Category: Music

How To Calculate the Value of Your Monthly Subscriptions

by James Wallace Harris, 7/4/23

I feel like Susan and I have too many monthly subscriptions for watching television, listening to music and books, and reading the news. Everything is going digital, and everything requires a subscription. That increasing number of monthly subscriptions is bothering me, but is it really too many, or a problem?

I decided to create a way to measure their value. I looked at the monthly cost versus the total hours Susan and I use each service and then calculated the hourly cost of using each subscription. The results were surprising.

FYI, the hours were calculated by how much each of us used the service. For example, We both watch Acorn TV together for one hour a night, so the total usage was 60 hours for the month. For YouTube TV, Hulu, Peacock, and Netflix, the hours look very large, but it’s because I add both mine and Susan’s together and because Susan has the TV on in the background while she sews.

684 hours a month seems like a lot of digital content. But remember, most of Susan’s TV watching is while she’s working on her sewing. She’s being more productive than me. I only watch TV when the TV is on. There are 730 hours in a month, times two, which equals 1,460 hours. That means Susan and I spend over a third of our time using digital content.

$260.37 isn’t a huge monthly expense at all then when you think about how much we get out of it.

Even though that’s not that much for two people, I don’t want to waste money and I want to reduce our monthly bills. I consider anything under $1 an hour to be a good value. We are getting the most bang for the buck with TV. It’s news that’s more expensive.

It’s obvious I need to cancel my subscription to Apple News+. Having access to over 300 magazines seems like a fantastic bargain for $9.99 a month, but I never get around to reading many magazines — even though there are over a dozen I want to read. If I read magazines 30 minutes a day, that would be 15 hours for the month, or 66 cents an hour – in the value range. I need to either read more or cancel.

Apple News+ offers several newspapers. I could drop The New York Times and The Washington Post. I’d probably spend at least 30 minutes a day reading the news, which would bring the value under a dollar an hour. However, I want to support both the Times and Post as institutions. I need to think about this. Apple News+ is a bargain for news reading, but it’s terrible for supporting individual magazines and newspapers.

Calculating how much news I read each day should tell me just how many newspapers and magazines I should buy each month. If I was completely honest with myself, that would be one magazine and one newspaper. I’d probably settled on The Atlantic and The New York Times. But even then, most of their content would go unread. My eyes have always been bigger than my stomach when it comes to periodicals. I’m currently buying WAY MORE newspapers and magazines than anybody could ever read in a month, much less what I actually read.

I’m currently getting The New York Times for $6 a month because I quit to get an introductory rate, but when it goes back to $25 a month I don’t think it’s going to be a reasonable value.

We could probably slash that $260 bill for subscriptions. But seeing these expenses laid out like this is quite revealing. Susan and I hardly ever eat out anymore, and we stopped going to the movies, so this pretty much is our entire entertainment/education budget. It’s not that big, especially when you think it’s just $130 apiece.

JWH

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

Are You An Old Man Listening to Music By Yourself?

by James Wallace Harris, 4/10/23

None of my fellow Baby Boomers want to sit and listen to music with me anymore. What happened to y’all? When did you guys stop listening to music? I’ve read articles about how most people stopped listening to new music sometimes in their thirties — but when did you stop listening to the old music you love too? And by listening, I mean sitting down and listening with the same devoted attention you give a movie at the theater?

Sure, y’all will put Pandora on in the background sometimes. Or randomly listen to a playlist of the 37 tunes you bought on iTunes for your iPhone. And you might still get a kick out of seeing geezers from the past perform live. But when was the last time you bought a new album and just sat and listened to it? And when was the last time you sat and listened to an album with a friend?

Rock music defined the 1960s and 1970s pop culture. Most of y’all gave up on music after that. I was still crazy about music in the 1980s and 1990s. But I have to admit, it’s been harder to feed by habit in the 21st century. I mostly rely on old music now. (There are exceptions like Adele and Kings of Leon.)

My feelings are hurt that my wife and none of my friends no longer want to share music with me. The only people I know who still listen to music like me are guys I read about online or watch on YouTube.

