Coyle & Sharpe

On The Loose (213CD)
by Joshua Brown

During the early 1960s, there were two men, Mal Sharpe and Jim Coyle, who would tape interviews with random people they met on the street and in business establishments. These interviews would be about fantastical subjects, invented by the twisted minds of Coyle & Sharpe. On one of the reel-to-reel tapes resurrected on this disc, the two men ask a pharmacist how to sterilize their equipment so they can perform a renegade chest operation. In another, they ask a man, brilliantly deadpan, to pull off a bank heist with them. The conversations which ensue are side-splittingly funny, and at times, verge on the dangerous. Luckily, the two of them only spent one night in jail during their illustrious career, which included a successful show on San Francisco’s KGO radio and a few record albums. Coyle & Sharpe deserve a slot in history alongside the comedic likes of Lenny Bruce. Because their approach actually showed the American public a little more than it wanted to know about itself, their legacy was sentenced to obscurity, until now.