RUS is really not that much different, as a fake book, than, say, Jerry Silverman's _Folk Song Encyclopedia_, except that it is easily available in multiple copies at popular prices. The disadvantage of this is that EVERYBODY has ALL the words to all the same songs. If people had to rely on their ears to get the choruses (and just lisen to the verses), they'd train their ears and their minds to learn folk music aurally. And aural transmission is what makes "folk singing" a folk tradition (as opposed to singing a song that once belonged to the category of folk). I'd say the problem isn't that there are copies of word books like RUS around, but that everyone has the same edition of the same book. If everyone had a different book, people would rely on listening to each other and interact, resolving (as musicians do) all the subtle and not-so-subtle variances that would occur, rather than simply reading blithely off a page that they know everyone else has an identical copy of.

So my problem isn't that RUS exists, but that multiple copies are being relied on simultaneously, whereas only the person leading the song really needs access to all words.

By the way, I often use word-books to find songs, but rarely RUS. (I'm extremely fortunate to have access to a library of hundreds of tune-books.)

--Charlie Baum from the folk shtetl of Silver Spring, MD