my parents' collection of records has been sitting on a low shelf in our spare room. this week as we were moving things around, we set them aside with similar questions. our old record player, which didn't work anyway, was given away long ago. should we bother keeping these ancient relics?
today I went through them, looking for something. something just as mysterious as the scraps of writing I've been finding in my boxes, perhaps. but there are no fabulous, colorful albums of any long-lost musical group. there's not any new hints at my parents' former lives as teenagers and college students. for all I could tell, they were the same back then. it's only the fashion that's changed.most of the large square covers proclaimed the contents to be recordings of my mum's high school and university band concerts. there was a bit of classical stuff, a bit of religious music, one Carpenter's album and one John Denver.
if I had to choose two musicians to represent my mother and my father and all I know about their sense of style, I could look no further than Karen Carpenter and John Denver. the voices of these two artists will be forever familiar to me. with the memory of my mother singing along mixed in.
oddly enough, I have learned to appreciate John Denver and do enjoy some of his music, but I have yet to acquire a liking of anything the Carpenters sang. perhaps that's because Karen Carpenter died the February before I was born, while John Denver was around for fifteen years more. perhaps I simply take after my dad here. I don't really know.
anyway, though this stack of old records may or may not be junk, I imagine we'll keep them lying around. I'm okay with that. so what if we can't play them? so what if they just sit there? they will be a tribute to things my parents were and are and did and liked. a useless sort of tribute, I suppose, but a tribute nonetheless. maybe some day we'll buy another record player.
photo borrowed off flickr. cheers
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