Category: Sixties

Reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five at Ages 18, 55, and 72

by James Wallace Harris, 2/8/24

When I first read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut back in 1970 I thought of it as an antiwar novel. The Vietnam War overshadowed everything back then, and I was old enough to be drafted. 1970 was the year M.A.S.H. and Catch-22 came out in the movie theaters. I went to see Catch-22 and was so blown away that I bought the book, read it in a day, and then went to see the movie version again. I didn’t read the book version of M.A.S.H. for another year but saw the film in 1970 too. Ever since I’ve thought of Slaughterhouse-Five, Catch-22, and M.A.S.H. as the trilogy of anti-war novels of my generation. The books were all about hating war.

When I read Slaughterhouse-Five again, in 2006 when I was 55, I listened it on audio. That time it was a completely different novel. That time it was hilarious. It was over-the-top silly, slapstick, and viciously satirical. At that time I focused on the Tralfamadorians and Kilgore Trout, and Vonnegut’s commentary on science fiction. In 2006 I noticed the antiwar parts, but they didn’t seem to be the primary point of the novel. They were still horrifying, but I found it hard to take Slaughterhouse-Five as a serious novel about WWII. That happened to me last year when I tried to reread Catch-22.

Now in 2024, when I’m 72, I listened to the book again. This time the story was bittersweet, heavy on the bitter, gentle on the sweet, and deeply philosophical. This time Slaughterhouse-Five was a condemnation of humanity. It was dark, very dark, but strangely not depressing. Both Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, and Vonnegut were accepting that humans do horrible things and there is nothing we could do about it. This time it was obvious that Vonnegut believes we have no free will, and the best we can do in life is enjoy those moments when life is pleasant. This time around Slaughterhouse-Five was incredibly stoic.

When I read Slaughterhouse-Five the first time I thought the main goal of the novel was to horrify readers that we bombed Dresden in 1945 and make them outraged. I thought Vonnegut was testifying to an Allied war crime. This time around I realized Vonnegut wasn’t doing that at all. He was completely accepting that we had to bomb Dresden.

I think both times before, I thought Billy Pilgrim was a stand-in for Vonnegut. However, this time it was quite explicit that Billy Pilgrim and Vonnegut were distinctly two different characters in the book. At the end of the audiobook, there was a ten-minute conversation between Vonnegut and another unnamed WWII vet. In that conversation Vonnegut even tells us the name of the man he based Billy Pilgrim on.

The vet Vonnegut was talking to kept trying to praise Vonnegut, and Vonnegut kept deflecting the compliments. But one thing the other guy said stood out. He said that all of Vonnegut’s books were in print because they have multigenerational appeal. Since I have read the book when I was young, middle aged, and old, I can attest to that.

When I read Slaughterhouse-Five back in 1970, I thought the book was a protest. It was Vonnegut telling his readers that we need to change. And back then I thought humans could change. When I read it in 2006, I still had hope that humanity could evolve into something better. But in 2024, I didn’t find Vonnegut protesting at all. Vonnegut advised acceptance. Why didn’t I see that at 18?

Slaughterhouse-Five is neither an antiwar novel, nor even a misanthropic novel. In 2024 it seems obvious that Vonnegut was saying we have no choice but to accept the life we’re given, both as an individual and as a species.

Vonnegut was around 42 when Slaughterhouse-Five was published in 1969. How is it he now seems like a wise old man when I read it at 72 in 2024? Every time I read Slaughterhouse-Five I thought of Kurt Vonnegut as a modern-day Mark Twain. I was very into Twain when I was young, but I pictured him as a bitter old man from his later fiction and autobiography.

I wonder now if Vonnegut eventually turned bitter like Twain. Even though for the 2024 reading many scenes felt bitter, now that I write this, I’m not even sure that’s what Vonnegut intended. Could he have intended a total beatific point of view? I need to rewatch the 2021 documentary about Vonnegut called Unstuck in Time. And I need to read And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles J. Shields.

This time around I’ve been thinking more about the Tralfamadorians, the alien race who kidnaps Billy Pilgrim in a flying saucer and takes him to their home world where they exhibit him in a zoo. The Tralfamadorians don’t see time like we do. Existence is all of one piece.

These aliens are like Zen Masters. Vonnegut uses them as enlightened teachers. But then, he gives a rather pitiful assessment of science fiction with his portrayal of Kilgore Trout. However, in a later novel, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, where Kilgore Trout is again featured, its hero, Elliot Rosewater attends a science fiction convention and gives this speech.

