Robin, my comments above are not just a gratuitous put-down of bongo players, they're based on bitter experience.

In the early Sixties, one of the coffeehouses I played in regularly on weekends was Pamir House (started out to be an Indian restaurant, but it fizzled, so the adaptable owner decided to hire a few folk singers and turn it into a coffeehouse). It was a very enjoyable place to sing, because Mr. Timmons, the owner, hired two or three singers to sing on weekends (and he payed regularly and reasonably well). We would sometimes sing one at a time, but generally all two or three, or sometimes four of us would be up in front at the same time, swapping songs, bantering back and forth, singing solos or impromptu duets or ensembles. Very informal; we were having fun and and the audiences loved it. Like a party.

But some people were not aware that we had been auditioned and hired by Timmons, we hadn't just wandered in off the street. Thinking that it was some kind of "free for all," they would sometimes join in—often with musically disastrous results.

Since the two Mikes, Judy, Jerry, Jim, Alice, Sue, me, et al, accompanied ourselves on guitars of various sizes, shapes, and qualities, with the occasional 5-string banjo in evidence, those who wanted to participate (uninvited by either us or the management) would come in most often with a set of bongos—and instrument that, in addition to being inexpensive, they assumed didn't require talent or ability to be able to play. All one had to do, they seemed to think, was just bang on the things.

Generally, once Timmons (back in the kitchen) became aware of the cacophonous arrhythmia, he would come out and invite the individual to kindly knock it off.

But often, before Mr. Timmons had a chance to come out and ask the interloper to stuff a sock in it, I would have bongo players attempting to provide a sort of palsied pseudo-Caribbean rhythm, not only to such songs as The Sloop John B., but to Greensleeves, The Unquiet Grave, Edward, or Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies.

I have heard bongos, bodhrans, and other percussion instruments played with a great degree of taste and skill and with very good effect. But unfortunately, many people seem to assume that if you can pound on a table-top, you can automatically play such instruments like a virtuoso.

Don Firth