Folk Plus is hosted and planned by Angela Page and airs Saturdays from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm on WJFF,
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For the past month, the idea of decieving the public with a fake memoir has been a hot topic in the news. An author named James Frey wrote A Million Little Pieces. Oprah windfrey picked it up in September as the top pick that month for her reading club. This memoir is about drug and alcohol abuse and Frey's life in a rehab clinic - revealed now to be Hazelden. By January she pulled her support learning that Frey had fabricated most of the memoir.
"I thought of myself as tougher than I was and badder than I was," he admitted when the truth about the fraud had surfaced.

Many singer/songwriters have penned a song with an autobiographical slant. Spurred on by James Frey's fake memoir I've compiled a setlist of  self centered ditties and songs of clear cut exagerations- no doubt, this will be my BEST SHOW EVER. Joke. (exaggeration)

Heres an introduction, written by Christine Lavin about her newest song "A Million Little Pictures" :

I wrote this song, inspired by the book "A Million Little Pieces," over the weekend. People have asked me over the years why I haven't written more songs about my personal life and my family.   Silly me!   All this time I  thought when you write about your real life it's supposed to be true.   Thank you, James Frey ... I feel so much more fascinating now. The song is called "A Million Little Pictures (This Is My Memoir)" I hope you like it.   Cheers! -- Christine Lavin

1. Christine Lavin - A Million Little Pictures
http://www.cliffgoldmacher.com/christinelavin/christinelavin.htm

2. Janis Ian - Autobiography 247 - Compilation: Fall 2006 - Sing Out

3. Patty Larkin - Me Me Me 225 - Live in the Square - Philo

4. Uncle Bonsai - Nobody Lives You 316
I am Joe's Eyes - Yellow tail Records
"nobody loves you like you do"

5. Susan Werner - When they Write the Story of My Life
Time Between Trains - Bottom Line

6.  Tom Russell - Hotwalker 400
Hotwalker - HighTone
russell launches the fraud of little jack horton

7. Ensemble - The Traveling Salesman
Music Man - Warner Bros.
"he's a fake and he doesnt know the territory"

8.  Andy Breckman - How I Met Your Mother 300
Don't Get Killed - Gadfly CDs.

9.  New Middle Class - I was Born 324
New Middle Class - newmiddleclass.com

10. Rod MacDonald - I am Bob Dylan 336
A Tale of Two Americas - Wind River

11 Moxy Fruvous - King of Spain 314
Live Noise - Bottom Line

Kids exaggerate:

12 . Rosenshontz (Usher, Rosen) - Its the Truth 418
Its the Truth! - Lightyear
"And thats why........   honest!"

13  Trout Fishing in America - Big Trouble 255
Big Trouble - Trout music
"the monsters came to my house to play..." and made the mess

We exaggerate:

14. Herdman, Hills, Mangsen (Berryman) - Squalor  317
Voices - Flying Fish
"its all because she didn't eat her vegetables"

15 Chad Mitchell Trio - The Great Historical Bum
At the Bitter End - Folk Era
a folk musical approach to the Forest Gump story

16 Rob Siegel - I Met Myself - 524
Live at Club Passim - robsiegel.com
back to 1978 to meet yourself as a teen

17 Si Kahn - Just A Lie - 2:26
Been A Long Time  - Sliced Bread
the opposite slant from James Frey, this song recals things being actually worse than they are remembered

18 Mark Weigle - Do You Go 434
The Truth Is - www.markweigle.com/
living a lie in a heterosexual marriage

19 . Colorblind James - He Must Have Been Quite a Guy 628
Why Should I Stand Up? - Gold Castle Records
many lies to chose from

20 . Arlo Guthrie - Motorcyle Song
Best of Arlo Guthrie - Warner Bros.
"I landed on top of a police car...."

21 . Mike Agranoff - (Breckman) Railroad Bill 401
Would You Rather Get  A Job? - mkeagranoff.com

James Gordon says "us songwriters never confess to exageration, nor are we able to spell the
word correctly...."

22 James Gordon - Opera Singing Dog 323
basic Black - jamesgordon.ca/

23. David Roth - Know Your Love 402
Another Side of David Roth - May the Light Music
he says this really is autobiographical

24 The Roches - We are Maggie and Terre and Suzzy
The Roches - Warner Bros.

25 Darcie Deville - When I Was A Child 310
Tornado in Slo Mo - Redwing

26 Bill Kahler - Time To Live 408
Spinning the World - Topsoil Records

27 Billy Jonas - My Life 10:10
Life So Far - Bang a Bucket Music

Some quotes   -------------------   LIES

Some lies are disguised so well to resemble the truth, that we should be poor judges of truth if not to be deceived by them.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.  - Abraham Lincoln

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.  - Samuel Butler

Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.  - Elizabeth Bowen

When the world has got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to kill it. You beat it over the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and behold! the next day it is as healthy as ever.  - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.  - Anatole France

 We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.   - Eric Hoffer

The easiest person to deceive is one's own self.  - Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.  -Sir Walter Scott
 

Some quotes   -------------------            EXAGGERATION

There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying.  - Josh Billings

Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough... Joseph Conrad

We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.  -Honore De Balzac

There is no one who does not exaggerate!  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.  - Walter Bagehot

Eschew the monumental. Shun the epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.
Ernest Hemingway

 ------------------------------------------------          Perhaps the first James Frey?

Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Baron von Munchhausen may have been the first James Frey. He lived in the mid 1700's, and was  a German nobleman who  joined the Russian military, Munchhausen supposedly told a number of outrageous tall tales about his adventures which became published. According to the stories, as retold by others, the Baron's astounding feats included being attacked by a wolf, which he turns inside out, riding cannonballs, Sinks a Spanish man-of-war, and escaping a swamp by pulling himself up by his own hair. In later versions he was using his own bootstraps to pull himself out of the sea, which gave rise to the term bootstrapping. Another story involves vessels belonging to negroes bringing white slaves from Europe, in retaliation, to work upon their plantations in a cold climate near the South Pole.

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