Science fiction didn’t come across so positively in Slaughterhouse-Five. Kilgore Trout wrote dozens of books that never sell. He’s a surly old man who makes his living by managing paperboys. Billy Pilgrim finds Kilgore Trout’s books only by accident. One time he finds four of them in a porn bookstore used as window dressing.

Wikipedia has an illuminating entry on Kilgore Trout. It says Vonnegut based Kilgore on Theodore Sturgeon. I’ve always wanted to know more about Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon’s fiction suggests he’s both eccentric and beat.

There are certain writers that haunt me. I think Vonnegut is becoming one of the ghosts that I need to get to know a whole lot better. And I might need to give Catch-22 and M.A.S.H. another read too.

JWH

Could Different Actors Make a Mediocre Film Great?

by James Wallace Harris, 11/28/23

Billy Wilder has made many great movies, including seven films on the National Film Registry. So last night, when Susan and I started watching Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) we expected another hit. The show wasn’t a total dud, but it was one of the weirdest major motion pictures I’ve ever seen. It’s a sex comedy, and Wilder has a great reputation from two previous classic sex comedies, The Seven Year Itch (1955) and Some Like it Hot (1959). And if you think about it, Some Like It Hot is a very weird picture, but it worked despite its weirdness, and it gets more famous every year. Why hasn’t Kiss Me, Stupid? (Although, it might work with younger people for reasons I can’t fathom.)

There are many parallels between the careers of Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock. One is young people are getting into the films of both directors today. And two, both directors fizzled out in the 1960s after a long career. There are other parallels, but for now I feel disappointed for Kiss Me, Stupid in a similar way I felt let down by Hitchcock’s Marnie, another 1964 film. Both films had many elements I liked, but they weren’t easy to watch. Both were too long.

To me, Wilder was obviously trying to have another sex comedy hit like Some Like It Hot because he originally hoped it would star Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe. Both starred in that movie. Instead, he got Ray Walston and Kim Novak.

The story is about a piano teacher named Orville Spooner (Ray Walton) and gas station attendant Barney Millsap (Cliff Osmond) who dream of selling hit songs. They’ve composed 62 so far. So when Dino (Dean Martin) shows up at Barney’s gas station Barney quickly concocts a wild idea to get Dino to hear their songs. Barney sabotages Dino’s car and tells him he’ll have to stay over night. Dino asks where some action could be had, meaning where he could get laid. He tells both Barney and Orville that he gets terrible headaches if he doesn’t get sex once a day. Barney tells him to go to a dive called The Belly Button.

Dino then asks where’s a good place to stay and Barney says there isn’t any, but he should stay with Orville and his wife. When Barney gets the chance he tells Orville his plan. He wants Orville to get his wife out of the house, and they’d get a prostitute from The Belly Button to play Orville’s wife and seduce Dino. He’ll be so grateful for all their efforts he will sing one of their songs on his TV show.

Orville’s wife, Zelda, is played by Felicia Farr, who was Jack Lemmon’s wife at the time. The prostitute, Polly the Pistol is played by Kim Novak. And here’s one of the major problems of Kiss Me, Stupid. Even though Ray Walston does a good job playing Orville, the loser piano teacher, who is easily sent into rages of jealousy over his pretty wife, there’s no chemistry between him and Farr, or him and Novak. And Walston plays the role just how I imagined Jack Lemmon would have played it, he just doesn’t have the physical presence of Lemmon. Lemmon really would have been the perfect choice for the role or Orville.

Farr plays Zelda okay, but she doesn’t really charm us. I wondered if Zelda had been played by Shirley MacLaine, who had tremendous screen charm back then, could Kiss Me, Stupid have been another Billy Wilder classic. It makes you think about just how important the actor is in a hit, especially two actors in a romantic comedy. Lemmon and MacLaine had proven themselves in two other Wilder pictures, The Apartment (1960) and Irma la Douce (1963), although the second picture is no where near as good as the first. That shows that story counts for a lot too.

And since Kiss Me, Stupid becomes a three-way love story, the role of Polly the Pistol is also important. If Marilyn Monroe had lived, I don’t think she would have been right for the part. I thought Novak did a great job, and I think if she had the right onscreen chemistry with Jack Lemmon, it would have been perfect. Poor Ray Walston just wasn’t a romantic comedy lead. And even though he’s the main character, he only got third billing.

