The part of the revival I was involved with was not that of the singaround type, where evryv#body who turned up, got a bite of the cherry - personally, I never found that type particularly satisfying because it was virtually impossible to guarantee that the singing never fell below an acceptable level.
With the best will in the world, you can have a night of mainly good singing and a couple of poorish ones stumbling their way through their crib sheets and it's the latter that get to be remembered
None of the clubs I went to encouraged people to practice in public, and the ones I helped to run had workshops attached to help less experienced singers develop.
The nearest we ever got to unorganised free-for-alls was the 'You name it, we'll sing it" when an M.C. collected subjects for songs from the audience and a group of residents (with necessarily sizeable repertoires responded with an appropriate song - still remember a man handing a slip of paper reading "gazumphed brickie goes berserk and slays 2" - he was obliged by Bert Lloyd singing Lamkin
In the Singers Club, chorus songs were a part of the set up and the residents made a point of teaching choruses - on some occasions, excessively, in my opinion.
All evenings finished with a chorus song - still get a lump in the throat when I hear 'Leaving of Liverpool' or 'I'm a Rover'.
The Critics Group did a great deal of work on varying an evening - from the early days MacColl was arguing that if you gave an audience a bundle of say six songs, all sung at the same pace and rhythm and sung in the same tone or using the same impetus, then the audience's "ears went to sleep" - they stopped listening.
We referred to the impetus of singing (a combination of speed, weight and direction) as "efforts" and MacColl devised a technique based on Laben's theory of movement to enable us to discuss them and handle them as singers.
MacColl's rationale was that the songs were made up of different emotions which, as in speech, produced different vocal sounds.
The residents were asked to be ware of what each other were singing so they could break the pattern when necessary.
MacColl's own use of these techniques was underlined for me by a story Pat tells of, when she was first involved in the Singers back in the early 60s, she invited a workmate home and. during the course of the evening, played her a side of one of Ewan's albums - the response was, "very nice, which one was he?"
There is no reason in the world why folk song should "all sound the same" - they cover many/most aspects of the human condition, which, when understood and interpreted, are every bit as varied as speech.
Jim Carroll