It wasn’t for lack of trying. We practiced consistently and tried to find good gigs, but something just wasn’t there.

Our vocalist and principal songwriter was Chase Jones. He also played guitar when necessary, but preferred having a lead guitarist to handle anything serious. When we recorded our demo CD (you can hear two songs below), I played all of the lead parts in addition to bass. Harold “H Cool” (though he didn’t get that nickname until later on) Johnson handled rhythm guitar (acoustic) and backing vocals. For the majority of the Child’s existence, drums were the domain of Rick Ortiz. There is very little of consequence to say about him.

Yes, I'm playing a pink bass.

Rounding out the lineup was usually a lead guitarist. Our first lead player was a guy whose name I can’t remember. That’s OK, because I can’t remember a single note he played either. He wasn’t exactly unskilled, but he was a bit aimless on the fretboard. I tried to help him out, but at the time, the closest I was able to come to constructive criticism was the following tidbit:

If a solo doesn’t go anywhere, it’s crap.

I remember that because, for years after, other members would remind me of how tactless I had been and how it had probably been a deciding factor in Bill’s (yeah, that’s what his name was - Bill…) leaving the band. I was OK with that and suggested my friend Mike Healy to fill the role. Mike is a much better player now - better than I am - but at the time, he just wasn’t ready to play lead in a band.

In between lead players, we cut a demo. To my knowledge, only two songs from that session survive. Here they are:

1. Behind-the-Closet-Door.mp3
2. Broken-Image.mp3

Eventually, we got Nate. Nate had been in one of Chase’s old band in their hometown, and moved up to Atlanta, in part to join Surrogate Child. He was a much better player than Bill had been, and came equipped with ideas, an edgier sound (which we had much desired), and even a couple of songs. Nate fit SC pretty well, and I had a lot of fun having a guitarist who could actually handle interesting parts.

Still something was missing. Probably several somethings.

In the end, we just lost momentum. I took a trip to Japan, and when I returned to Atlanta, there wasn’t a band left. No surprise really, but it was kind of sad all the same.

Chase and I continued to be good friends and tried for some time to start a new band. We were tentatively calling ourselves Snidely Whiplash and were attempting to recreate the entire Baader Mienhoff album in a live setting. We recruited Karen Schultz for a short time to play some bass and keyboards (I was playing guitar), and we searched high and low for a drummer. There was one guy named Keith that we really liked, but we could never get enough elements happening together at the same time to really call ourselves a band.

Today, I want to share this:

Where the 12 songs on 4.75 Inches were basically “rock,” “Pictures of You” would fall into the “soft rock classics” category. That is, of course, if it were actually a classic. Come to think of it, it’s not even really all that classy either.

I wrote this song in 2005, while I was living in Myogi, Japan. Myogi was a really small town (so small that it doesn’t even exist anymore), so I spent a lot of evenings hanging out at the Mister Donuts in nearby Tomioka. And that’s where I was when I got the idea for this song.

MisDo (as it’s called in Japan) has a monthly musical theme that is played in all of the stores nationwide, and that particular month, the theme was 80s schlock - or “soft rock classics.” I was sitting there, eating my old fashioned doughnuts and drinking my tenth or so cup of American coffee, thinking to myself that I could do better. So I pulled out the iBook and headphones and went to work with Garageband. Those built-in samples turned out to be just cheesy enough to make a really good backing track.

After writing out some quick lyrics, I went out to the car, where I recorded the vocals straight into the built-in mic on the computer. You can actually hear a couple of trucks driving by in the mix.

I actually rerecorded this song later, using a better mic and a few real instruments, but I’ve reserved that copy for the (eventual) followup to 4.75 Inches, 12 Centimeters of the Andy Fossett Soft Rock Classic.

Periodic table graphic from the TAFRS T-shirts.

Cover art for the first edition of 100 copies

Back in early 2003, I got this idea that I should record a rock album.

At the time, I had been doing a lot of jamming, especially with a couple of drummers, and playing a kind of punk/dance/jazz hybrid that people seemed to enjoy, but we never got our act together well enough to put a band together.

Maybe it was all a reaction to playing bass four or five hours a day for the preceding year, but I suddenly began getting the urge to shred and and play guitar solos and stuff. It probably also had a lot to do with having finally gotten my Klein Electric (a guitar I had dreamed about owning for years) a few months earlier. In any event, most of my creativity was being channeled into bass playing, so I ended up relearning all my old songs on the guitar.

So I figured I might as well record them.

All together, I sold and gave away about 150 copies of the actual disc. Since then, I’ve made the music available for download from iTunes, and you can listen to previews and get the tracks from there.

Here’s what I wrote in the original liner notes:

So. Here we are. Now what? I guess I should use this space to tell you a little bit about the compact disc you are probably either holding or listening to right now.

I want to say starting off that this isn’t really indicative of the kind of music I usually make. Nor is it my best effort at recording my music. Sorry.

