Memorization

One of the things I continue to be told is that I have to memorize my music. I have always struggled with that. I have put in untold hours to memorize chords and lyrics for a one hour show, only to start forgetting them a few short weeks after the run finished. But in order for me to really be successful as a dueling pianist, I need to memorize hundreds of songs. It has always amazed me at the sheer breadth of material these guys know without any music or lyrics to remind them. So I began hunting for help with memory training. I found this one school called The School of Phenomenal Memory (PMemory.com) that makes all sorts of fantastic claims, but it somehow involves learning an alpha-numeric code, that you need to really integrate into your mind in order to quickly access it, sort of like learning shorthand, and only after you master this code, can you utilize it to help with the memorization process. I don't have a problem going through all that work, if I can be assured that it is a legitimate system, but I couldn't find any truly independent reviews or analysis of this School or method, but I did find that they had a couple of unresolved complaints with the BBB. And I gathered from those complaints that their "No Time Limit, No Questions Asked Money-back Guarantee" did indeed have Questions Asked, and apparently not answered satisfactorily. Moving along, I did, however find a cool website called www.memory-key.com which has a lot of different articles and resources for cognitive strategies and memory improvement. Now back my practicing. Was it Leroy Brown that learned a lesson 'bout messin' with the wife of a jealous man, or was it simply Leroy that learned the lesson 'bout messin'? I can't remember. Dammit!