Memory – Auxiliary Memory

Why Didn’t I Hear The Beatles in 1963?

by James Wallace Harris, 5/25/23

I’ve been playing The Beatles all this week and I noticed something that has me thinking about it a lot. The first two Beatles albums Please Please Me and With the Beatles came out in 1963 in the United Kingdom but I didn’t hear them until after February 9, 1964, when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. Obviously, some Americans heard Fab Four songs before then because there were mobs at the airport and 73 million people watched Ed’s show that night.

When do you remember first hearing the Beatles? I got interested in those dates because I was going to write an essay about what I remembered about The Beatles from 1964, but it bothered me I was recalling my 1964 but the tunes were from 1962 and 1963. America and England were out of sync by over a year.

Why hadn’t I heard the Beatles on the radio in 1963? Starting in 1962, I listened to Top 40 music several hours a day on WQAM and WFUN AM radio stations in Miami, so I should have heard The Beatles’ songs if they were released. I just don’t remember hearing them at all in 1963.

“Love Me Do/P.S. I Love You” was released in England on October 5, 1962, but not until April 24, 1964, in the U.S., when it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Beatlemania could have started in late 1962, or early 1963 — why didn’t it?

“Please Please Me/From Me To You” was the Beatles’ 2nd single in England, released on January 11, 1963. It reached #1 on the New Music Express and Melody Maker charts. “Please Please Me/Ask Me Why” was the first Beatles single released in the United States on February 25, 1963, but failed to chart. Some radio stations around the country played this single but it got no screaming fans and was forgotten. “Please Please Me” reached #35 in Chicago on March 8 on their local charts, and again on March 15, but disappeared after that.

“Please Please Me/From Me To You” was re-released in the U.S. on January 3, 1964, and made it to #3 on Billboard. Again, it was obvious that Americans loved the Beatles, but why did we wait until 1964 to love them? This makes me want to write an alternate history science fiction story about Beatlemania hitting America during Christmas of 1962. And it can’t be all Capitol’s fault.

Three more singles by the Beatles were released in the U.K. in 1963: “From Me To You/Thank You Girl” on 4/11/63, “She Loves You/I’ll Get You” on 8/23/63, and “I Want To Hold Your Hand/This” on 11/29/63. Did Americans visiting England bring back these singles and albums? Weren’t there any word-of-mouth from the jet setters?

According to Wikipedia, 34 songs were recorded by the Beatles in 1962 and 1963. Capitol turned down the opportunity to put them out, and a little label, Vee-Jay snapped up the rights. Vee-Jay planned to release Introducing… The Beatles, a repackaged of the UK album Please Please Me in July of 1963, but Vee-Jay didn’t get it out until January 10, 1964. Then Beatlemania hit and Capitol took back the rights.

Theoretically, I could have heard some of the Beatles songs in 1963 on WQAM or WFUN in Miami, but I don’t think so. What if Beatlemania had arrived a year earlier? Would that have launched The Sixties sooner? The 1960s up until the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, never felt like the legendary times we call The Sixties. 1960 to 1963 felt like the 1950s.

The Sixties, at least to me, began when The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan. Seeing them that night felt like Dorothy opening the door in The Wizard of Oz when the film went from black and white to Technicolor. The magic of the Sixties ended for me with Charles Manson and Altamont. In 1970, The Beatles broke up, my father died, and I moved from Miami to Memphis. That’s when I felt The Seventies began.

I was going to write an essay comparing The Beatles’ first two albums against their competition. In America, our first two Beatles albums in 1964 were a mixture of songs from the UK 1963 albums and 1962-1963 singles plus some cuts from the third and fourth British Beatles albums recorded in 1964. It’s all rather confusing if I wanted to understand music as a product of its times.

Here’s an overview of what The Beatles were doing in 1963. As they were writing those songs, or doing covers of American songs, it was 1963. But they made a social and psychological impact on us in 1964. That delay fascinates me.

This week I played all the Beatles albums from Please Please Me (UK 1963) to The Beatles (White Album) (UK/US 1968). I can play all the albums through Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) over and over and did this week. All the songs appeal to me. Each album was a unique masterpiece. Things completely fell apart with The Beatles (White Album). (George Martin and others thought it should have been a single album. I agree completely. The White album feels like a single album with a bunch of outtakes and demos.)

Even though I loved all those Beatles albums through 1967, I’ve only put a few of their songs on my Top 1000 playlist on Spotify. I’ve been wondering why for a long time. I want to compare The Beatles’ songs to the hits that came out at the same time that I love better. But when I saw the dates when the first two albums came out were from 1963, I wondered if should I compare those songs to songs coming out in 1964 when I first heard those Beatles songs, or to songs that were coming out in 1963 when The Beatles recorded their songs?

