Tuesday, Jul. 22, 2003 | 10:09 AM

Is it just me or has the quality of street musicians in Boston fallen a notch or two in the past couple years?

Maybe I�m just older and more jaded�maybe the thrill of seeing Real Live Musicians on the Street!--a thrill born of growing up in the suburbs where nobody played music outside has finally subsided.

Or maybe a lot of people just really and truly suck.

If I see one more 19 year old Northeastern student sporting berkenstocks and a Bob Marley tee shirt banging out Keep on Rockin� in the Free World on a poorly tuned six string, I think I�ll fucking hurl. Especially if the song is dedicated (as I saw it be yesterday) to our troops overseas. Talk about missing the point. Neil Young must be turning over in his grave� er� I mean his four poster bed.

And has the City of Boston had some secret government plot to clone Ani DiFranco and position all of these clones at various street corners in the Harvard Square area? And has this experiment gone horribly awry in that the somewhat grating earnestness and self righteousness of the original Ani remains intact but the finger picking skills and IQ score have been diminished with each new clone infestation? Please. PLEASE no more three chord apologies to Native Americans for taking their land, OK? You grew up in Great Neck Long Island, and you�ve never even met a Native American. You�ve also never met a chord you could play correctly, so spare all of us.

And what is it about the red line T stations that attract devotees of R. Kelly? You know what I�m talking about. There�s always some soul brother number one with a shitty little midi system piping in crappy casio synth chords while he whoops and hollers and yodels into a painfully loud static-y microphone, as everyone who�s waiting for the subway tries mightily to ignore him in hopes that he�ll go away.

Oh Baby. Oh yeaaaaaaaaaaah baby. You are myyyyyyy wommmmmman baby. And I looooooove yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

What the hell has happened to soul music, huh? Since Marvin Gaye was shot and Al Green became a christian nutball, we�re left with Senor Seersucker on a bench in Davis Square�s inbound station yelping incoherent and melodically structure-less pap. But anyway�

One must give credit where credit is due. There are indeed some decent musicians out there in the streets and I give �em all props.

There was a guy several years ago in the Government Center T station who played the banjo. He was an old guy and he had the most pleasant warm voice, like cinnamon tea on a cold day. He strummed jazz standards from the 20�s and 30�s. I�d always give him five bucks and ask him to play I�m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself A Letter. He was damn good. I wonder what happened to him

And then there was this woman with crossed eyes and an operatic soprano who sang Beatles covers. She was pretty awful, but absolutely fascinating like a train wreck or a hot air blimp catching fire. I�m assuming she�s been stoned to death at this point, because I haven�t seen her in awhile.

Then of course there�s the One Man Band Guy. And Tom Bianchi. And Gonzalo Silva the fretless bass wonder (who has sadly left Boston for the greener pastures�er pavement of NYC.) Legends all.

And the mother of all Boston Street Performers. Mary Lou Lord. When I catch the occasional site of her on Newbury Street or in front of the Coop, it�s like seeing a solar eclipse or running across your favorite old movie on cable.

Now, Mary Lou Lord is a reminder of a better simpler times�A time when a bunch of snotty idealistic kids formed their own record labels and thought that somehow they�d take over the world.

And a time for me when nothing was better than catching a glimpse of these kids on street corners at sunset, watching them play Freedy Johnston covers til their fingers gave out and dreaming someday that I�d be one of those kids too.

Of course now I know better. And that�s why I stick to jazz. Pick up your portable amps, go home and drink a Blue Moon White Ale. And dream of how things almost were.

Or better yet, listen to the Magnetic Fields. They�ll set you straight.