Reviewer reviled, rabid, rapid and wrought

Editing reviews is one thing. To actually change them, however, is an entirely different, and to my mind unscrupulous, thing.

I am referring here to my review of the Split Enz album, to which a number of changes were made which in places completely changed what I clearly meant when I wrote it.

1.	"And, surprisingly, it was worth waiting for" — I did not say 'surprisingly', I said it was "well worth waiting for".
2.	The line "some tight-hit that snare drum hard-drumming" — not having a copy of my original draft I can't remember what I actually wrote here, but I know for sure it wasn't this.
3.	"The bass should have .... more attention paid to editing" — this really made me wild. May I go on record as stating that I did not write this, and in fact completely disagree with it!!!
4.	The paragraph beginning "Side two is very much ...", and in particular the statement in brackets about Phil Judd: I did not say "arguably" as far as I can remember. I flatly stated my opinion that he is NZ's leading rock talent.

And there were several other such changes. Some were Ok, e.g. "welding from seemingly disparate roots something new and refreshing", which put that part of the review better than I did, which was Ok. For the most part, however the changes were not Ok to me, and its not the first time I've noticed such changes in reviews.

I am very glad you omitted to put my name at the end of the review. As as as I am concerned that review of "Mental Notes' was not mine at all, but someone elses. If you wanted these opinion expressed, why not write a review yourself and print them both side by side? That would then have been your opinion of the record. When I wrote my review, I expressed my own personal opinion. It wasn't my personal opinion as it appeared in print, however.