Dean Martin was fine playing himself, and his public persona that he uses in his acts fits the part, however, I always thought Martin was nicer than than the boozie character he created. And Martin never comes across as a horndog that the role needs. I wonder if Frank Sinatra or Bobby Darin wouldn’t have been better at acting the sex maniac. The part needed a big name singer who could act sleazy.

And last, I thought Barney should have been played by Jonathan Winters.

How much does on screen chemistry play in creating a hit movie? Watching Kiss Me, Stupid, it proves that it’s a great deal.

Kiss Me, Stupid was both stupid and boring in many places, but also oddly touching sometimes, and even funny in other places. We have to listen to a bunch of bad songs that are parodies of famous songs. They were funny sometimes, and painful at other times. The songs were written by Ira Gershwin pattern on George Gershwin’s melodies. They almost sound good, even the words, but it’s obvious they’re suppose to be bad too, even though they almost sound good.

Kiss Me, Stupid is available to watch for free on YouTube.

JWH

Remembering the Sixties in Two Bad Movies

by James Wallace Harris, 10/4/23

I’m always shocked by how much American society has changed since the 1960s when watching movies and television shows from that decade. I graduated high school in 1969.

I’m curious how people born after the 1960s picture it in their mind’s eye. I grew up in the 1960s and remember two versions of that decade. I mostly recall the pop culture 1960s that everyone learns about in history and from the media, but if I think about it, I remember another 1960s, one far more mundane, and quieter. The difference you might say between The Beach Boys in 1963, and The Beatles in 1969.

Over the last two nights, Susan and I watched two movies from the 1960s that reminded me of the less famous version of that decade: Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number (1966) and Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding (1967). Neither film was particularly good, but I found them both to be fascinating time capsules of that other 1960s.

Someone growing up in the 21st century would probably find both films stupid and even offensive. They would probably wonder where the smartphones, tablets, computers, and social media were, and why no one used certain now universal four-letter words routinely as adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. I’m sure they would think the acting stilted and why people fit into roles, especially gender roles. Those thinking a little deeper would wonder why all the famous 1960s pop culture was missing. But I think the thing that would standout the most, was the attitude both movies presented regarding sex. You’d think people living in the 1960s were Victorians.

Both Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number and Doctor, You’ve Got to Be Kidding were about sex, but neither showed actual nudity or anyone having sex. Doctor is about Sandra Dee getting pregnant and three boyfriends wanting to marry her. None of the three had had sex with her. And the only reason we know Sandra Dee had sex with her boss, George Hamilton, was because the movie showed fireworks.

Boy is about Bob Hope, a late middle-aged real estate agent getting accidently involved with sexy movie star Elke Sommer, but not really. Elke Sommer plays a French actress famous for making movies where she takes bubble baths. She really wants to do dramatic roles and free herself from tub casting. Ironically, we see her taking several foamed covered baths in this film. 1966 is before they started having nudity in films, but it tries hard to show as much of Elke Sommer as possible. Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number advocates good old fashion puritanical values while promoting itself with the allusion of sex.

I thought both films were accurate with the clothes, houses, furniture, and cars. The look of the other sixties does come across in these films. Even the lame jokes and goofy dialog gave off the right vibes for the times.

Both films were aimed at the silent majority but tried to appeal to the emerging youth culture. It’s strange how we see counterculture slowly take over Hollywood by watching old movies and television shows from the late 1960s and 1970s. Very few movies in the middle 1960s showed what was happening in the rock world, or counterculture. If they had rock music, it was generic instrumental shit. Hollywood lagged for several years recognizing the social impact of rock.

I remember seeing The Graduate in late 1967 and thinking how radical it was. The soundtrack used Simon and Garfunkel. That was tremendously exciting at the time because it felt like my generation was finally being recognized. However, seeing it recently was another shock. It wasn’t that radical at all, not how I remembered feeling it in December 1967. The Graduate was still much closer to that quiet version of the sixties than the infamous loud sixties. I see it now as a transitional film.

It wasn’t until 1969, with Midnight Cowboy and Easy Rider, that we began to see that notorious version of the 1960s. I remember how shocking both films were when I saw them at the theater. But by then, my personal sixties were closer to those films. But in 1966 and 1967, my life was still like the Bob Hope and Sandra Dee flicks.