The thing is, somewhere around spring of 2003, I just had this feeling that I wanted to make a rock album. At that point I hadn’t played music that could be called “rock” in a couple of years or more, so it was a strange thing to be using distortion boxes and playing guitar solos again. I think I just needed to get some musical closure on my college years before moving to Japan and becoming a teacher. So I took a bunch of old songs I had written through high school and college and started working out new arrangements and finishing lyrics. after a couple of weeks, I had narrowed eight years of writing down to these twelve songs.

Then it came time to record. in the general spirit of nostalgia for my teen years, I rebuilt the the studio in which I learned to record using all the old gear my father had bought when I was a child. The main recording gear consisted of a Musimatic 2200 console and a Fostex A-8 reel-to-reel machine dating from the early 80s. Two tracks of the recorder wouldn’t track properly, so I ended up with six useable tracks for recording. Almost everything on this disc was processed through Hafler and ART guitar preamps before hitting the desk. I mixed everything down to stereo cassette on an old Magnavox deck and ran it into my PC for final sequencing and burning to disc. it was a really labor-intensive way to record compared to the system I use now, but it felt appropriate to the nature of the project.

I should mention that I feel really strongly about using my Klein electric guitar, Analogman stomp boxes, and Kendrick amplification. These excellent instruments are made by excellent people. I haven’t been quite so lucky with finding the magic bass gear yet.

The performance: I did all the vocals (i’m really, truly sorry for that, by the way) and played all of the instruments, with the exception of drums which were handled by Craig Webster. Craig is a great drummer, and I feel awful that I couldn’t do his performance justice in the recording and mixing aspects of this disc. We did all of the drums in about a day and a half, and all Craig had to base his parts on was a click and some rough guitar sketches. After that I overdubbed the rest of the parts, sticking to first and second takes only. I think the mixing took more time than the recording overall.

The songs:

1. I Like Girls - I’ve always been about honesty and simplicity in song-writing, and I think this is a good example. I wrote the basic ideas for this song in a cafe in Yokohama and filled out the details based on my experiences with various girlfriends and trying to figure out just exactly what the hell I am looking for.
2. I Would Sell My Lungs - I wrote this song for Melo after her 21st birthday. What a disaster.
3. I’m Totally Stupid - I once had a crush on a girl who worked at a Japanese restaurant. the time came when I had no choice but to just come out with it, and all I could think to tell her was that I was totally stupid for her. it wasn’t my best approach, and she was seeing someone, but a few months later, I got a date with her anyway.
4. Very Nice Hat - A girl I used to know once knitted a hat for me, and it was very nice. This song is not about her, but it is about giving and sharing and other good stuff like that.
5. I Like Watching Chicks Play Tennis - Back to the honesty theme. I was at a bar one afternoon, and they were showing the Australian Open on the TV. I don’t usually watch TV, but I was powerless to avert my gaze. I can’t remember the names of the players who had me so fixated, but at that particular point in time, they were the two hottest women to ever live.
6. Bug - I wrote this in high school when I was learning about metafiction and post-structuralism.
7. Language Lessons - This song is just for Shiloh, ‘cause she asked for it.
8. Here Goes, and Anyway… - I have some great friends. They know who they are. (I just listened back to this song again, and the vocals absolutely suck. I’m really sorry about that - I guess I should have done one more take…)
9. Types of Inertia - As a physics student, I realized one day that the only thing keeping me with my girlfriend of the time was inertia. The result was my best effort attempt at a straightforward rock song.
10. The Particles of a Party Girl - When Craig was over tracking drums, there was a little bit of leftover tape at the end of the second day. What you hear is pretty much straight improv with a guitar overdub.
11. Susan is Nanking -Michael and I wrote this for Susan’s 21st birthday. Nanking was a code for certain girls we knew back then.
12. The End - This one is pretty self-explanatory, I guess.

So that’s it. That’s all there is. I hope you enjoy at least some small part of the music that found its way onto this disc. If not, you can always use it as a coaster or something. If you do enjoy it, make copies for all your friends. I promise not to sue.

Anyway, it was fun to record, and I still enjoy listening to the songs from time to time. None of them are great by any standards, but that was never the point.

I don’t know where Soul Coughing came from, but they sure do come (sorry, Ted Nugent reference). I first heard about them from Laurie Nardone. Laurie was my English teacher for senior year of high school, but it was actually a college class, and Laurie was not the schoolteacher type. She was really damn cool. She taught us how to read critically and punctuate like motherfuckers. She also turned me on to Soul Coughing. For all of these gifts, I continue to hold her in high regard.

You may never have heard of Soul Coughing, and if this is the case, I pity you. Missing out on this band is not something you want. Their music is rich and interesting and varied. You won’t be able to compare it to the formulaic ADD-pop you hear on the radio and TV these days. Still, it might not set you on fire the way it does me. You may listen to a few of their songs decide you don’t enjoy them, but you’ll have widened your experience, and you’ll be a better person for trying to understand what this music means.

So what can you expect?

Magic. OK, maybe you won’t agree, so I shouldn’t promise magic. But I can promise unique. I can promise that you’ve never heard this sound before or since. The music consists of equal parts funk, drum and bass, and cartoon soundtrack. The lyrics are some of the best abstract poetry you’ve ever heard.