As I listened to the Beatles’ albums this week it was obvious with each album John, Paul, George, and Ringo progressed in creative sophistication. But then so did pop hits each year. In America, those 1964 Beatles releases stomped the 1964 American releases. But shouldn’t they be compared to 1963 songs?

Finally, could I have heard some Beatles songs in 1963 and they just made no impact on me? Did it take Beatlesmania to get us to love The Beatles? And could the reason I put so few of their songs on my Top 1000 playlist is because Beatlesmania and The Sixties ended in 1969?

JWH

Developing a Healthy News Diet

by James Wallace Harris, 5/21/23

Michael Pollan created a small book about eating healthy called Food Rules. As an analogy, I’d like to create a set of sensible rules about consuming the news. Pollan distilled his list of rules down to three simple sentences, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” but it really takes reading his book to understand that mantra.

What I would like to do is develop a similar simple mantra about my daily news consumption but I’ll have to work out the details first. Pollan emphasized eating whole foods rather than processed foods. Is there such a thing as whole unprocessed news? “Not too much” is an obvious target since we obviously consume too much news. Finding an analogy for “mostly plants” will be interesting.

What would be the equivalent of nutritious news? Experience has taught me that some news is unhealthy, and I often get news indigestion. I also admit I’m bloated and overweight from too much news consumption.

Like whole food and junk food, we prefer junk news over whole news. I spend several hours a day nibbling on news from many sources. Most of which is forgotten immediately. I wonder if my first rule should be:

#1 – Ignore easily forgettable news

We’re used to clicking on anything that catches our fancy while idling away moments on our smartphones. Essentially, this kind of news is gossip and titillation. Basically, we’re bored or restless. We should use that time in better ways, especially if it exercises our minds. Read real news instead. Or, do something active. Playing games, listening to music, or audiobooks, is more nutritious than never-ending bites of clickbait.

Everyone bitches about information overload but who does anything about it? I’ve learned from intermittent fasting that my body appreciates having a good rest each day from eating. I believe I need to apply the same idea to news consumption.

#2 – Limit your hours consuming the news

I find 16:8 fasting works well for eating. I’m thinking of a 22:2 fast for news is what I’m going to aim for at the moment. Two hours of news consumption a day might sound like a lot, but if you add up all the forms of news I consume including television, magazines, online newspapers, YouTube, and news feeds, RSS feeds, I can easily go beyond two hours.

We should also separate news from learning and entertainment. Learning something new could be considered a form of news. I’m not going to count educational pursuits in my news time. And if you enjoy reading nonfiction books or watching documentaries on TV, that shouldn’t count as news either. However, shows like 60 Minutes, CBS Sunday Morning, and The Today Show can be considered informative entertainment news. Some people just prefer news shows for fun rather than watching fictional shows. I’m not sure if they should count or not.

What we really want is to stay informed about the world so that we interact with reality wisely. Humans have an extremely difficult time processing information. We think we’re far smarter than we are. We constantly delude ourselves. And we think our opinions matter when 99.999% of the time they don’t. Most people think they are experts on countless topics after having consumed just a few hours of news. They think they know better than real experts who have put tens of thousands of hours into studying their specialty.

#3 – Stop assuming you know anything

I believe the real key to understanding the news is being able to tell the difference between opinion and significant data. The real goal of news consumption should be finding the best data, and that means getting into statistics.

Unfortunately, the news industry is overwhelmed with talking heads. Everyone wants to be an expert, and all too often most news consumers tend to latch onto self-appointed experts they like. News has become more like a virus than information processing.

I read and watch a lot of columnists and programs about computers, stereo equipment, and other gadgets. Most are based on personal impressions of equipment individuals have bought or been loaned from manufacturers. These tech gurus are a good analogy for what I’m talking about. Most of the news we take in daily is from individuals processing limited amounts of information and giving us their opinion. What we really want is Consumer Reports, Rtings, or the Wirecutter, where large amounts of data are gathered from a variety of sources, and statistically analyzed.

This is just a start on designing my news diet. I want to keep current on a long list of topics, but that’s like learning about all the vitamins and nutrients my body needs. News nutrition will be a vastly more complicated topic. What are the essential vitamins I need every day? Is it politics, national and international affairs, economics, crime, immigration, ecology, etc?

