Sorry I haven't read all the above all the way through so if I'm covering what someone else has said I apologize. Nothing wrong with crib sheets in singarounds and sessions but I do object to the 'song book' culture where people who have no inclination to sing themselves turn round and say 'Can someone please sing no. 35 because I like to hear it'. Some of you may know where I'm coming from. However, well delivered, practiced, and learnt songs and tunes are always more enjoyable than long ballads where the singer forgets the words half way through and has to start from the beginning again.

As far as tunes are concerned we play as a ceilidh band and one of our members can't actually remember the tunes/chords very well so he brings a stand on stage with him, we'd prefer he didn't but its better than messing up a whole set. We also have one for the leader who occasionally has a slip of memory and its better to have an available prop as memory slips can spoil the dance. Also we regularly get asked by callers to play tunes we haven't done for a long time, sometimes years. However when we do stage sets and sessions we never use stands, and very rarely crib sheets.

There seems to be a bit of a culture in some of the circles we move in where people who have been playing for 25 years+, almost always reading from the same book, are starting to object when someone new comes along with different music (we do provide sheet music for big scratch bands so that any competent musician can make a good attempt and the dancers won't be disadvantaged). We all appreciate a challenge and playing from an 'easy' book doesn't do much for experienced musicians (don't count me in that, I'm a goat basher most of the time:)