Another way to look at it was Hollywood was censored for showing real life for many decades, and finally in the late 1960s changes in the laws allowed it to portray a more real America.

I’m not sure any film captures the times in which they were made. They all create a mythic view. But I need to think about that. Are there any films from the 1960s that come close to how I lived in that decade? Do you have a film, from any decade, that you feel represents something close to how you grew up? I was too young, but I do remember people like the characters in America Graffiti. Actually, I remember people like the Bob Hope and Sandra Dee characters too. Maybe it’s the characters and settings that feel more historical than plots.

JWH

Beatlemania in 2023

by James Wallace Harris

Yesterday, when our friend Leigh Ann came over to play our weekly game of Rummikub with Susan and me, and they started telling each other what they’d done this week, I felt rather mute. I feel I don’t talk as much as I used to, and that getting old has left me with less to say. But aging might not be the cause because some of my friends talk even more than they did when they were younger.

I thought I had a very exciting week but I couldn’t put it into words. I guess that’s why I blog, to find ways to put things into words. All I was able to say was I was going through a phase of Beatlemania. But that didn’t come close to meaning what I wanted to say. For someone observing me, I would look like I wasn’t doing much the last few weeks, sitting around doing nothing but thinking, watching TV, reading, or listening to music. But inside my head, things are hopping, at least to me, but here’s what I was thinking.

Why do we love the things we love? Why do we devote time to the activities we do and not other activities? Why do we remember some things and forget other things? For the past few weeks, I’ve been exclusively listening to albums by The Beatles every day and finding great enjoyment in their music. I was a fan of The Beatles back in the 1960s but never a fanatic. I can go decades without playing their albums, but three weeks ago I signed up for Apple Music and started streaming Beatles albums again, playing, two or three a day.

After I got hooked on Beatles music again I also started listening to a 44-hour biography of The Beatles, Tune In by Mark Lewisohn. That led me to ask: What are the best books on The Beatles? I found The Beatles and The Historians by Torkelson Weber. Finally, I also got hooked on watching documentaries about The Beatles too — YouTube is full of them. Beatlemania thrives online.

Why am I undergoing a Beatlemania phase in 2023? How can songs from five and six decades ago give me so much pleasure now? I’ve been thinking about that while I listening, and a number of reasons have come to mind.

#1 – Forgetting Our Hateful Times

Buddhists and Hindus teach that we should be here now. Now for me is retirement in an older middle-class suburb. I don’t have much to do other than maintain my declining health, coexist with my wife and two cats, and take care of an aging house and yard that needs more and more upkeep. I suppose I could find a kind of Eastern beatific bliss in just doing that, but my Western mind wants more. If I take in news about the larger world via television and the Internet, my reality is troubled by endless worries about things I have no control over but I can’t help but wish I could change. The most disturbing of these worries is how hate is taking over the world.

When I listen to The Beatles I escape all thoughts of that hate for a couple of hours. That’s quite pleasurable. This is also true when I watch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, All Creatures Great and Small, Downton Abbey, and other shows that let me forget the hate in the world. Reading old science fiction also works. These artistic works bring various kinds of beauty into my world.

One friend said that listening to music just triggers endorphins — that I’m just a dopamine junky. That might be where the rubber meets the road but it doesn’t explain where I’m going and why. This reminds me of “Fixing a Hole” by The Beatles, especially the lines:

I’m painting the room in a colorful way
And when my mind is wandering
There I will go

When I contemplate this I realize I’ve used these kinds of escapes my whole life to avoid aspects of reality I didn’t like. Knowing that made me realize that I can map events in my past along a timeline created by pop culture that is well documented by date and time.

#2 – I Love Reconstructing Memories

Looking back over a lifetime of avoiding reality is quite revealing. Wise people from history tell us the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Recreating what happened in my past through reconstructing memories is a form of examination.

The second reason why I’m remembering The Beatles is that I can use their career as an external timescale for measuring events in my own past. They are like tree rings or carbon dating. For example, I know what I was doing on the evenings of the 9th, 16th, and 23rd of February 1964, because that’s when The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. And those memories release other memories of that month to float up from my unconsciousness to my conscious mind. Because The Beatles were so often in the news I can use memories of those news events to recall what I was doing in my life between 1964 and 1970.

