Great Expectorations

It isn’t easy being the token anything in a big, monolithic organization.

As the hard-rock-saturated Lollapalooza ’96 tour pulls to a close with sold-out shows today and Sunday at Irvine Meadows, New York City band Soul Coughing is practically the token everything.

With Metallica and Soundgarden setting the hard-and-heavy pace on the main stage, Lollapalooza is a gathering of 18 bands in which almost all the young dudes (the only dudettes are three backing musicians in the band Psychotica) play some strain of brawny, guitar-based rock. The same goes for the not-so-young dudes in the Ramones and Devo, who occupy the esteemed-influence slots on the bill.

It’s left to Soul Coughing, which caps the second-stage lineup, to add most of the adventurous, genre-hopping spice to this diet dominated by arena-rock meat and potatoes.

On a weekend devoid of funk or rap acts--heretofore a part of each year’s Lollapalooza mix--Soul Coughing will bring to bear a strong funk and rap influence. Drummer Yuval Gabay favors lean, crisp R&B; beats. Sebastian Steinberg, on upright bass, likes to get into some swinging, jazzy patterns. Mark De Gli Antoni’s sampling keyboard dabs on sonic colorations that on Soul Coughing’s two CDs have included everything from ominous noise eruptions to musical snippets from Howlin’ Wolf, the Andrews Sisters and Bugs Bunny cartoons.

Singer-guitarist M. Doughty operates under a whole slew of influences, taking cues from rappers, reggae toasters, detective-yarn spinners and beat poets as he slings absurdist catch phrases or unwinds hard-bitten narratives. He also can turn his grainy, chesty singing voice to wistful, melodic pop tunes in the collegiate-rock tradition of Pavement or Liz Phair.

“I get the general impression that we are alternative-ness at Lollapalooza,” a road-weary but still conversationally light-footed Doughty said Wednesday by phone from a hotel room in Portland after a night of much driving and little sleep.

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Soul Coughing has joined Lollapalooza for the tour’s final 2 1/2 weeks. It has been less than a triumph, said Doughty, whose first name is Michael and whose surname rhymes with roadie.

“It’s been more or less like any tour where we’re opening for somebody, except we’re not exactly opening for somebody. We’re closing for Sponge,” he said, referring to the platinum-selling mainstream modern-rock band that precedes Soul Coughing on the second stage.

Doughty said the crowd thins out drastically after Sponge plays. An audience drifts back only when there’s a lull in the main-stage action.

Lollapalooza “basically has alienated the core [alternative-music audience]. It’s Metallica fans, basically,” Doughty said.

So, one might surmise, being on Lollapalooza has been a drag for Soul Coughing.

“Oh, God, no!” Doughty exclaimed. “It’s like being at a picnic every day. It’s incredible fun, [although] I don’t understand what kind of career-advancing move it could possibly be.”

At this point, Soul Coughing has at least a foothold on a lasting career. The band’s 1994 debut album, “Ruby Vroom,” won strong reviews and has sold 77,000 copies, according to the SoundScan monitoring service--far from a hit, but enough of a base to build upon.

The follow-up, “Irresistible Bliss,’ has sold a monitored 19,000 copies since its release July 8. After Lollapalooza, Soul Coughing will play arenas as opening act for the Dave Matthews Band.

Where “Ruby Vroom” had its rambling moments and a tinge of self-conscious hipsterism, the new record features pithier, tougher-sounding arrangements that harness the band’s adventurous nature to structures and hooks that might appeal to modern-rock fans.

Soul Coughing isn’t making its way entirely alone. It has a strong stylistic counterpart in Beck, whose successful and widely praised new album, “Odelay,” is also built on a collage of genres incorporating funk, hip-hop and alternative-rock elements. Like Doughty’s, Beck’s lyrics reflect a wordsmith’s playful engagement with language.

But Doughty isn’t inclined to view Beck as part of a shared movement.

“I don’t generally think in those terms,” that is, of seeking like-minded allies or trying to outdo stylistically close competitors. “I haven’t heard [Beck’s] record yet. I like the single. I don’t sit around wondering if people are for the revolution or against it.”

Doughty grew up mainly in West Point, N.Y., where his father teaches military history to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy.

“If you’re looking for a repressive environment, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one,” Doughty said of his hometown.

He landed in Manhattan to study playwriting and music. Then he got his foot in the door at the Knitting Factory, a New York club that’s a hotbed of avant-garde pop, rock and jazz. Actually, all of Doughty could be found in the door, since he wound up working as the club’s doorman. The job positioned him to get gigs easily, albeit on off nights when only a few people would be in the audience.

“I was putting bands together on the fly, doing songs I had written. Ten or 12 people would show up. They were slots I parasitically grabbed.”

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Soul Coughing began in June 1992 as one more pickup band he had lined up to back one of his shows. Gabay, raised in Israel, Steinberg, an ex-Bostonian, and Antoni, a transplant from San Francisco, were culled from various Knitting Factory bands.

Doughty said he immediately realized he had found the mix of strong, distinctive musical personalities he was looking for.

“I had no interest in being a bandleader. It’s supposed to be a collaborative project, and they began to bring their own fragments of material.” The band took its name from a colorful euphemism for vomiting that Doughty heard from a friend. After a year, Doughty said, record companies began scouting Soul Coughing. Slash/Warner Bros. signed them.

Doughty isn’t coy about his ambition.

“Sure, I want to be a rock star,” he said. “There’s really no other reason to be getting into this. . . . If I didn’t, I’d be sitting at home, living a lot easier life.”

* Soul Coughing plays today at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday at 6:30 p.m. on the Lollapalooza second stage, Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive. Sold out. (714) 855-6111 (taped information) or (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).