Thanks to all of you for your detailed, insightful concepts - some even 'out of the box' (especially the click track one lol), and some quite new to me. Some are things you think might be helpful - but you just never bothered to do. And unless you have an unusual talent - the amount of time and repetition it takes to memorize a good number of songs is much longer than anyone would like to admit to themselves....when the goal of the quantity of songs in your repertoire overtakes the joy you find in committing them to memory and practicing them (something that happens to this perfectionist all the time) - it's time to rethink the very reason you are playing. I'm at best a hobbyist that would like to be able to perform once in a while for friends and family or at a public bar or restaurant - I really should accept that and work on 5 or 10 songs instead of 30 or 40 - but hey, as popeye says "I am what I am..."

If I just take this thread, pull it apart, and list each item without duplicates - we'll have no less than 10 to 20 outstanding approaches. And of course, some will work better than others depending on the individual and their current musical experience.

For me - as others have mentioned, writing the first words of the verses down is as important as memorizing the verses, because I find it much easier to memorize a verse than to memorize what verse comes next. I actually have hand-written this out for my target repertoire songs of the Kinks, Simon and Garfunkel, Top Petty, Grateful Dead, the Eagles. If you might find this of any use - I'm happy to share it. I also memorize the progressions by number, which sometimes helps me - but for this to work for someone, they need to have really committed the major, minors, and the common mode sequences and be able to find the chords in that mode pretty easily. When that approach doesn't work for me - at least I'm reviewing the keys and chords within each.

Thanks again everybody.