Do I need to know about everything? Is that what an informed citizen needs to do? Take immigration. Is anything I think about immigration affects the situation at the border? Does voting liberal or conservative even affect anything at the border? I can barely maintain order in my house, why should I believe I can organize all of reality on Earth? Maybe my last two rules should be:

#4 – Know my limitations

#5 – Pursue the news I can actually use

Like nutrition, news is a complicated subject that’s hard to understand and can easily confuse.

JWH

Why Do I Want Old Issues of Rolling Stone Magazine From the 1960s and 1970s?

by James Wallace Harris, 3/26/23

The other day I got the hankering to read old issues of Rolling Stone from the 1960s and 1970s and started trying to track them down. This morning I decided I needed to psychologically evaluate why I was doing this because I realized as I was still lying in bed that I don’t have enough time in life to read everything I want to read. So why waste reading time on these old magazines? That got me thinking about a Reading Bucket List and focusing on reading the most important books rather than just trying to read everything.

I might have ten more years, or it could be twenty or thirty, but the time to get things read is dwindling. For practical purposes, I’m going to assume I have ten years which will put me in the average lifespan range. Since I average reading one book a week, that’s 520 books. My best guestimate suggests I already own six times that many in my TBR pile. Or, put another way, I’ve already bought enough books to keep me reading for another sixty years. I need to stop chasing after more things to read like hundreds of old issues of magazines.

So why want to read a bunch of old magazines? Since I started contemplating the idea of a Reading Bucket List, I realized it’s not the number of books. This was my first useful revelation today. It’s the number of topics I want to study, including fictional explorations on those topics too.

Lately, I’ve been reading about the creation of the atomic bomb, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, atomic bomb tests in the atmosphere, how the general public felt about nuclear war in the 1950s, and 1960s, and how all of that influenced science fiction novels and short stories. If I explored that subject completely I could use up my 520 books easily. Because I want to explore a number of topics before I die, I also need to limit how deep to get into them.

I see now that my Reading Bucket List won’t be a list of books, but a list of topics to study. So I need to change my bucket list name from Reading Bucket List to Topics to Study Bucket List. My fascination with topics usually doesn’t last long, just a few weeks or a couple of months. However, most of the topics I’m interested in are reoccurring. I’ve chased them my whole life and keep coming back to explore them some more.

(It might be valuable to make a list of these topics, but that’s for the future. Another project: see if I can create a timeline of how often these interests resurface.)

Let’s get back to the magazines. I believe writing the above paragraphs have already helped me see something important. I want to reread old issues of Rolling Stone with a specific goal. (One reason I write these blog posts is to think things through and see into myself.)

I want Rolling Stone magazines to find albums and groups I missed when I read Rolling Stone the first time they were coming out. This is part of a larger project of studying I’ve been piddling away at for decades. I started haunting record stores in 1965, but I never could afford to buy many albums each week. As I got older and had more money I’ve always tried to catch up by buying older records when I bought new ones, filling in the past. Now with Spotify, I can listen to almost any album from the past. But I need to know about the group or album to search for it and play it. I thought I’d read old record reviews and look for albums that are forgotten today but got good reviews back then.

My ultimate goal is to get a solid understanding of popular music from 1960 to 1980. Eventually, I want to add 1948-1959 and 1981-1999. And if I have time I’d like to learn about classical music. But I’ll define this topic as: What Were the Best Albums When I Grew Up? I figured Rolling Stone magazine from 11/9/67 to 12/31/80 could help me.

There are plenty of books on the best albums of all time, including from Rolling Stone, and I have many of them. But they tend to focus on the same famous albums and artists. I love when I find a song that’s been forgotten that really excites me. For example, recently I found “Harlem Shuffle” by Bob & Earl from back in 1963. I was listening to AM music at least eight hours a day back in 1963, but I don’t think I remember this song, at least not distinctly remember it. The title is familiar, and some of the lyrics, but then this song has been covered a number of times, including by The Rolling Stones.

Yesterday, I played “Harlem Shuffle” several times very loud on my big stereo with a 12″ subwoofer and it sounded fantastic. Boy did it press some great buttons in my soul. And that’s also part of my Topics to Study Bucket List. I grew up with certain buttons I liked pushed. I want to understand them. Studying music from 1960-1980 is working toward that. Studying science fiction that came out from 1939-1980 is another. But like I said before, making a list of all of them is for another day.

