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May. 16th, 2005 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustFriday's Guardian featured an interview with singer-songwriter K.T. Tunstall, in which she discussed her musical tastes and influences:
That phrase "a comedy album by a mathematician from Harvard called Tom Lehrer" reveals that interviewer Will Hodgkinson is unfamiliar with the great man, credited by Wikipedia as an influence on both Frank Zappa and Eminem.
But what is a journalist to do? Do you bluff, and pretend to have heard of someone when you haven't? Or do you publish your ignorance in all its glory? Do you rely on the sub-editor to stop you making too big a fool of yourself? Is it unkind to suggest that it might be safer to try googling names that you don't recognise?
"An adopted child, Tunstall grew up in a house with no music. Her physicist father, who took the family on outward bound expeditions through the Scottish highlands, owned no records and only one tape: a comedy album by a mathematician from Harvard called Tom Lehrer. 'He would sing the table of elements in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan,' says Tunstall of Lehrer. 'Everyone at school would be dancing around to Marvin Gaye and all I could contribute were the songs of a comedy scientist'."
That phrase "a comedy album by a mathematician from Harvard called Tom Lehrer" reveals that interviewer Will Hodgkinson is unfamiliar with the great man, credited by Wikipedia as an influence on both Frank Zappa and Eminem.
But what is a journalist to do? Do you bluff, and pretend to have heard of someone when you haven't? Or do you publish your ignorance in all its glory? Do you rely on the sub-editor to stop you making too big a fool of yourself? Is it unkind to suggest that it might be safer to try googling names that you don't recognise?
