Home Cd player Guest Column: Tales from the Library | Opinion

Guest Column: Tales from the Library | Opinion

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Numerous studies prove that listening to music not only lifts your spirits, but can also lower your blood pressure and basically make you happier. And who doesn’t want to be a happier person? And yet, one of the most neglected areas of our library is CD-recorded music. I grew up with home music playing constantly on my dad’s gigantic stereo console. They made things HUGE at the time. This stereo was gigantic…at least four feet high, three feet deep, and six feet long! The cabinet was mahogany and took up a good portion of one of the walls in our living room. You can slide an open door on top to reveal the turntable where you placed the vinyl records. The front of the console contained the speakers and storage area for approximately 75 albums. While my dad favored jazzy music like Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, my mom’s interest drifted into crooners like Paul Anka, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and his favourite, Vic Damone.

I had four older brothers who bought all the Beatles records, so I inherited my love for the “fab four” from them. Because of the importance of music in my family, it was only natural that I save on my pocket money and also buy my own albums. The first vinyl I bought was the Mary Poppins soundtrack, with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke. But my interests ‘matured’ from there to pop group The Monkees… then I took a detour and bought Tiny Tim’s debut album with Tiptoe Through the Tulips. I spent a lot of my youth making mixes of my favorite songs…and if you’re from that era, you know there’s nothing like a mix to make you happy.