Bongo Joe

We Say...

Review by Mike McGonigal

"Bongo Joe" George Coleman was quite literally an outsider musician, performing self-taught, strange and highly entertaining songs on Texas streets and boardwalks for many years. The music is unlike anything you've heard: hypnotizing, wryly humorous story-songs that easily elevate themselves above novelty status. It's not easy to capture a great street musician, and Arhoolie head Chris Strachwitz's stereo recording made on the streets of San Antonio in 1969 is a case study in how to do so; the music's both crisp-sounding and visceral. Fans of Tom Waits, Moondog and Robert Pete Williams will find much to enjoy here.

Coleman inhabits that Moondog-ish space where at first you don't know whether to take him seriously as a musician or not, though you can't stop listening even after you've stopped laughing along with his eccentric shtick. And although he's not half the musician that Moondog was, he's as much a performer as Waits is, deeply inhabiting a world-weary yet clownish persona that cracks often enough to show you how smart he really is. As with Robert Pete Williams, one gets the sense that even with tunes he's performed hundreds of times the music is vitally different each time — improvised to account for changes in the environment, or simply on a whim. Coleman's palette is limited but you're never left wanting; the guy is simply singing, whistling or talking on top of the sound of his handmade oil drum. Coleman himself said "I rap but not that bullshit they're putting down now; I play fundamental beat music" before passing away at the age of 75 in 1999.