Reviewed by Rod Brogan
Released: 1980 Bongo Fury Bongo Fury Genre: Hard Rock Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Highlights: Patience Never Trust A Stranger Getting Out Ostensibly named for the 1975 album by college friends Frank Zappa and Dan Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart), Bongo Fury was here the pseudonym of Canadian drummer and songwriter Bill Wade. This 1980 disc is Wade’s wacky brainchild. He had also worked previously with fellow Canuck artists Moxy (whose song Young Legs from 1978 is covered, with Moxy’s Buddy Caine on guitar) and glam rock band Brutus, whose Gino Scarpelli contributes background vocals throughout. The album is 10 tracks of typically constructed pop rock songs, with verse, chorus, verse, chorus, breakdown, back to chorus, then a fade out on a solo being the most popular model. Bongo Fury is best described as melodic hard rock with tongue firmly planted in cheek (The album opens with Patience’s adorably adolescent lyrics “She knocked on my door/ got down on the floor/ with the nerve of a New York whore”) and great gusto in the playing. The band sounds loose, the solos are an afterthought, and no track sounds like they bothered with a second take, but the energy is infectious. Song titles like Alaska Shuffle and Paper News Rag say it all. This is a bunch of guys having fun in a side project that went nowhere but had fun on the journey.
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