In early 2000, Soul Coughing, one of the most eclectic bands to bring the asses of the masses to a synchronized rump shake, disbanded. But they left in their wake three incredible albums, and the bragging rights of being the first band to bridge the gap between Looney Tunes and Charles Mingus. In 2003, Kufala Records, along with keyboardist Mark De Gli Antoni, assembled a collection of various live Soul Coughing recordings. Smash Magazine recently got the opportunity to speak with Mark about the Kufala recordings, and the bespectacled band-mate whom many blame for the band’s demise.

SM: Hey there Mark, how's it going?

MD: Everything's great. How are the slots out there?

SM: They aren't so loose.

SM: I'd like to start with the recent Kufala Records debacle. There's been a bit of controversy over the convoluted relationship amongst the members of Soul Coughing, and how it delayed the release of the live Kufala Records recordings. Would you elaborate on what happened?

MD: Well, there's a nifty little clause that says everything the band approves of, the label can release. The label can't release anything the band doesn't approve of, which meant unanimous band approval. So any one of us could have objected, and that would have been enough to stop it. Well, when it came to the Kufala stuff Warner Brothers on their own didn't have the authority to release it cause those are live recordings which technically had to be approved by the four of us. And suddenly it became an issue of someone not approving of the recordings, and the reasons given were completely bullshit. It was a completely hollow case, and we had to wait a few months for the bullshit-ness of the complaint to be known to everybody. Then we just said fuck it, we can put them out.

SM: Can you foresee any additional Soul Coughing releases, perhaps a DVD, coming out in the future?

MD: There's plenty of material for a DVD, and it could be an amazing DVD, but it would be a nightmare. If the four of us weren't involved, and legally someone said we didn't have any say, then it would probably get made. But knowing that the four of us would have to approve it to contribute, you know, we're like worse than kindergartners. Things are like really fucking weird now. But if there's any releases, they'll probably be live stuff because all of the material now, in some way or another has been released.

SM: But how could a band that was as rhythmically and sonically as exceptional as Soul Coughing come to a tumultuous end as the band did?

MD: Well, all it takes is one person not to believe in the idea anymore. All it takes is one person to think it's all about them. And once one person does that, it just gets really difficult. And that's really what happened. And that certainly spread to other people. It definitely spread to me, cause I got pissed off too. Cause it takes so much faith, and trust. I always say a band is only as good as its drummer and take our exceptionally genius drummer that we had. You know on the surface, somebody might say, "But the drummer wasn't writing any songs," but if it wasn't for the drummer nobody would have ever come to our live shows. People in our band stopped believing in our drummer. And to create the sound of Soul Coughing, it meant that all four of us had to sit down and work together. And that happened all the way thru Irresistible Bliss, and on about half of the songs on El Oso. And on the other half of the songs on El Oso you could hear where somebody just stopped trying. And it just became a thing where no one wanted to work on other people's ideas. And as a writer, I didn't want to work with people that didn't want to write back. And we didn't have that huge of hits.It wasn't like the golden cow where you couldn't say no. It wasn't like we had some sort of Green Day catalog, where publishing meant that we could retire.

SM: In 1999 Soul Coughing had a tour scheduled with Morphine in the opening slot. I've always thought that had Mark Sandman of Morphine not passed away, Soul Coughing may not have disbanded so suddenly, if at all. Could this have been a possibility?

MD: Maybe a while longer, through some more touring, touring can keep you together. That's absolutely possible. Though we were absolutely doomed to break up, because we had stopped writing together. But even most of the material on El Oso was written a year and a half before El Oso. But there just wasn't any writing trust anymore. Like with Ruby Vroom we fought like cats and dogs, and with Irresistible Bliss we fought like madmen, cause no one knew how to hold back, musically. So everyone was giving everything to the idea of Soul Coughing. But after El Oso there wasn't a belief in the idea of Soul Coughing anymore. It was like four heads, and four heads do not make one head. So the touring would have kept us together, and that would have been a fun tour. It would have been great to tour with Morphine, I certainly love that band, and it's just too bad for Mark.

SM: Did Soul Coughing always suffer from inner-band turmoil, even in the early Knitting Factory days, or did the tensions intensify when the bands notoriety began to grow?

MD: Here's a good example of the type of band fights we had. The president of Warner Brothers goes into a studio with an editor for three months, on his own time and dime, and made the cartoons that are set to the music on El Oso for us for free. He comes back to us and gives us the videos as a gift since he loved the band so much. It would have been $125, 000 to license the images for all the videos, and MTV would have shown the video for "Circles" all the time. But instead, one band member says, "But they won't know who I am. They won’t know what I look like." So he lobbies through extensive, pathetic, childish efforts to have a video made for "Circles" where he could be in the video. So we waste $175, 000 instead on a shitty video for "Circles" that was shown, but it was such a nickel and dime piece. It was completely forgettable. And that is a perfect example of how the band fell apart.

SM: What is your perspective on the post Soul Coughing projects that the other members are involved in, such as Sebastian's work with Neil Finn, or UV Ray?

