In the interest of full disclosure, i've got a thing for Mike Doughty. Could be that i was an avid member of The Only Answer (and a few other iterations), his on-line fan community. Sure, we seldom actually talked about The Mikeanator, all things being equal, but it was our love of his music that brought us together in the first place, i'd wager.Have you checked out Soul Coughing (particularly Ruby Vroom)? What about Smofe + Smang or any of his other early solo stuff? Back before signing to Dave Matthews' label, Doughty was one of the leading jazz beat poets out there, as far as i'm concerned. Then he apparently opted to try to go mainstream, but we don't need to get into that right here.
As luck would have it, MD just did a performance piece with Carolin Pook and her Pookestra. For the following performance, that means Mike laying down rhymes that would make Ginsberg jealous, two violins, two upright basses and a trumpet. The end result is more artsy than straight musical (or AAAArt, as Doughty calls it), so strap yourself in for the nearly 20 minute ride. Where else can you go to hear someone use the phrase "seelenausfallgeschichte?" This is beat music of an ENTIRELY different nature, kids, but it's no less digable.
