If you were doing some last-minute shopping on Grafton Street in Dublin on Christmas Eve 2009, you may have stumbled upon
some musicians busking to raise money for a
local charity. Look closely and you'll notice among the buskers are an
Oscar winner and a
Grammy winner. In just under two hours, more than €2000 had been raised.
Three days earlier,
Glen Hansard had revisited his busking roots and shown up on Grafton Street along with Noreen O'Donnell (a former member of Hansard's band
The Frames) and multi-platinum-selling Irish artist
Mundy, for an hour-long busk which raised €812 for the Dublin Simon Community. You can see them playing Mundy's
big hit before the gardai shut things down. This inspired Glen to post to
twitter and
his other band's website, urging people to get out and busk for a few hours on Christmas Eve to raise some more money.
So on December 24, he was back on Grafton, again accompanied by Mundy and Noreen, and this time joined by other long-time friends,
Damien Rice,
Liam O Maonlai,
Vyvienne Long on cello, and
Declan O'Rourke on mandolin. Here are some clips of their set (not as high quality as the first link posted at the top, but they still get the vibe across).
Heyday //
July/I'm on Fire //
Get Up, Stand Up //
Volcano
After a few songs, Liam and Declan stood down and let a couple of teenage buskers join in. The crowd had grown quite large by the time they started playing The Waterboys' "Spirit", which was interrupted by Bono's arrival. He joined in on versions of
Stand By Me,
One and Knockin' on Heaven's Door. Check the expression of relief on the face of the young busker to Bono's right at 5:30 as they segue from a song he seems to be unfamiliar with and launch into one which he had clearly played before.
posted by pjdoland at 8:15 PM on January 5, 2010 [4 favorites]