You’re probably familiar with selective quotation e.g. when a show is reviewed as ‘An extraordinary waste of time where the cast failed to extract anything meaningful from the script. A must-avoid performance’ and the posters the next day say ‘Extraordinary’, ‘Meaningful’ and ‘A Must’.
I’ve just been invited to play at the Royal Oak on Monday, a solo acoustic support slot. In the publicity for it I was surprised to find:
‘The Evening News called him “…the best of local songwriters.” and that is really high praise.’
I was delighted and somewhat sceptical, so I googled it. I found an entry from my blog in 2004. In it I quoted in its entirety a review of a Full Moon Club gig I did. It was pretty favourable but the first sentence was more lukewarm than the rest:
‘Not to be confused with the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Norman Lamont is neither the best nor the worst when it comes to local singer-songwriters.’
HIgh praise indeed. The rest of the article was pretty complementary, but you know I’m brilliant anyway. Now I’ll quote in full what I said at the end of the blog:
In the best tradition of theatre posters, I can see a few juicy quotes from the above:
"the best … when it comes to local songwriters (Evening News)"
So that’s been in hiding on the web since 2004 – until today! Lie, fabricate, plagiarise – it works!!