In this case, playing The Beatles albums over and over these past weeks reminded me of 1964. I now see something different that I didn’t realize then. I moved to South Carolina just days after the assassination of JFK. I was starting my third 7th-grade school in the Fall of 1963, moving into my 3rd house, I hadn’t yet made any friends, and my alcoholic parents had begun fighting. We were all mourning the president, and the beginning of 1964 was a very weird time nationally with the funeral and as LBJ took over.

Beatlemania hit in February of 1964 and it seemed like magic. My mood, and maybe even the mood of the country changed. At least it did for many of us kids. Even though South Carolina was the worst time for my parents I started having a good time, and living there became one of my favorite memories. If I think hard and dredge up other memories, I can dredge up other bad memories, but my sister Becky and I made friends, and we had a lot of fun that year. We played outside a lot. I hadn’t gotten addicted to science fiction yet, and I don’t remember watching much TV that year. What I remember is The Beatles and all the other music that came out in 1964. During the 1960s, AM radio, science fiction, and television produced most of my endorphins.

Looking back I remember the Sixties very fondly, but if I go to Wikipedia and read the history of the decade it was horrible. There were just as many hateful people back then as there are now. I realized that The Beatles were constantly in my awareness, releasing new singles and albums, and doing things that got them on TV and in the news. Listening to their music these weeks I realized that I hadn’t paid much attention to the lyrics back then, but I found their music upbeat and uplifting and knew that’s what they did for us back in the Sixties too.

#3 – Growing Up in the 1960s

While listening to all of The Beatles albums from Please Please Me to Abbey Road this week, I observed the Fab Four maturing as creative artists and I recalled parallels in my own growing maturity. The kid who rocked out to “I Want To Hold Your Hand” was also watching My Favorite Martian. I wasn’t very mature, and neither were The Beatles’ songs. Most of their early tunes were about teen love, but then most of the songs on AM Top 40 in 1964 were also about teen love. I turned 13 in late 1964, so that was a preoccupation of my own mind.

The Beatles were never protest singers like early Dylan and a lot of American rock and roll bands. Although, John Lennon did go heavily in that direction after leaving The Beatles. Their song “Revolution” was a kind of protest song put down. This week I was surprised by how quickly their songs changed to topics other than love, and when they were about love, they left teenage life behind and were about work and relationships of people in their twenties.

Young people often enjoy works of fiction where the protagonists are slightly older than themselves. The Beatles and Bob Dylan were about a decade older than I was. They were not Baby Boomers. They were digesting experiences ahead of me and their music was a kind of guide to aging for my teenage self.

As I play the music from 1962 to 1969 now, I can recall how I grew and the music grew. The Beatles were only #1 with me in 1964 and part of 1965, because in July 1965 Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” hit the charts, and he took over the #1 spot. Eventually, The Byrds pushed The Beatles down to #3, and then Simon and Garfunkel pushed them to #4, and then Jefferson Airplane and a zillion other bands vied to be my favorites. Each artist had their own philosophical insight into the decade.

The third reason why I’m remembering The Beatles is to recall the growth of my maturity as a person. It’s understandable that my 12-year-old self would respond to “I Want To Hold Your Hand” in early 1964 but my 13-year-old self would much prefer “I’m A Loser” in 1965 or my 16-year-old self would resonate with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” in 1968. But this is harder to understand and requires remembering the other music I loved during those years. The Beatles evolved as creative artists from year to year, and so did all other creators of popular music, as did all of their fans.

What’s interesting now is when I watch TV shows I loved back in 1964-65, like Gilligan’s Island or The Beverly Hillbillies, I internally cringe to think I was once so simple-minded to enjoy them. But I don’t cringe at hearing the early simple songs of The Beatles. I should cringe when I hear “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” but I don’t. Why?

#4 – What If Things Had Been Different?

The fourth reason why I’m remembering The Beatles is that I’m trying to reconstruct possible alternative personal histories of the 1960s. Our formative years are always shaped by the times in which we grow up. Nearly everyone is programmed for life by external influences when they are young. How would I have been different if I had imprinted on Bob Dylan in 1964 rather than The Beatles? Or Miles Davis? Or Beethoven? Pop culture does a number on us, in essence, it’s a kind of brainwashing. Think about how the political right is up in arms over the Woke culture of today and how they don’t want it to shape their children. If you remember the generation gap, you’ll remember how there was some generational resistance against the pop culture of the 1960s too.

