Soul Coughing and Music Midtown 1994

So, the more things change, the more they stay the same, et cet.  Six years after deciding that he needed a change and left Atlanta, he had decided that he needed another change and returned to Atlanta. You never enter the same river twice and you don't live in the same city twice - it's changed after you've moved back and so have you.

His enthusiasm for alternative forms of jazz-based hip-hop continued, and one of his favorite bands of 1994 was Soul Coughing.  He considered their post-hipster combination of hip-hop, folk-rock, and jazz to be just about the coolest thing imaginable and was excited to see them perform a free, in-store performance at Criminal Records.

Frontman Mike Doughty is currently performing stripped-down, "reimagined" versions of Soul Coughing songs, and 20 years after the 1994 show, he caught Doughty perform at Criminal Records again, albeit at a new location and in a solo, acoustic set.  He caught Doughty again, this time with a full band, at Terminal West later that year.  

As with the years before, he listened to a lot of other music that year.  One Saturday morning in 1994, he saw in the local newspaper that there was something called Music Midtown that was going to be held that very day on an undeveloped tract of land at Peachtree and 10th St.  He went down on the spur of the moment and attended the inaugural event, and remembers seeing headliner James Brown for the one-and-only time in his life, as well as various other bands including Cake, Cracker, James, and Cowboy Mouth, but after that, it's mostly a blur of forgotten memories.

  

Fortunately, he took some pictures.

Michelle Malone

Flying Burrito Brothers

Glenn Phillips

Hugh Masakela

James Brown

For posterity's sake (and to attract Google hits), here's the line-up of the 1994 Music Midtown festival: Al Green, Allgood, Arturo Sandoval, Anson Funderburgh, Michelle Malone, Bela Fleck and The Flecktones, Billy Dean, Black Uhuru, Bobby Blue Bland, Brother Cane, Buddy Guy, The Charlatans, Cigar Store Indians, Cowboy Mouth, Cracker, Dallas County Line, Dash Rip Rock, Deborah Allen, Derek Trucks Band, Eddie Money, Five Eight, Flying Burrito Brothers, Glenn Phillips, Goose Creek Symphony, Hank Flamingo, Hugh Masakela, Hip Heavy Lip, James, James Brown, Jason & The Scorchers, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Joan Baez, Jupiter Coyote, KC & The Sunshine Band, The Knack, Lee Roy Parnell, Leo Kotke, Marsha Ball, Mr. Pitiful's Blues Bandits, Murray Attaway, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church Music Ministry, Ottoman Empire, Peter Case, Radney Foster, The Radiators, Raven Symone, Rodney Crowell, Rusty Johnson, Saffire The Uppity Blues Women, Sam Philips, Sergio Salvatore, The Smithereens, Subsonics, Syd Straw, Thing 1 Thing 2, The Tramps, Uncle Green, The Vidalias, and Wild West Picture Show.

Mike Doughty, Terminal West, Atlanta, November 20, 2013

Last night, Mike Doughty, formerly of the band Soul Coughing, performed at Terminal West.  New York's Moon Hooch opened.

Moon Hooch are a trio fronted by two guys on saxophones and backed by a drummer.  On first impression, their dance-oriented music is not dissimilar to moments of Big Gigantic, but unlike Big Gigantic, whose music I once described as consisting of all climaxes without any build up or release, Moon Hooch aren't afraid to vary their approach and to throw in some skwonk and experimentation. In fact, I don't think they're afraid of much of anything.   

It was my first time hearing Moon Hooch, and I enjoyed them a lot.  EDM meets avant-jazz, with a little old-fashioned funk thrown into the very modern mix.

The equally eclectic Mike Doughty headlined.  Doughty's music exists at the intersection of rock, hip-hop, and post-beat jazz.  He was the front man for the former band Soul Coughing, and one of my favorite concerts of the 1990s was Soul Coughing's free outdoor set in front of the old Criminal Records location on Moreland Avenue in Little Five Points.  I got a new printer just yesterday, and was able to scan in some of my old photographs of that set.  I'm not sure of the year of these pictures, but I believe it was about 1993 or so.  

Although I loved the Ruby Vroom album and their subsequent recordings, after that show, I didn't see Doughty again until 20 years later when I saw him, again at Criminal Records (although now at the new location), during last September's L5Fest.

During the L5Fest, he performed Soul Coughing songs solo, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar.  Last night, he had a band, or at least a very able drummer and an acoustic bassist, and he played electric guitar, keyboards, and turntables. It was all quite different, although equally enjoyable, from his L5Fest performance, and he included Screenwriters Blues in his set list. 

So, since L5Fest was the beginning of the surfeit of seasonal concerts that I call "Rocktober," and one of the highlights of L5Fest was Mike Doughty's performance, it seems appropriate to end Rocktober with this bookend, second performance by Doughty.  In other words, that's it for the longest Rocktober yet.

In a related note, I almost didn't go last night.  I got lazy and convinced myself that I just saw Doughty two months ago and it wouldn't be worth the $25 ticket to see him again so soon.  But I rallied at the last minute, but even driving there I decided that if I couldn't find a parking space in the nearest lot to Terminal West, I would just turn around and go home.  When I pulled into that nearest lot, it was full and several other cars that also couldn't park were turning around and leaving.  I turned around too, ready to go home, when suddenly, as if from nowhere, a young woman walked back to her car, got in and drove away, suddenly leaving the only open space in the lot right in front of me. Well, if the cosmos was going to be that obvious in its message that I should go, who was I to say "no?"