I like RUS for what it is, a shared vocabulary of a whole lot of good songs. When I'm searching for a song fitting the theme of an upcoming Open Sing, I'll thumb through RUS and search the Digitrad. Odd but fun things can pop up in RUS, like the time I saw "The Man on the Flying Trapese" and added that to my repetoire for the theme of "Ways to get from here to there". "Classics" I haven't thought about for decades will become relevant.

It's also fun to quietly get out my RUS at Open Sings. So often someone will sing a song that's there. One just has a sense it will be found. They, the leader aren't reading out of The Book, they are just singing a reasonably well-known song. But I may have never learned the words, myself, and so I can actually sing along, in harmony, and have a good time as a participant.

This past weekend I was at a small folk gathering in the Philadelphia area. A pretty hard-core Rock and Roll guy was saying (to my astonishment) that he really likes Rise Up Singing. He's always amazed that the words/chords to so many many songs he wants to re-aquaint himself with can be found there.