The other day I was watching a YouTuber film at a trade show for audiophile equipment and I noticed something very interesting. The halls of this convention center were filled only with men, mostly middle-aged or older men. I watched carefully trying to spot a female in the crowd as the YouTuber visited one booth or dealer room after another. Didn’t see one female. But lots of grey beards and bald spots.

My wife and her friends still love going to concerts. Just the weekend before last, they went to see Journey and Toto at the FedEx Forum. She and her friends will spend big bucks to see ancient rock dinosaurs roam the Earth again. They’ll even travel hundreds of miles to see their favorite blasts from the past. But she doesn’t listen to the old albums from these same groups. Before she went to see Chicago I asked her if she’d like to listen to some Chicago albums with me. She just said, no.

I don’t like live concerts anymore. I saw Chicago when they were touring with their first album. I bought that first album the week it came out because it was a mysterious double LP with a Priced Right sticker that just intrigued me. It blew my leather sandals off.

Back then I haunted record stories, going to several each week. By the time I started college, I had 300 LPs in my collection.

When I blog about music I get a damn few hits. When I try to talk about music I’m excited about, I can tell I’m boring my friends. I know there are people who still love listening to music because of all the audiophile YouTubers. I’m especially amazed at younger guys who love and know so much about music from the 1960s and 1970s. Wait, I just remembered, there is one female record collector who produces videos for YouTube (Melinda Murphy). What a lucky guy her husband must be — assuming he enjoys sitting around listening to records with her.

I’m learning that as we get older we retreat into ourselves. Is that because we all have uniquely favorite things we like to do which seldom overlap with our friends? I consider myself damn lucky to have two friends who read science fiction.

My wife and friends love spending time with things I don’t enjoy anymore. I wonder if Susan’s feelings are hurt that I don’t watch sitcoms with her anymore. When we first got married we watched several each night together. I’ve lost my taste for them. So while she’s watching M.A.S.H., The Andy Griffiths Show, or Friends by herself in the living room, I’m listening to Buffalo Springfield or The Byrds by myself in the den.

So, are you an old guy who sits by himself listening to music?

(I’ve spent a fair bit of time dredging through old memories and I realize that I only knew a handful of people who would sit around a listen to music with me. I guess I’m wanting something that never happened much anymore. Mostly I listened to music with friends before I got married, and it usually involved getting high. Early in our married life, Susan would go record shopping with me, and even listen to what I bought afterward. I remember when I married Susan, she had a box of about 40 LPs, many of which I liked, and that impressed me. She even bought a few albums over the years and listened to them sometimes, sometimes by herself. We went to a lot of concerts together. But she slowly stopped buying CDs – except for The Foo Fighters. Now she listens to Spotify, but only rarely.)

JWH

[picture above was generated by Midjourney. The AI has a weird idea about stereo systems.]

Just Saying No To Vinyl – Going Back To CDs

by James Wallace Harris, 3/28/23

The big news in the music world is vinyl is outselling compact discs in sales. That’s because it’s for total sales and not total units. That’s not hard to believe when LPs go for $20-50 for regular releases, and much more for special editions. Yet, CDs seem cheaper than they’ve ever been. I’m going back to buying CDs. Fooey on the $50 LP.

I just bought Fleetwood Mac- 1969 to 1974 on 8 CDs for $36.99. And Eagles, The Studio Albums 1972 – 1979 on 6 CDs for $27.88, and What’s That Sound? Complete Albums from Buffalo Springfield on 5 CDs for $26.39. The sound quality is impressive but the packaging is very cheap. Just cardboard sleeves for the CDs in a cheap cardboard box, no booklets or documentation.

I actually like these CDs in slim cardboard sleeves. I’m going to try and find a set of file drawers that will just fit them. Or maybe some miniature crates like how we use to store LPs. CDs in plastic cases take up a lot of room.

