No Jim, I don't want to go there, but what we're talking about here, in my eyes at least, is what is a traditional thing to do.

If the free-for-all is traditional, that's what's traditional. Can you sincerely tell me that people didn't sing pop songs at home too? Is what you're calling a folk song still a folk song when it's sung by an operatic tenor?

Just for the sake of differentiation, I'll call it traditional but I don't think it's very reasonable to dismiss what people have done in pubs for centuries as untraditional or somehow wrong.

On the contrary. Traditional singing has always, but not all the time, been about joining in.

Ian