One of the coffeehouses where I sang regularly during the early Sixties was a place called Pamir House. The fellow who started it intended it to be a Indian restaurant (Pamir houses were wayside inns on the Silk Road where it passed through the Pamir Mountains), but about two weeks after it opened, a group of Indian exchange students at the University of Washington tried the place and declared the food to be a) less than authentic, and b) the word "swill" figured prominently in their comments. Not to be deterred, the owner deep-sixed the ersatz Indian cuisine, put in a line of snacks and pastries, got an espresso machine, hired several singers, and turned it into a coffeehouse. At that, it was pretty successful.

It was fun singing there because there were usually three or four singers going on any weekend evening. We didn't do sets as such, we just perched on stools up front and swapped songs, complete with banter, as if we were at a party or hoot. The audiences loved the informality and the off-the-cuff quality of it.

Anyway, an occasional audience member seemed to get the idea that it was sort of a free-for-all, apparently not realizing that we hadn't just dropped in, we were regular singers and were getting paid. One guy started coming around regularly with a pair of bongos. [I can't think of a quicker way to commit suicide than to show up at a place like Pamir House with a set of bongos.]   He was tolerated for about three songs, but when he tried to assist me on "Greensleeves" (with my carefully arranged lute-style classic guitar accompaniment), the owner of the place put a word in his ear and confiscated the bongos until he was ready to leave.

It has always amazed me that people who try to play the bongos always have such an iffy sense of rhythm. We don't run into all that many bodhrans around here, but I image a similar problem might occur with them.

Don Firth