And wanting old issues of Rolling Stone is not a new desire. Back in 1973-74, I bought three huge boxes of old issues of Rolling Stone at a flea market. God, I wish I had them now, but I wouldn’t have wanted to drag them around for fifty years either. And earlier this century I bought Rolling Stone Cover to Cover, which featured every issue from 1967 to May 2007 on DVD. I still have it, but the discs have copy protection and the reader software stopped working after Windows 7. I’m thinking about setting up a machine, or virtual machine, and installing Windows XP on it to see if I can get it going again. But that will be a lot of work.

With some help from some folks on the internet, I’ve gotten the first 24 issues of RS on .pdf. I’m hoping to find more. If you have them and wish to share them, let me know. Or if you know of any other source. I’m also interested in learning about other magazines that reviewed music from 1960-1980. And I’ve already gotten some recommendations of less than famous bands to try. If you have a favorite forgotten album or group leave a comment. And now that I think about it, if you’re working on a similar project, tell me about your methods.

Ultimately, I want a list of all the albums I love most from 1960-1980. I might even buy them if I don’t own them already. I enjoy listening to one or two albums a day. Recent great discoveries were the first albums by Loretta Lynn and Etta James. I was surprised by how well they were produced, and how well everything sounds on my latest stereo system.

This week I discovered Amazon is selling CD sets that feature 3-8 original albums from certain groups for about the price of a single LP. Yesterday, I got in a set of Buffalo Springfield that was remastered under the supervision of Neil Young. 5 CDs for their three albums. (2 CDs are copies in mono.) I also ordered the first 6 studio albums of the Eagles, 7 albums from Fleetwood Mac’s middle period, and five albums of Weather Report. But these are famous albums. The real goal is to find forgotten albums I love as much as the classics of rock music.

JWH

Unfocused Reading

by James Wallace Harris, 3/12/23

I love reading best when I’m reading a book that I hate to stop reading and always want to get back to when I’m not reading it. Back in December, I was obsessed with reading Elizabeth Strout’s books. I read seven of her nine novels, practically one right after another. That was delightful. I was in reading heaven.

Right now my reading is terribly unfocused. I can’t stick with any book for long. Pictured on this page are all the books I’m currently reading — at least they are the ones that are currently up on my Kindle, Audible, Scribd, and Libby apps, and the books I see lying around. There’s probably more lying next to chairs, or under magazines.

Some of the books I’m reading are because I’m in an online book club for nonfiction books (Come Back in September, Song of the Cell). Or books related to what we read (Jena 1800, Sleepless Nights, The Romantic Revolution).

Others are because I’m in a Facebook group that reads anthologies (The Best of Nancy Kress, Beyond Armageddon, 21st Century Science Fiction). Others are because I’m interested in a particular subject, or they were recommended by a friend (The Good Lord Bird). (It’s great.)

I’m reading All Creatures Great and Small by James Harriot because Susan and I are watching the TV show of the same title. We finished the new series and are into the third season of the old series.

I’m reading Where The Wasteland Ends because I got interested in Romanticism in my online book club. I’m reading Miss Buncle Married because I loved Miss Buncle’s Book. I’m reading Neanderthals and The Great SF Stories 20 because I just love reading science fiction short stories.

I’m reading The Murder of the U.S.A. because I’m writing about the history of science fiction stories that deal with surviving a nuclear war, and it’s an early example of the subject. I’m reading Television’s Greatest Year: 1954 because I found it in a used bookstore and it looked interesting and is interesting. I’m reading Dangerous Visions and New Worlds because I like reading and writing about the history of science fiction. I’m reading How Hight We Go In The Dark because I try to keep up with current science fiction and it was considered one of the best SF novels last year.

I hope this illustrates how scattered my reading and thinking are at the moment. I’d much rather be focused on one subject and one book. When I was growing up and for many years of my working life, I mostly read one book at a time. I miss that simplicity, that focus.

When I joined Audible in 2002 I was on the 2 audiobooks a month plan, and I’d finish one audiobook and carefully study for days how I would use my second credit. Each book was special.

Then Audible started having sales, and now I have hundreds of audiobooks in my TBL to pile. And with all the Kindle books on sale, and all the wonderful buys I find at the Friends of the Library bookstore, I have a couple thousand books on my TBR pile. Life was simpler when I could only afford to buy one book at a time. I just can’t resist a book I think I want to read if it’s priced very low. And I subscribe to Scribd, Kindle Unlimited, and Apple News+ which provide access to hundreds of magazines and countless books and audiobooks. I have too much of a good thing. Less might be a whole lot more.

The book covers shown on this page are only the books I’m trying to read this week. It doesn’t include the books I’m buying or the books I recently gave up trying to read or finished.

