Well do I remember a coffeehouse in the University District, one where I often sang during the early 1960s (CLICKY). The manager had a roster of singers whom he paid reasonably well and regularly, and usually there were three or four of us holding forth on Friday and Saturday evenings. Sometimes we were up front by ourselves, but usually all three or four of us were on stage, sometimes swapping off doing solos, sometimes singing together (generally unrehearsed, but it seemed to come off well).

The audiences loved it, and packed the place on Fridays and Saturdays. It was less like a performance and more like a party.

Every now and then someone new would come in and ask if they could do a guest set. The manager usually said okay, and sometimes he would actually hire them. Alice Stuart, a Seattle folk amd blues singer, got her start that way.

I remember one guy who came in with a set of bongos, and without a by-your-leave, he would try to bonk and thump along with the singers. He had neither taste nor sense of rhyhm, and he was a general pain in the ass to both the singers and the audience. Why the manager didn't insert the guy's bongos where the sun doesn't shine and boot him out the door was probably because he was busy in the kitchen most of the time.

Anyway, an audience member requested that I do Greensleeves. Not everybody's favorite these days, but I did a particularly nice version of it, or so people told me. Three verses instead of the twenty or thirty that some people insisted on doing, and I had a lute-like classic guitar accompaniment worked out for it. Actually, the way I did the song, it was part classic guitar solo.

So I did it.

And this cretin tried to follow me on the bongos.

He was totally oblivious to the glares he was getting.

Why, I wonder, am I suddenly reminded of this?

Don Firth