At Least The Name Is Spelled Right

I'm not sure whether to be more amused or annoyed by Rick Dumont's article about Dreamtime published in today's Nashua Telegraph.

As either Mae West or Oscar Wilde once said, "I don't care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right." But the name is about the only thing that the reporter did get right. Every time I see a media report on something that I actually know something about, and see how much the reportage differs from the reality, it reminds me to be very skeptical of everything I read.

And, y'know, I'm just a schmuck from Merrimack, New Hampshire. Imagine what Bob Dylan goes through.

For the record:

* I did say the very early Elvis modeled himself after Dean Martin, but have no idea where the line, "But feeling that image wouldn't be marketable, Elvis' handlers molded him into what he became..." came from. However, I didn't say it, and neither did Mr. D.

* I didn't say that Dylan modeled Theme Time Radio Hour after Woody Guthrie. I don't even know what that means. I mentioned, as I usually do in interviews, that I suspect that the idea for TTRH's theme format may have come from Guthrie and Alan Lomax's "Back Where I Came From."

* Obviously, I didn't say Morey Amsterdam wrote "Rum and Coca-Cola." I said he stole the song.

* The "radio station" is WFMU.

* Yes, a writer from the "venerable" Rolling Stone did interview me. But it was about TTRH, not Dreamtime. As it turned out, my interview was completely edited out of the published article, except a line about "Back Where I Come From," and my name wasn't even mentioned.

* I am appreciative of the fact that the Telegraph reporter did get my response right about not knowing (and little caring, because it's not why I do Dreamtime) whether Mr. D. knows about Dreamtime, especially as it seemed he was doing his damnedest to get a quotable quote out of me. I must have repeated the "Don't know. If he does see it, I hope he likes it." line five times in different variations to that question.

*And the photo published with the article should have been credited, "P.W. Bals." Or maybe "Jailbait Jones," I can't remember who took it. In any case, if I had my druthers, I would have preferred the one above, also by P.W. Bals. Or maybe JJ.

I don't want to be too dog-in-the-mangerish about this. Appreciate the publicity and all that. But I mean really, I was interviewed for this over three weeks ago. What, 10 minutes to either send me the article or go over it with me by phone?