I think between all the zillions of albums I can listen to on Spotify, all the zillions of movies and TV shows I can stream, and all the zillions of books, audiobooks, and magazines I could read my mind is running in seven directions at once trying to consume everything. It’s wearing me out.

I hanker for a simpler reading, listening, and watching life. One that is more focused. I think it’s time to cancel some subscriptions and give up buying bargains. I don’t know if I can ever get back to reading just one book at a time, but it should get it down too much less than 21 at a time.

[There is a certain synergy between this essay and the one I just wrote for my science fiction blog, “10 Reasons How I’m Reevaluating My Interest in Science Fiction.”)

JWH

Visualizing My Discontent

by James Wallace Harris, 2/28/23

Yesterday I watched a YouTube video about writing morning pages. The idea is to get up and hand-write three pages of stream-of-conscious thoughts. So, I tried it this morning and I realized I have a number of things that make me discontent. And one of the things that make me dissatisfied with my life is not being able to see the big picture of what’s going on with myself. This brings me to this blog. I went to Xmind and created a quick mind map of my discontents hoping to see an overview of what was gnawing at me. You can see the results above.

The seed of discontent that inspired all of this comes from the way I feel each night before I go to bed — about how I spent my day. If I did something that felt productive, I feel satisfied with my day. If I didn’t I feel restless. I like when I have an ongoing project that inspires me to get up and get back to working on it. I haven’t had one of those in a while. My next level of satisfaction comes when I write a blog that I’ve put some good work into creating.

Of course, everything depends on health. Over the past few years, I’ve had to deal with a number of health issues. The walls of my life, my aquarium you might say, are the limitations of my health. When I was younger, that aquarium felt like the ocean itself, but as I grew older it shrank. As an adult, I began to realize my limitations, but the possibilities still felt huge, like I was living in the Atlanta aquarium. In my fifties, it felt more like a fancy 50-gallon deluxe home aquarium. In my sixties an ordinary 20-gallon job. Now when I feel bad it feels like I’m living in one of those bowls people keep goldfish in. When I’m feeling better, I’m back in a basic 10-gallon tank. My health goal is to do as much as I can within the boundaries set by my body. That means a lot of my daily anxiety deals with staying healthy. If I can maintain a certain level of health I feel like it minimizes my discontent. And the more I do, the less discontent I feel.

However, staying healthy juggles so many goddamn variables that it’s stressful to think about what to do to stay healthy. For instance, I watched a video, “7 Foods That Ruin Your Liver” this morning — two of which are among the top ingredients of the protein supplements I eat. Since I have a fatty liver, and sometimes have pains in my liver area, this is another worry. I also have a cyst on my liver. And I have gallstones. Eating carefully has become a very big deal for me.

Luckily, my health problems don’t cause me much discontent, or even anxiety. I’m used to dealing with them. My discontent comes from worrying over what to eat and how to exercise. I want to eat what I like and dislike making myself exercise. What would eliminate that anxiety would be finding a diet that I just stick with all the time, and finding a way to integrate just enough exercise to the minimum needed. Both really come down to discipline, but discipline is a major area of discontent for me.

I’ve been lucky lately, and have been feeling better. Last year wasn’t so good because of health problems and a hernia operation. Because I’m feeling better I feel like I should be doing more. Because I’m not doing more I’m feeling restless and discontent. That’s what came out in my morning pages.

Reducing that discontent and getting back on track will require finding a project to work on. I want something that will take me several days or weeks. Something that will make me feel like getting out of bed in the morning. The one I’ve picked to start on, but I don’t know if I’ll stick with, involves creating a new way to learn, memorize, and visualize a subject. My memory is deteriorating, but it’s never been very good for studying a subject deeply. I read nonfiction books and news articles all the time. But that information goes in and out of my brain almost instantly.

I recently read and reviewed a book about the German romantics. Supposedly, they found a lot of insights that have trickled down to us today. I want to create some kind of visual representation of their ideas and how they connected to other influential people over the last two hundred years. I figure this will kill several birds with one stone. It will touch on four branches of the mind map above: memory, reading, productivity, and anxiety. It might even touch on possessions because I will enjoy using more of my computer equipment, and it might touch on friends because it will give me something to talk about with them.

What I want to do is develop a way to visualize what I read to help me remember the information and convey what I’ve learned to other people.

All of this was inspired by scribbling out three handwritten pages this morning when I got up. Watch the video above, you might find it useful too.

By the way, the level of discontent I feel right now isn’t very high. I have a very contented personality. I find it very easy to just hang out and putter around in life. My greatest discontent has always been not being more ambitious. All I’m doing now is pushing myself to do just a little more.

JWH