Play your sing-song part, tourists love it
You will need them by the time you finish perusing what amounts to a life-changing gift from MacConnell to the thousands amongst you who are bad singers and who, accordingly, have been suffering silently through pub sing-songs.
I hereby guarantee that your pain and suffering and social exclusion are over.
Last week, an official report underlined the reality that the Irish pub, and its music and song and dance, is the experience most relished by our international visitors.
We always knew that. But do we not also know that when a rousing sing-song is beginning in the lounge, and we are sitting on the edge of it, some bad neighbour who knows we cannot sing a note will always call on us to sing the next ballad, and will maliciously enjoy our blushes and discomfort, when we have to refuse.
That kind of neighbour is always there, just like the bank clerk with the golfing sweater who steals the show with his nasal version of ‘Danny Boy’ or ‘Song For Ireland’. They are always there, close to the Dublin lady who persists in demolishing the ‘Castle of Dromore’.
Relax, lads. Your pain is over. I have written a song with which you can steal the show any night, anywhere.
Nobody will be able to criticise your singing, your shoulders will be sore from back-claps, there will be a queue of folk wanting the lyrics, the bank clerk will not sing again, and that bad neighbour will drink two extra bitter pints of despair.
I am not blowing my own trumpet, but it is a fact that I have constructed three good songs in my time — and the one I am giving away to ye free now is certainly the most useful of them. (The others, for the record, are ‘Christmas In the Trenches 1914’ about that poignant truce a century ago, and ‘The Leaving’ with which I have been making Mammies weep at sing-songs in recent weeks, as they encounter the reality of Johnny and Bridget, post-exam, leaving the family nest).
But this new song, which I have personally bar-tested on both sides of the Atlantic this summer, is the best of all. I have named it ‘The Song For Bad Singers’. You can sing it to any air, I waive all rights to royalties or fees, and I look forward to hearing one of you singing it boldly and loudly.
This voice that you hear, offending your ear, once belonged to a boy soprano.
At the age of 13, scrubbed up and clean, beside old Sister Bridget’s piano.
The party piece was ‘Danny Boy’,sung with innocent joy, all those high notes rang out golden free,
And in 1955, twas great to be alive, for twas heard on the BBC.
And when it broke in ’58, my mother said it still was great, so it sang all the songs of the time,
It rocked around the clock at the baptism of rock, with the Clancys it sang ‘Sweet Mountain Thyme’.
’Twas unafraid of ‘Blue Bayou’, and with Elvis sang too, ‘Wooden Heart’ and that fräulein by the Rhine,
And when the Beatles had their day, it sang ‘I love you Yeah YeahYeah’ and that song about sweet summer wine.
But now it smokes and it croaks, on the high notes it chokes,
It sounds like an old gaolhouse door,
It’s gone hoarse, it’s gone coarse, every night it sounds worse,
And it don’t sing ‘Danny Boy’ no more.
This voice sang “I love you” in its youth, just once that was the truth,
Soon after at the altar, it said “I do”
A little on, “Kids, time for bed”, lullabies o’er sleepy heads,
Crooning the teething years through,
Twas still well fit for ‘Danny Boy’ at family times of joy,
‘Noreen Bawn’ and that cottage by the Lee,
And the ‘Fields of Athenry’ as the fleeting years sped by, and ‘Only Our Rivers Run Free’.
But this voice was abused and misused, and far too often it was boozed,
Twas even lost once or twice along the road,
It had to learn how to cry, when loved ones said goodbye,
And how to groan ‘neath some years’ heavy load,
‘Danny Boy’ at last cracked it and totally wrecked it,
Now it can barely limp down to ‘Spancilhill’
The ‘Raglan Road’ is far too wide for it to reach the other side,
And at sing-songs, it’s silent and still.
And chorus.
Now use those scissors and start memorising!
