Soul Coughing, the cult band led by Mike Doughty (aka M.Doughty), had a moment in the mid-Nineties with this song, Super Bon Bon.

I rarely read biographies, or music books, so I don’t know what persuaded me to read Mike Doughty’s account of his time in the never-very-famous band Soul Coughing.

Perhaps it was the title: The Book Of Drugs. But it’s genuinely one of the best books I’ve ever read in any genre. 

It’s a cautionary and mordantly humorous tale of big dreams, painful realities, personal feuds and life-threatening addictions (and subsequent recovery). 

It really should be subtitled: Why You Should Never Join A Band. 

Before he wrote it Soul Coughing had a moment – a very brief moment – in the mid-’90s, and this song, Super Bon Bon, was the highlight of their career.

They were a unique band and very hard to categorise: the only parallel I can think of is early Beck, in particular his big hit Loser; and, perhaps, bands like Eels and Cake.

Soul Coughing were characterised by Doughty’s stream-of-consciousness quasi-rapping and the band’s loose amalgam of what he called “deep slacker jazz” grooves, hip hop beats, oddball samples and electronic experimentalism.

I’m interested to learn that, despite the disparaging portrayal of his fellow band members in the book, Doughty reunited with the other three original members last year for a short tour and a TV appearance playing this song on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The other thing I’ve learned (though I would have been fine to remain ignorant) is that Doughty took his band’s name from a poem he once wrote about Neil Young vomiting.

All together now: “Move aside and let the man go through. Let the man go through.”