7 February

On this date, 60 years ago, The Beatles showed up in America.

They landed on a Boeing 707 at JFK Airport. I was ten years old at the time. I never heard of the Beatles. I don’t think I was clued into Pop music all that much. Was I? I’m trying to remember. I liked the song Big Girls Don’t Cry by the Four Seasons. And Surf’n U.S.A. by The Beach Boys. I liked the Four Seasons cuz they sang falsetto and The Beach Boys cuz they sounded cool. Now I’m remembering The Supremes…with Diana Ross. And all the Motown groups. But especially The Supremes. They had one hit song after another. I’m remembering now! I’m remembering! I was a huge Diana Ross and the Supremes fan! I loved the Supremes! A ten year old kid, grooving on the Supremes. I didn’t own any of their records. I didn’t own any records. I heard Baby Love on the jukebox at the Chinese Restaurant where my buddy Anthony’s mother worked. And I’d hear them on the Radio. These were the new sounds. Elvis Presley was making movies. My Grandmother dragged me to those.

So you had all this Pop Music and much more going on when these British guys showed up–and suddenly everything was about them.

7th February 1964. Exactly 60 years ago. That was the day they showed up. A couple days later we watched them on the Ed Sullivan Show. We thought they were funny. My mother liked them. She even went out and bought us Beatle hats.

My Mother liked the Beatles. This middle-aged southern lady who listened to country music. She really liked the Beatles. Everybody liked the Beatles. Infants still crawling and goo gooing liked the Beatles. A little later the Rolling Stones showed up. Not as many people liked the Rolling Stones. They were kinda nasty and even repellant to some people. You had to be a little Nasty yourself to dig the Rolling Stones. Nowadays the whole country is nasty and repellant, which is a good thing in my opinion. The Rolling Stones are still around and pretty much everybody digs them now. But back in 1964 only The Beatles enjoyed Universal Appeal. It wasn’t until John Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus that The Fab Four suffered a decline in popularity. But it was just a itty bitty decline and they bounced right back with some great songs, including Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band.

People could never get enough of the Beatles.

Until they quit….

Old Timey Shit

I gotta tell you, I’m not into all this old timey shit. I’m an old dude now. 70. That’s right, I’m seventy years old. Don’t let anybody tell you seventy is not old. Like people that say 70 is the new 50. People tell that kind of shit they’re holding onto youth by the fingernails. What’s the point of dreaming about the good old days? I mean, how good were the good old days?

They were not that good.

It was 22 November of 1963, not three months before The Beatles showed up, that President Kennedy was assassinated. A demented dude picked him off with a military carbine he purchased by mail order. It was that easy!

Put in a order. They send you a carbine.

Lee Harvey Oswald bought the rifle by mail order and used the rifle to shoot the president in the head. I remember that day. I was Ten years old at the time but I remember it well. I remember a few days later watching Lee Harvey Oswald himself being assassinated, while in custody, by this guy Jack Ruby. I watched the whole thing go down on television…

So the Good Old Days were not all that good.

Why do so many people like to look back with fondness? Makes no sense. Maybe the good old days were good for so many people because we were all so young.

I don’t remember being a happy Ten Year Old. My Mom and us kids, we lived like refugees. I ran the streets like a wild animal. I was just waiting around to become an organized criminal. I missed out on that score. IF I had a gang to join I would’ve joined it. But I was left to freelance. Shoplifting mostly. At one point I had a cardboard box filled with around a hundred cartons of cigarettes I’d amassed by shoplifting the local grocery stores. Another box was filled with stacks of comic books I stole from various drug and liquor stores. I secreted the cardboard boxes under the house. I didn’t even smoke all that much, maybe a couple three ciggies a day. Shit. Those ciggie cartons might’ve lasted for years. I only stole stuff because I liked stealing. So why’d I stop? I stopped shoplifting after I buried that kid alive and was jailed. Maybe if the kid had smothered to death like I intended him to do, I would’ve been sent to the CYA Prison on a murder rap, kept there until I turned 22, and with careful tutelage by my fellow thugs, emerged a focused Criminal with a lucrative life of crime ahead of me. Instead, I was sent to live with my Aunt Hazel. And she somehow convinced me to go straight. I was eleven years old. And from that year forward I stumbled along the straight and narrow path, getting pretty much nowhere, despite college degrees, legitimate jobs, failed marriages, keeping my nose clean, or at least not cutting it off to spite my face, until I stand before you today…an old dude with a sour disposition and no criminal record to speak of…

So what’s it all about, looking back?

Maybe it’s a way of trying to figure out what we are. Or, maybe it’s just part of our make-up. We’ve got these huge brains that operate almost as good as A.I.. And we’re stuck with them. We’re stuck THINKING about shit. Thinking all the time. Every minute of every day, thinking. Thinking about the good old days. No matter how hard we try, we can’t stop thinking. And thinking back, back to when we were young, back when we could think even faster than today. Faster. More nimbly. Thinking our beautiful thoughts! Thoughts of youth! Yearning for goodness! That’s it! That has to be it! We look back in a kind of search for goodness! We want to be good. Good like…

The Beatles!

I’m no different than the rest of you in this respect. True, I’m not into all this Old Timey Shit. Yet I do look back. I can’t help it. I’m stuck looking back often as a result of these milestone dates. Like, say, november 22, 1963. A real bad date to look back on. But then there’s good dates. Good dates to remember. If you gotta look back on a date…an Old Timey Date…a date from your long ago past, well, I guess February 7, 1964 is a good date to remember. It was the day the Beatles showed up. And what they brought with them was simple.

They brought Joy.

Because everybody loves the Beatles…

As for me, I’m a big fan of The Supremes.