It is thirty years now since I first joined a community choir. As probably related elsewhere (so I will be brief), I had taken some singing workshops in Katoomba, run by Janet Swain. She decided shortly after that she wanted to form a choir and a few weeks later a large band of relative strangers were gathered in her loungroom in Bullaburra for an inaugural night of singing. Thus Crowd Around was formed.

I have also related elsewhere my huge debt of gratitude to Janet for kindling the singing fire in me, for while I had played around with a guitar and sung the odd ditty in private, I had never taken it all that seriously. I still think back with great fondness on that time, which seems so idealistic, naive and energetic to me now.

So it was with some joy that I found a copy of Janet's 'Sing Out', one of the first songs Crowd Around ever performed, and gave it to our MD Suzanne at Moo Choir on Monday night. After thirty years, we will be revisiting the song that got the ball rolling in 1992, an anniversary of sorts, a memory kept alive by the pure exulation that singing can be, when sung together.