I've often thought of--but never had the occasion to do-- a sort of song game like this:

First singer sings whatever; say it's "Wreck of the Old 97" for example.

Second singer must sing a song that "touches" the first song in some respect, such as being a wreck song, a railroad song, a lover-who-dies-in-the-course-of-work song. So maybe he sings "My Sweet Pinery Boy", where the fiance is trying to locate her logger lover, but he's drowned.

Third singer now has drowning, death in the line of work, logging, or some other theme he can justify from the second song.

Simply singing the same song won't do, of course, unless it's a strongly different version. Anyone can challenge a singer's offering as not related or a mere repetition, and a vote of the meeting, or maybe the word of an agreed referee, decides the challenge. A singer may be able by quickness of wit to justify what would otherwise seem a remote connection to the prior song. If a singer can't come up with an acceptable (to the group or referee) follow-on song, given two tries at it, he's out of the game, and next one up has to "answer" the previous singer's song. A singer must be able to do a complete song--not just a verse or so and "I can't remember the rest." This would go by challenge also, so that merely not singing a given verse that someone else can remember wouldn't NECESSARILY be cause for disqualification.

In one form of the game, you could use a cheat sheet or music if you happened to have it, but not having it available would be no excuse. This would tend to put a premium on memory. Or of course the group could set its rules to allow only songs from memory, which would make it tougher for some.

As you can tell from the description of the game, any one song yields a number of possible themes to follow, and it seems to me that this would be likely to bring forth a lot of songs that wouldn't necessarily come up in the usual course.

I really would like to try this some time.

Dave Oesterreich