Soul Coughing released three albums, and all of them are great. The last disc, El Oso is at once the most commercial and the most challenging, but they all have a lot to offer and reward repeat listening with layers and layers of sound and texture and meaning.

Ruby Vroom

Ruby Vroom was Soul Coughing’s first album, and I played the hell out of that thing. “School Bus To Beelzebub” sounded like a drunken carnival in hell, and the lyrics had to be the most cracked out thing I had ever heard up to that point in my life. My favorite song on the disc back then was “Supra Genius.” The main riff was just too funky - the way the drums played off the guitar and bass unison - and any song with the lyric “You say correlation is not causation,” was sure to excite my geeky side.

Listening to RV now, “True Dreams of Wichita” is by far my favorite track. The minimalist structure, telephone overdubs, and Wizard of Oz reference all touch something that’s hard to describe in words. Everything’s in there, but mostly longing. Serious, intense longing. Longing for love, longing for meaning, longing for I-don’t-even-know-what-I’m-longing-for. I can almost forgive Doughty for kind-of rapping in the middle section. There are so many great images and lines in the lyrics, I could even listen to Brittney Spears sing this song.

I regret that I never went to see Soul Coughing during this period. Laurie actually invited our class out to see them play at the Red Light Cafe in Atlanta, but for some reason, I flaked out and missed it. I didn’t know that they would become my favorite band.

Irresistible Bliss

When Soul Coughing’s second album came out, I did know they were my favorite band. I remember driving between Georgia Tech and the Hashiguchi Jr. restaurant and hearing “Soft Serve” come on Album 88 (Georgia State University’s student-run station). I didn’t know they had released a new album. Most bands didn’t have websites back then, and there was certainly no MySpace, but I recognized them instantly.

There was a Tower Records in the same shopping center as Hashiguchi, so I decided to buy the CD before lunch. I ended up sitting my car, listening to the whole CD in the parking lot and being late for my afternoon Calc 4.

Irresistible Bliss was one of four or five CDs that lived in my car for a very long time. I couldn’t get enough of “Collapse” and “Idiot Kings” especially, but the whole disc was gold.

El Oso

I found out about El Oso quite a while before it was released, and waited eagerly. In fact, I waited in line at Tower Records (the same one where I had bought Irresistible Bliss) after midnight on the eve of its release. The line wrapped all around the store - not for El Oso, mind you - I think a new Janet Jackson album came out on the same day.

El Oso was kind of a strange disc. A lot of people have remarked that it had all the signs of a band nearing the end of their life span, and I’ll agree that it’s extremely uneven. “Circles” had a kind of alterna-pop feel and was even featured on a couple Starbucks in-store-play discs. I worked at Starbucks at the time, and I made rigged the machine to play that song at least once an hour.

On the other end of the spectrum, “So Far I Have Not Found The Science” sounds almost like a demo that was included on the disc as an afterthought. “Pensacola” describes a trip to Wal-Mart. “The Incumbent” was good, but it didn’t need to continue for almost seven minutes.

When I listen to El Oso now, I usually just listen to the middle six tracks, from “Blame” to “Fully Retractable.” I like the rest of the album too, but the first and last few songs don’t seem to give me anything new when I hear them for the thousandth time like “Maybe I’ll Come Down” does. In a weird way, “Maybe I’ll Come Down” sort of reminds me of the Beatles, though I can’t explain how.

El Oso must have been Soul Coughing’s last shot. They went on a pretty big tour to support the album, and I saw them at the Masquerade in Atlanta. I thought it was a great show. I was pleasantly surprised to see Yuval confirm on stage that he never plays the same beat twice. There’s some kind of magic between Yuval and Sebastian that, as a bass player, I can’t help but love.

Unfortunately, it was their last tour, and they broke up shortly after.

Doughty

Mike Doughty released an EP, called Skittish, of songs he recorded in hotel rooms on that last tour. I thought it was really good and listened to it a good bit. But it wasn’t Soul Coughing. Nothing against Mike - I bought his newer CDs and saw him play live a couple of times too - but I really miss the groovy, dirty, Soul Coughing sound.

Sounds like Chicken

Maybe it’s not a sound that is marketable to the music-listening public. I think their songs require a little more effort than most listeners are willing to put in to their music these days. People want background music for TV dramas - they don’t want to sit in a dark room and concentrate on the sound anymore. Soul Coughing doesn’t sound good on a iPod. You can’t feel the thunder of the upright bass or swim around in the synth noise. It doesn’t translate well to earbuds and computer speakers.

But maybe that’s why I still come back to it. The real CD. The sound is so much fuller than .mp3 and Soul Coughing really requires a lot of space for the soundwaves to bounce around. You’ve got to crank it up loud enough that the sound changes as you walk around the room. You’ve got to make it the focal point of your environment - you can’t cheat this music and expect it to offer anything up to you. But when you give it your attention, it gives back it’s own unique presence.

That presence is kind of meaty, kind of greasy, and kind of funky. And it’s good. Give it a listen and see for yourself.