Customer Reviews

New York, NY

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Soul Coughing is one of my all-time favorite bands. I saw them live multiple times, and at every show, their performance was never less than amazing. I'd rank them among the best live acts I've ever seen. All that considered, the CD version of their final show EVER (which, unfortunately, I didn't get to see) should sound a hell of a lot better than it does.

The show itself is as fantastic as I'd come to expect. Songs familiar from their studio albums are more often reconstructed than plainly reproduced, occasionally taking unexpected detours into fresh territory. Masterful frontman Mike Doughty talks, sings, chants and scats, improvising as needed, keeping the energy high and the crowd involved.

But you really can't begin to enjoy it until the end of the first disc, when the sonic murk that has inexplicably enveloped the earlier songs just as inexplicably begins to dissipate. I can only assume that the audio inconsistencies are due to the recording equipment used and the circumstances and/or microphone placement involved in capturing the show, because the band never sounded at all indistinct when I saw them, let alone murky.

I wish that the people responsible for this release had incorporated recordings directly from the soundboard, then it might have had a chance of reproducing with clarity the uniqueness of Soul Coughing's precise cacophony. If what's on these discs IS from the soundboard, then the technician responsible for mis-twiddling these knobs deserves a public flogging.

The result doesn't sound like any attempts at remastering would do it much good in terms of rendering the entire show consistently listenable. So you're left with one great live show and approximately 1/2 of a great live recording. It's just a shame that this is what stands as the historical artifact of their last performance...

If you're looking to recreate the experience you had at a Soul Coughing show, I'd suggest you look elsewhere. This recording is a weak (at best) audience recording that is muffled, muddled, and boomy. I was almost entirely disappointed.

It's a great performance from Soul Coughing, and the quality of the audience recording (this is obviously not a soundboard) is just good enough to make it worth it. This could have been so much better with a better quality recording. I find it hard to believe that the band doesn't have some better archival material, but I'll take this anyway.

Soul Coughing being one of my favorite bands ever, this series of live recordings was a bit maddening. None of these are, as some here have said, audience recordings. They have clearly mixed an audience mic into the final mix, but this is very typical in order to moisten the mix a bit. That being said, not much care was taking in separating each track and giving it the love it so richly deserved. The editing is also completely appalling. Seeing how cheap these releases have become, it may be worth it to the die-hard fan, but don't introduce yourself to the live ouevre of Soul Coughing via this series of recordings.....find a friend with a bootleg instead.

Ooh, they tear it up in this concert. $300 and Miss the Girl are some serious drum 'n bass jams and Yuval is sublime on the drums. The encore performance of Screenwriter's Blues is goosebumps-good. The audio quality is rather cavernous and raw but far better than what I've heard of the other releases in this series. If you're a Soul Coughing fan, GET THIS ALBUM. If not, probably starting with the studio stuff is the way to go... THEN get this album.

P.S. I just wish Doughty would freestyle less. It's not his strong suit.