I saw the comment above from Joe Offer (in '97) about "mixed company." I was in the Air Force, and except for basic training and technical school, we didn't sing much. The Army and Marines did, however. I was sent to an Army technical school in '81, along with a few Marines and Navy guys, and we marched everywhere - also did PT (physical training) in formation. Imagine us, jogging along in formation at 5:30AM with our Marine Viet Nam vet cadence caller, past the officers' housing, loudly singing songs with every four-letter word you can imagine.

He was told to tone it down. As a result, we sang a lot of verses including the word "bleep," and he added a few about officers sleeping late and generally (no pun intended) being wusses.

While many songs and verses have been forgotton, there are loads of new ones. This isn't a dead tradition, and the songs are ripe for collecting. I've been places where I wished I had the time and equipment to collect songs, but it would have required me to run behind the guys carrying a tape recorder. I didn't feel that this was something that sounded like fun...