The Fleetwood Mac set seems to be all recent re-masters but I can’t be sure. Then Play On, one of the Fleetwood Mac albums has the same 18-cuts with bonus tracks as the remastered CD that Amazon sells as a single CD for $14.27. The Fleetwood Mac set has a sticker that says “Six studio albums re-mastered on CD for the first time. Plus a previously unreleased live performance from 1974, 20 bonus tracks, and 8 previously unreleased tracks.” That’s interesting because the box contains 7 studio albums and a live album CD. I ain’t complaining.

The Buffalo Springfield set has a sticker saying it was “Re-Mastered from the original analog tapes under the auspices of Neil Young.” Buffalo Springfield never sounded so good to me. Their original LPs and CDs always seemed thin sounding. The new set has Buffalo Springfield’s three original albums, with the first and second in both mono and stereo.

The Eagles set has six studio albums on CD, with no extra information, no extra cuts, and no claim to be re-mastered. But the CDs sound good.

For years I’ve been trying to get back into vinyl. I sometimes buy old LPs at the library bookstore for 50 cents each, and I bought a handful of new LPs when they were on sale. But I won’t buy them new anymore – they’re just too damn expensive, and still going up in price. And every time I hear a skip on an LP I want to give up vinyl completely – give away my records and turntable. No vinyl revival for me.

I like to play one or two whole albums each day. Sometimes in the afternoon when I’m tired, and sometimes after dinner when I’m tired and not ready for television. I’ve gotten so I enjoy hearing a whole album – and played loud. Susan is nice enough to indulge me for a couple of hours.

And I feel bad about always streaming music because I’ve read artists don’t get paid much through that system. I’m willing to buy new albums, especially if they are priced around $5-10. And I love these new bargain sets. Amazon has a bunch of them and I’m going to buy more. They are usually marketed under “Original Album Series” or “The Studio Albums” keywords.

I think the only Fleetwood Mac album I bought when it came out before they went big with Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham was Bare Trees. Over the years I’ve picked up a few albums with Peter Green and Bob Welch. I bought the 1975-1987 albums as they came out. It’s great to jump back and hear all the earlier albums. There is even a cheap box set of the earliest Fleetwood Mac albums that I’m going to buy.

These cheap box sets are a great way to really get into a group, and time travel to the past. There are quite a few artists and groups I didn’t listen to when they came out that I’m willing to try now because they now have an enduring reputation. I especially want to try a lot of jazz groups. I’ve already ordered a set of Weather Report albums on CD.

I have hundreds of CDs I’ve bought over the last forty years, but some weren’t mastered that well originally. I’m willing to buy CDs if they are priced low and especially if they’ve been re-mastered. I’d love to buy a cheap box set of Joe Walsh solo albums and James Gang albums. The old CDs I have sound thin and poorly mixed. I don’t see anything remastered for them currently.

So, it’s back to CDs for me. Just saying no to the vinyl revival. I know LPs are cool, and wonderful to look at and hold, but CDs sound better and are more convenient to use.

My plan is to explore a lot of music, especially albums that came out from 1960 to 1980. I’d like to buy all my favorite albums on CD and keep them in order by when they were originally released. I only want to buy albums I’ll listen to whole – from the first to the last track. I’m not interested in buying the greatest hits albums or compilations. I have Spotify for those songs.

Year Album Artist
12/05/1966 Buffalo Springfield Buffalo Springfield
10/30/1967 Buffalo Springfield Again Buffalo Springfield
06/30/1968 Last Time Around Buffalo Springfield
09/19/1969 Then Play On Fleetwood Mac
09/18/1970 Kiln House Fleetwood Mac
09/03/1971 Future Games Fleetwood Mac
03/00/1972 Bare Trees Fleetwood Mac
06/01/1972 Eagles Eagles
03/01/1973 Penguin Fleetwood Mac
04/17/1973 Desperado Eagles
10/15/1973 Mystery to Me Fleetwood Mac
03/22/1974 On the Border Eagles
09/13/1974 Heroes Are Hard To Find Fleetwood Mac
06/10/1974 One of These Nights Eagles
12/08/1976 Hotel California Eagles
09/24/1979 The Long Run Eagles

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