The fourth reason why I’m remembering The Beatles is harder to explain, but I’ll give you a thought experiment. What if I could reincarnate in my 12-year-old body but with my present mind, how would I relive 1964-1969? Sure, I still love listening to The Beatles today, but isn’t that conditioning and nostalgia? If I was back in 1964 with my 71-year-old mind, I’m not sure a song titled “I Want To Hold Your Hand” would be that appealing. Even if I was in a 12-year-old body, I wouldn’t want to live through being a teenager again. Then why am I doing it now? Reviewing the past now gives me a chance to think about what else might have been interesting about the Sixties. This makes me wonder why I wasn’t more mature back then.

And the truth is I was interested in all kinds of other things but I’ve mostly forgotten them. Remembering The Beatles is a way to try and remember those other things. We can call this the fifth reason. Of course, there were other songs and musicians, but there was so much more. We remember the past through the highlights that have stayed with us or our collective history. But what were the mundane things I was doing just before or just after playing The Beatles?

I can vividly remember a time I was listening to “Hey Jude.” I had just gotten off work at the Kwik Chek in Coconut Grove, Florida, where I was a stocker. I was sixteen and had worked my way up from bagboy to stocker. I had just spent six hours after school shelving the canned foods on the vegetable aisle. I was driving home from work in an old 1958 Mercury at ten o’clock at night. I had the windows down. I was hot and dirty, drinking a 16-ounce bottle of ice-cold Coke and it tasted great. “Hey Jude” came on, and it sounded better than any time I had heard it before or probably since. It was my favorite song on the radio at that time. I was driving along Old Cutler Road, which wasn’t lit with lampposts, and the dark was eerie and surreal driving under old mangrove trees near Matheson Hammock while listening to “Hey Jude” turned all the way up.

#5 – History

I guess the fifth reason why I’m remembering The Beatles is their history is so fascinating that I just want to know more about them. There are certain subjects that fascinate me that make me want to become an amateur historian or biographer. I never stick to these subjects long, but I always come back to them. These topics are like million-piece jigsaw puzzles I work on from time to time.

I love reading books and watching documentaries about my favorite subjects. I love going deeper and deeper into a topic. It’s both psychologically and philosophically rewarding. The depth of detail and research in Tune In is remarkable. But also reading The Beatles and the Historians is teaching me a tremendous amount about understanding memory and analysis of the past. It teaches me a bit about being a historian. If you want to know more about this book I highly recommend watching this YouTube review.

We all delude ourselves. We all have faulty memories. We should never trust our own opinions. Studying how historians evaluate the data they collect is applicable to studying how we perceive the world. And reading an in-depth biography like Tune In helps me mentally construct my own biography in more greater detail.

#6 – It’s Not Nostalgia

I’ve always looked backward. And sometimes I do have a longing to return to the past. But I also know that the past had more bad things that I’ve forgotten than good things that I remember. One thing I’ve noticed while playing these Beatles albums over and over is how little I recall them. I’ve been able to recall enough memories about how I reacted to The Beatles in the 1960s to remember that I didn’t play their albums that much, and I mostly heard their tunes on the radio. I bought the albums, and some of the singles, but I didn’t play them over and over again like I did Bob Dylan or The Byrds.

And I have gone through smaller bouts of Beatlemania over the decades. The first time was when their albums came out on CDs and I bought them again. Then bought them a third time when those CDs were remastered. During those periods I also read about The Beatles and watched documentaries that summed up their career. Each time playing their music from the past meant more to what I was doing in the now. I wasn’t just reliving the past. Their music has a weird kind of lasting power.

#7 – Self Revelation

I don’t believe in an afterlife. Until I’m proven wrong I assume this life is all we get. And it troubles me that we forget so much about our one life. We forget due to inattention. Nor do we pay attention to what makes us who we are. Quite often we chase illusions rather than face up to reality. We exist by reacting impulsively to a never-ending parade of random events. I’ve become obsessed with figuring out who I am by remembering what I did in the past and why. I use the lessons of memory to trigger revelations about myself with the final goal of knowing who I am today.

Strangely enough, I’m finding such revelations in The Beatles. Why am I playing them now after ignoring them for years, or even decades? Lately, I can play Beatles albums for one to two hours and find a kind of bliss.

While I’m strung out on the endorphins The Beatles music pumps into me, my mind is racing with thoughts. Memories and connections burble up out of my unconscious mind. I might look like I’m doing nothing, but it feels like I’m more active than when I’m running around doing something very physical.

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