This may sound a bit like I'm back-pedaling, but not so.

I have no objection to a group of people and singing out of RUS or whatever they like, if that's what they want to do. As Joe points out, people can have a lot of fun with it. It's just that, apart from when I go to church and sing out of the hymnal along with the rest of the congregation, that kind of singing doesn't particularly appeal to me, especially if that's all that happens at a given song fest.

Apart from the song book thing, I have no particular objection if someone wants to keep a notebook of lead-sheets for songs already learned, and keep it in easy view so it can be glanced at from time to time if need be.

I don't think my memory is failing, even if I have become one of The Ancient Ones. But I find that I have occasional "senior moments" with songs that I've sung perhaps hundreds if not thousands of times in the past. Most annoying! For about a decade, during the Fifties and Sixties, I sang somewhere almost every week, usually several evenings a week: coffeehouse, concert, or some other gig, or if not there, at a "hoot" or song fest in someone's house. Except for learning new songs, I rarely had to practice because I hardly needed to. I had a pretty large repertoire, but singing as much as I did, it wasn't hard to keep it up to snuff.

But that was awhile back. Although I try to limber up my fingers on the guitar, warm up my voice, and sing a bit every day, I don't sing anywhere near as often or as much as I used to: maybe eight or ten times a year altogether at get-togethers at Bob's or at Alice's or at our place, rather than two or three evenings a week.

Frustratingly enough, the songs tend to slip away if they're not sung with some regularity. It especially seems to be a case of "last in, first out." The songs I've learned most recently are the ones that I have the occasional "senior moment" with, even though I learn them thoroughly and practice them a lot before I try them in front of other people. So it seems to me that the reasonable thing to do is to keep lead sheets within easy view and give it a quick glance when needed. Since the song has already been learned, the occasional glance is not the same as having to read it off, or sing it out of a book.

In professional theater and at the opera, there is the prompter hunkered down in the prompter's box, ready to quickly and quietly feed a line to an actor or singer if they blank out, as everyone does from time to time. Symphony musicians know the music and are well rehearsed, but they all have the score in front of them. On television a decade or two back, Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Jacqueline du Pré, Zubin Mehta, and Daniel Barenboim did a bravura performance of Schubert's "Trout Quintet," and they each had the music on a music stand in front of them. They rarely glanced at it, but it was there, just in case. Luciano Pavarotti knows the scores to fifty or sixty full operas and dozens and dozens of other songs. On television specials, unless it's a fully staged opera, he usually sings with a music stand within easy view. He doesn't sing from the music, but now and then, he may give it a quick glance. And he's not the only one. He certainly knows the music and is obviously well-rehearsed when he goes before the cameras, but no one, not even he, can be absolutely sure they won't have a temporary lapse. Better to have a quick reminder unobtrusively within view than to blow it on national TV.

So if I start showing up at song fests and hoots with a three-ring notebook full of lead-sheets, that's why. But they won't be songs I have not already learned well and sung a lot.

Don Firth