Jim Carroll: "Have I ever used a crib-sheet? No I haven't; when I set out on this voyage nearly half a century ago I would have been booed off the stage had I done so. People believed it necessary to do the work before they went public - the songs were worth it and anything less was insulting to the music and to those who made the effort to turn up."

I know we've been over this before, but I'm still a bit confused here.   You say the audiences would have been insulted had anyone used a crib sheet -- thus proving that they had not "done the work before they went public?" But you've also admitted that sometimes people can flub lyrics or go blank even when they've been singing a song flawlessly for years. So I'm wondering what that audience would conclude if they heard such a lyric screw-up from a performer they did not know. Might they not take such a memory lapse as proof that the singer had "not done the work before going public" just as much as they'd interpret the use of a crib sheet that way?