Sing Along with Me!

I think one of the very best things about rock concerts and festivals is the feeling of a temporary community. The energy of the crowd feeding off one another, singing together, enjoying one of their (hopefully) favorite bands together. There's something about a sea of people fist-pumping in one accord that really moves me. Community. Then it's over, and you move on. Temporary.

Temporary communities can exist in large-scale, like a stadium-sized concert, or small venues, like a birthday party at your home, or anything in-between. Basically anytime 3 or more people get together to all do one collective thing; celebrating something is always a plus!

One of my objectives in learning to play the guitar is to be able to create temporary communities, in the form of sing-alongs. Seriously - I'd love to be able to get out the ol' acoustic guitar in a group setting, start to play, and have everyone join in. Like around a campfire, except that I don't camp, so more like around a fireplace. :)

To reach this objective, I've started selecting songs that I want to learn to play by considering if they are sing-along-able. Perusing my iPod, I notice that it does include many that meet the criteria, but many that don't. The main reasons being that they either don't translate well to the acoustic guitar (although sing-alongs could certainly spring up around an electric guitar, but I'm not sure I want to haul around all that equipment all the time), or the fact that it's a song that not everyone knows well enough to sing along with. I guess I have some obscure taste...

So, what better way to find out what songs everyone knows than to ask everyone? To everyone who's reading this, please comment with what your favorite sing-along songs might be. I'm not asking for your favorite song, per se - just those that you think would be fun (and easy) to sing in a group, that others would enjoy singing just as much as you do.

Just as an example, I've recently been working on "Every Rose Has its Thorn." I think it qualifies - do you?

Let me hear from you!