I don't know what happened here. Maybe somebody meant to refresh this old thread, or maybe a cockroach was jumping on someone's keyboard and this is what randomly came up. (That's a reference to one of my favorite books, Archy and Mehitabel.)

Anyway, in case anyone is searching for advice on how to search, I have quite a bit of experience at that, so I'll pass on some hints.

First, bookmark this page: Discussion Forum Enhanced Search.

The first option, Search Forum By Subject or UserName, is extremely useful, but you need to know how to use it.

Any character string that you type into the Subject box must exactly match, character by character (but ignoring capitalization), a character string in the Subject line of a particular message, for that message to appear in your search results. The matching character string can appear anywhere in the Subject line. For example, if you type "how to" you will find "RE: Lyr Req: Teaching Me Worm How to Swim (Bill Newton" and "RE: Mudcat Membership-how to join" (etc.) but you will not find "RE: how-tos on jug playing?" since punctuation, spaces, and diacritical marks are significant.

Note that I am not talking about Thread Titles here. A Subject line is its own separate thing. It defaults to the same as the Thread Title, except that all replies after the initial message are prefixed with "RE: ". That is the default, but everyone who posts a reply has the option to enter something different, but very few people do this.

A few of us (me, Joe Offer, and some other people whose names are unknown to me) have editing privileges; we can change Subject lines after--even long after--a message was posted. For a long time now, it has been my practice to browse through threads about songs, and look for messages where people have posted lyrics, tunes, or chords (I am particularly interested in lyrics), and I will change the Subject to "Lyr Add: ", "Tune Add: ", or "Chords Add: " followed by the song title in ALL CAPS, for example: "Lyr Add: CUSHY McCOY". If space permits, I will add the songwriter's or a prominent performer's name in parentheses, e.g. "Lyr Add: I LIKE 'EM FAT LIKE THAT (Louis Jordan)"

So if you're looking for a particular song that has been discussed at Mudcat before, a good way to find it is to use Search Forum By Subject or UserName and type the title, or part of the title, into the Subject box and click Search.

[Keep watching this thread. I will add more.]