My eleven year-old daughter wanted a turntable for Christmas

My eleven year-old daughter wanted a turntable for Christmas. I am not sure what inspired this desire. I haven't owned a working record player for years before she was born. With the death of Tower Records I even stopped buying CDs and stepped fully into the iPod age acquiring nearly all new music in the form of digital downloads from the iTunes store. While I wasn't spinning records, we were listening to an extensive musical library. As a kid I was #5 of 6 kids and I was introduced to the Beatles and the British Invasion through my oldest sister who graduated from high school in '71. My brother who graduated in '73 added Bread, Grand Funk Railroad, and Neil Young to the family library. My sister Karen, graduated in the Bicentennial and brought home Donna Summer, Elton John and the Eagles. By  '79 when my brother David graduated, there was seriously uncertainty whether disco actually sucked or not. He brought home Boston, Van Halen and The Knack, but still had an Angel Flight suit and a set of custom disco roller skates for date nights. I caught the crest of the New Wave when I graduated in 1981, and counted down with my friends to the day MTV was added to our cable line up. My record collection reflects the influence of early MTV.  My younger sister picked up the guitar along with James Taylor, and a lot of country music.  As a result of being the youngest of I was exposed to nearly over two decades of pop culture and when I left home, I somehow ended up with most of the vinyl that accumulated during that time. Over the years my kids had heard many of these songs on the computer and iPod, but never a record. But the albums were still tightly packed in clear plastic boxes in the garage.

After several inquiries, I determined that my daughter's desire for a turntable was genuine. Luckily I found one at Target , of all places, which in addition to 33,45 and 75 rpm records also played cassettes, CDs, and iPods.  On Christmas morning, as the last gift of the day, my youngest daughter opened up the turntable. I brought in the old LPs from the garage, and on Christmas day, to my surprise all of the kids spent hours playing The Beatles, The Cars, Blondie, Barb Marley, the Carpenters, The Cars, Nat King Cole and a Time-Life collection of Christmas albums featuring Barbara Streisand, Burl Ives, Andy Williams nabbed from my in-laws dust bin.

Around New Years an older friend asked my youngest what she did for Christmas. She said she had spent the day listening to a bunch of old records. "You mean songs, don't you? Do you even know what a record is? She assured him that she had been referring to vinyl albums and how she had been looking at the cover of record albums like St. Pepper and The B-52s. It was a sweet moment that made me smile, as I filed it away as a "keeper". It was great to have something to share with my children from my life and post that they enjoyed and appreciated. Music is a cultural touchstone, which thanks to iPods, CDs, radios, and now records we share in common. An unexpected twist: on New Years Day we put away the Christmas decorations and cleaned out the garage (again). This year, instead of being asked to get rid of my albums which in the past were guilty of taking up valuable storage space in the garage, I actually heard my wife say something to the kids about needing to get a suitable piece of furniture for the new turntable that would hold the record albums too.