The Lonesome Death (and Life) of Souled American

But the band has its outside adherents as well. The reverence springs beyond San Francisco and bands also. Souled American's songs impassioned music critic Camden Joy, a guerrilla-music scribe in New York City who's made a small name for himself by writing deeply personal and passionate treatises on his favorite bands and posting them around Manhattan. For the Souled American project, Joy took 50 short essays about the group and made each into huge public posters. He then gathered all the work into a small book named after a Souled American song, "Make Me Laugh, Make Me Cry."

Adducci says the band was touched by the gesture. "You're locked in your shell; you're not playing out a whole lot; you're coming up with material and making albums. To see the effect that some of those have on people. ... We were quite moved by that."

Obscurity has paradoxically benefited Souled American; but Adducci says the band would risk a greater exposure, if only to have the old albums in stores. "That's kind of the goal when you make records: I don't know what it's going to sell, this or that, but just as long as it's available for the future -- for someone to get into it."

For now however, they're absent.