Mike Doughty will be at TriBeCa B&N on February 2 for a special performance, signing, and discussion (photo by Deborah Lopez)
Barnes & Noble
97 Warren St. at Greenwich St.
Thursday, February 2, free, 6:00
212-587-5389
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.mikedoughty.com
Mike Doughty first entered the New York scene back in 1991, when he was writing about life and music for the New York Press in its early heyday; using the names M. Doughty and Dirty Sanchez at the alternative weekly, he was part of a cast of characters that also included Sam Sifton, Jim Knipfel, Jonathan Ames, and Amy Sohn. The forty-one-year-old former Knitting Factory doorman started the band Soul Coughing in 1992, releasing such well-received albums as Ruby Vroom and Irresistible Bliss before breaking up in 2000. Doughty digs deep into the details of that time in The Book of Drugs (Da Capo, January 2012, $16), a no-holds-barred look at that old music cliché, sex, drugs, and rock and roll. “I can’t renounce drugs. I love drugs,” he writes in the memoir. “I’d never trade the part of my life when the drugs worked, though the bulk of the time I spent getting high, they weren’t doing shit for me. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t do drugs first. This part of my life — even minus the bursts of euphoria — is better, sexier, happier, more poetic, more romantic, grander.” Doughty gets right down to business in the book, telling it like it is, at least as far as he can remember, making no excuses or philosophizing about the things he did as Soul Coughing exploded and then imploded. He talks about hanging out and doing drugs with Jeff Buckley, spends three pages listing random women that he screwed, admits that “puking became so normal that I stopped kneeling,” and regularly questions his own talent. Well, he needn’t worry about that last thing, as Doughty is damn good at what he does, as evidenced by this lighthearted yet involving memoir, his work with Soul Coughing, and such solo records as 2005’s Haughty Melodic, 2009’s Sad Man Happy Man, last year’s Yes and Also Yes (named after his profile headline on an online dating site), and the just-released The Question Jar Show, a live album interspersed with Doughty answering questions from the audience in between songs. The Brooklyn-based Doughty will be at the TriBeCa Barnes & Noble on February 2 at 6:00, signing copies of The Book of Drugs, talking about his life and career, taking questions, and playing a few songs as well.
Avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison (Decasia), who uses found footage and often delves into the cinematic process itself in his fascinating work, collaborates with Icelandic musician and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson in the elegiac The Miners’ Hymns, a tribute to the now-gone collieries, or coal mines, of Northeast England. The fifty-two-minute documentary opens with new aerial shots of the locations where the Durham coal mines were, since replaced by luxury housing and megastores. The film shows the birth and death dates of several collieries going back to the nineteenth century, then seamlessly blends into archival black-and-white footage of the miners at work underground, the community coming together for a local fair, and a union rally during a strike that includes a confrontation with the police. There is no text and no narration in The Miners’ Hymn; instead, Morrison’s savvy editing of the found footage, consisting of both moving pictures and still photographs primarily acquired through the British Film Institute and the BBC, brings the old-fashioned town and its old-fashioned ways to vibrant life even though they roll across the screen in slow motion. Jóhannsson’s score punctuates the proceedings with an occasional brassy flare when not sounding more funereal. Despite the lack of text and narration, Morrison’s point of view is clear and all too obvious, paying homage to something that has been lost, and he is never quite able to make an emotional or personal connection with the viewer. However, The Miners’ Hymns contains remarkable footage that still manages to tell an important story, even if it is one-sided and lacking at least a little more historical context. Prior to its theatrical release on February 8 at Film Forum, The Miners’ Hymns is being shown on the big screen in the World Financial Center on January 31 as part of WNYC host John Schaefer’s annual free New Sounds Live Silent Film Series, featuring a live score performed by the Wordless Music Orchestra. The series continues February 1 with Morrison’s latest work, The Great Flood, followed on February 2 with Spark of Being and February 3 with the amazing Decasia, with Michael Gordon’s memorable score performed live by the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble.
