listening to some live Soul Coughing, courtesy of the Internet Archive. I miss good music.
We got back into Maryland just in time for a couple inches of desperately-needed rainfall. The rain barrels are almost full, and I’m fully expecting the grass to be lush and green for about two days before going back to a post-apocalyptic shade of brown.
Finn seems to be in the grip of the Terrible Twos; there is suddenly much whining and crying and carrying on over the smallest of things. Mama and I are resolute and speak to her in even, measured tones about how she should use her words and explain what’s wrong instead of making keening noises. Hopefully this, too, shall pass quickly. Potty training, though, is going along like gangbusters. She makes me so proud.
Portrait of the author by Finley, 2015
Hi, I’m Bill. I’m a designer, illustrator and photographer, working on the web since 1997 and writing online since 2001. I’ve had a pretty varied career, including contractor, print designer, game artist, webmaster, consultant, design director, head of my own small studio, Creative Director, and adjunct professor. I graduated from MICA at the exact moment paste-up and rubylith gave way to Quark, which meant I was trained in the old ways and the new.
In 2001, I looked around and saw that other folks were starting weblogs, and I decided to give it a try. For the first couple of years I coded and posted everything by hand, uploading via FTP, because I didn’t have database or CGI access on the server I was using. In the middle of March 2005, on or about the fourth birthday of this weblog, I bought a domain and hosting plan and switched over to Moveable Type to maintain the site. After searching for an available domain name, I finally settled on Idiotking, a shortened version of one of my favorite Soul Coughing songs and also something separate from my namesake site, which I was using for commercial purposes at that time.
I used Movable Type for a couple of years until I got tired of the increasing complexity of redesigns and upkeep. In 2008, I migrated to WordPress in search of more flexibility and ease of use.
This weblog is a dinosaur in the age of Facebook and Twitter, but the purpose for this site hasn’t changed since the day I started writing it. The whole point was to have a single place to keep all of my writing, pictures, and links instead of spreading them out across different sites, so this remains the best place to find me.
My wife, daughter and I live outside Baltimore in an ex-doctor’s office/house with two rescue cats, an insane rescue dog and a truckload of plaster dust. I’ve been brewing beer for about eight years now, and while I’m by no means an expert, I can brew a pretty decent IPA. I’ve owned two International Harvester Scouts over the course of twenty years. My current Scout is ugly but runs like a top and will probably remain four different colors. I bought a Travelall in the winter of 2023 as a new project vehicle.
I take photos with a Nikon D7000, Fuji X-T10, Canon 5D, 7D, (new-skool) a Minolta X-700, Rolleicord, and various antique 620 format cameras (old-skool.) Here’s a link to my Flickr account, and one to my Instagram account, if you haven’t already found them.
Some random factoids:
- I’ve had a goatee since 1997 and a full beard since 2015;
my chin has not seen sunlight since the Clinton administration. Streak broken; I shaved everything off after chemo in December 2017. - I hate Pearl Jam.
- I drove a tow truck to high school.
- I performed on stage in 1987 at Carnegie Hall in a tuxedo and checkerboard Vans.
- As of 2017, I’ve been to Bimini, Italy, Ireland, Curacao, the United Arab Emirates, England, Mexico, Paraguay, Colombia, Portugal and Spain.
- I love eating but dislike cooking. I do make a mean guacamole, though.
- I can pick locks, but I’m out of practice.
- I’ve been driving stick since I was 14.
- I love baked goods but will not eat anything with raisins inside.
- I’ve been published in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, Detroit Free Press, and Los Angeles Times.
- I’ve never met a celebrity, D-list or otherwise, in person.
- I’ve marched in a parade down Main Street in Disney World behind a bass drum.
- I failed math in 9th grade.
- I had a 5.5 lb. tumor removed from my abdomen in 2017.
idiot king – Duh.
cash is king logo – This one I don’t get.
squirrel movable pvc garden – Right, I can see that, I guess…
frigidaire air conditioner annoying beep – Heh, I don’t remember writing about all these together, but it makes sense…
idiot – Again, duh
diy casette adapter – I don’t remember writing about this either…
soul coughing idiot king – Once more, with feeling: DUH
kill the wabbit metallica – Ha ha
disposable digital video camera – Must have been on the linkblog
blisters tickling itch – Eeeeeewww.
I guess I should be happy it’s not pr0n search terms or sales links or other crap like that, but I’m not writing about any of those things, either.
I found, through circuitous channels, that Mike Doughty has a blog. Soul Coughing was always one of my favorite bands from back in the day, ad I had the good fortune to see them live twice—once at the old Bohager’s, which is now an empty lot (and being reclaimed as some kind of new building), and once in the old 8×10 as one of about fifty very lucky fans. That small club date remains one of the best live shows I’ve bever seen. (This weblog takes its name from one of my favorite S-C tracks.)
Anyway, he’s been kicking around playing small gigs for the past couple of years, and is in the middle of releasing a new solo album and going on tour to promote it. If you haven’t heard any of his newer work, it’s a departure from the old S-C sound, but still features ace songwriting and melodies. He’s an excellent writer, and comes off as an extremely down-to-earth kind of person.
If you haven’t heard it, I recommend Skittish. “Rising Sign” is one of my favorite tracks from last year.