Hi howard

I agree with you.

Like you I first performed in school where the pupils had been instructed to go. So they weren't very sympathetic to our fumbling early performances.

Like you I learned how to improve , mainly by practice....bloody practice.

Some time later I joined a rock group as guitarist vocalist. This group was semi-pro and we got paid for every gig. The group had been together for some time but the vocalist moved on.

I was given a list of songs that I would be required to sing. And I just had to learn them !!!! or else.................

Luckily most of the songs were hit songs of the time and I knew many of them but not completely word perfect and certainly not to performance standard.

I got by although the first few dates were a little nerve-racking.

AND NOT A BOOK NOR PIECE OF PAPER DID I HAVE. !!! They wouldn't let me. They did feed me the keys and some of the first lines and I went from there.

Of course I made some mistakes but they covered me. But I never made the same mistake twice as the other members were very fierce critics.
As I got more experience I realised that they had been teaching me to stand on my own two feet.

I soon became confident. Each week when we met for practice we would go through what our content would be for the gigs for that week. There were always new songs to be done and as the vocalist it was my job to learn the lyrics.

Fortunately I found learning words - be they poetry or lyrics of songs easy.

Even now ....and I'm over 21....lol I still find it almost as easy as I did then.

Of course in some ways it is easier now then then - the Internet is a constant and immediate source of lyrics both in written and audio mediums.

I have no objection to others using props but I believe that it would better for all if they did learn the word adequately to perform.

Cheers

MikeL2