MD: UV Ray! Yeah, UV Ray is great, it's Yuval. I could never say anything bad about Yuval, ever. I just love him so much.

SM: What are your feelings on the music Doughty's releasing?

MD: I don't know anything about it. How's it going for Doughty? It seems like I run into lots of people at labels saying he sent them the record, but they're not going to put it out. I mean, I hear that a lot.

SM: I see a discernible amount of animosity towards Soul Coughing's legacy coming from Doughty. It appears as though Doughty has tried to completely, and thoroughly absolve himself of any affiliation with Soul Coughing's catalog, while he welcomes the residual fan base.

MD: Though he still plays the songs. He still advertises it all the time. Yeah, I know how much he hates it as he gets checks once every three months for it. With him, he very much tries make sure that when he's doing a gig people know he's from Soul Coughing. I mean since you have the Lust In Phase CD, look at those fucking pathetic liner notes. That was another fiasco. When it comes to greatest hits, a label doesn't have to get your approval cause they're just re-releasing things that you've already approved of. So a girl from Rhino Records thought, "It'd be neat to have some liner notes, I'll call the singer." But before they release stuff they have to approve it through me and so a week before the record was coming out I got the notes, and I was just so bummed because the first draft was a lot worse. I mean he actually wrote shit like he taught me to play the sampler. The stuff he said was insane. And so there was about one thing per song, like one sentence, that I wrote back to the lawyer and would say that it was totally a lie. But the rest was interesting. I actually called Doughty on it, and that was the last time I spoke to Doughty. I called him and told him I didn't want to write anything, and for him to go ahead. But even to make himself look better. I mean, for the seven hundred or so people that adore him, they'll think it's great. But for the rest of the world, make yourself look better. You know, there are so much deeper truths about Soul Coughing. And he's just extremely, extremely bitter. And why is he so frustrated, because he really isn't a musician per se. He's a wordsmith. And when I first met him, he was working as the doorman at the Knitting Factory, and he was this sampling genius, as in word sampler. You know half the words from Ruby Vroom are shit from other people that he picked up and put together. But somewhere along the line, he got it into his head that he was Sarah Mc Lachlan, or Courtney Love. And he just never let go of that.

SM: It's fair to say that a considerable portion of Soul Coughing's fan base was initially generated through the wildly popular "Super Bon Bon." Do you have any anecdotes about the recording process?

MD: Well, Sebastian and I put all the music together and Yuval was there. And for three days we had almost exactly the way the song would sound. Then we went to Europe and Doughty saw the candy bar of the same name. And then it just all came together. But there's this big denial about that now. Even in the liner notes Doughty won't even cop to Sebastian and me writing that song. He won't even say that. And I don't even care.

SM: With the relations amongst band members being as volatile as you say they occasionally were, did you guys ever get into any physical altercations?

MD: Well, did I ever want to punch Doughty? No, though everyone said really horrible, horrible stuff to one another. But he did want to punch me once. We were making Irresistible Bliss and Doughty was acting like a total turd and I called him on it. And we were in front of some other people, and he definitely didn't want to look like a turd, and it only then dawned on him that he was acting like a turd, and then he really got pissed. He left the room and that was that.

SM: Is there a possibility of a Soul Coughing reunion, perhaps in 2020? Maybe call it something witty like the Eagles' Hell Freezes Over reunion tour?

MD: What would it take? I just couldn't imagine. I'm not going to blame it on Doughty, but it's never going to occur to him that Sebastian, or Yuval is cool. And where he used to consider me the other writer in the band, now he thinks what I did took away from the essence of the song. He seems to just grow angrier by the day. Here's a guy that didn't want these live releases to come out, so I just couldn't imagine him ever wanting to do it. I can't imagine him ever coming to grips with how cool it was. And you know, when "Hell Freezes Over" for the Eagles, it freezes over at a quarter of a million a show. Hell gets really cold when those numbers are offered. And if that much money was being offered I'd be highly shocked if all four of us said no. But we were Soul Coughing, and it was great, but it's not going to be so much money that we'd be dumb to say no. And maybe it's unfair for me to put it in Doughty's court, but he's going to have to want to do it.

SM: Who would win in a cage match between Soul Coughing and the Dave Matthews Band?

MD: We would win because it would really be 4 against 3 because the bass player from DMB is too nice a guy to fight, and the sax player's just way too stoned, completely inebriated. I mean he smokes a lot of everything, and would be too out of it to fight. And lastly, we have a better drummer.

SM: Ok Mark, last question. Out of all the people you encountered while in Soul Coughing, who was the most unsavory?

MD: I'd say Jeff Buckley's guitar tech, or the Meat Puppets.

SM: Which Kirkwood brother, the one on heroin?

MD: Exactly, the brother on heroin. They were so oppressive, so awful to us. We were like vermin to them.

SM: Well Mark, it's been great talking to you. Thanks a lot.

MD: No problem, keep in touch!