I learned, over here my first time 'round, that those guys who stand on the street playing guitars or cellos or saxophones for money are called buskers. Ireland being a country where everyone you run into knows how to play at least one instrument, buskers are everywhere.
There is one busker on Grafton Street these last few weeks or so who has struck my interest. It is not that he belts it out like the proverbial cat in heat that awakens every living soul within blocks. It's not that he stands dead in the centre of the street instead of keeping to the sidewalk to let the shoppers, tourists, pub crawlers, and employees pass on this thoroughfare unimpeded. It's the fact that this unknown musician keeps wailing, over and over again, the same verse of this one song.
"I want it, baby you got it, baby I need it, right now--"
And he bridges each repetition with and "Oh-" . At first, wandering around with Carmel this one Saturday evening, window shopping in Switzers' and Marks and Spenser and F.X. Kelly, we didn't notice. Any stroll down Grafton Street brings you past a half dozen buskers; generally (and this must drive mad the aspiring musicians giving it their all, there, for the exposure and a few quid) passersby give them the audio-version of a glance and filter them out. We wandered in and out of a lot of background music. But stepping back out of The Duke and walked back down Duke Street to Grafton, we suddenly said, Hey, wait a minute--!
He's been there at least three times I've seen. Maybe he realizes people on the way about their own business just give buskers that background-music glance and so dividing his time over a large repetoire would be wasted. Maybe it's the only song he knows. Maybe he's a nutter. Maybe he believe that one plaintive string says it all.
I don't know what that song is called or who it is by, but I'd wager everytime it's heard on the radio, now on, I'll remember Dublin in the lengthening days of summer, 1998.
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