A Musical Butterfly Effect

This week’s Bright Antenna yoga class fell on my dad’s birthday, and as a tribute to his 66 years on the planet, I give you a collection of songs he loves, songs he played incessantly in the car throughout my childhood, and still plays to this day. This is also a nod of thanks to him for nurturing my love of music in his own unique way. That is, very soon after my older sister and I learned to walk, we learned to work our dad’s old record player, and we spent every second we could listening to his collection of 45s—he owned hundreds of them, and for a long time these were the only records we had.

Our musical tastes eventually grew beyond rock oldies of the 50s and 60s, however, and when they did, Dad began stopping at the local record store on his way home from work every so often to buy us each an album. He didn’t know anything about the current popular music so he would simply pick random records from the display.

One week he brought me Debbie Boone’s You Light Up My Life. The next week Blondie’s Parallel Lines. Not long after that, I got Pink Floyd’s The Wall and my sister got Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall. I loved every single record that he put in my hands—loved the cellophane-wrapped packaging, the artwork splayed across the cover, the liner notes and lyrics, which my sister and I often memorized. And given my ongoing love affair with music, and my current job running an indie record label, I have no doubt that this small, thoughtful gesture on my dad’s part had a disproportionately large influence on my life’s path. A musical butterfly effect, if you will, for which I’m eternally grateful.

Dad, today we hold plank for two minutes in honor of you, which will be 10 seconds longer than “He’s So Fine,” The Chiffons #1 hit in 1963.

Namaste.

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Follow Bright Antenna Records on Facebook and Twitter to receive a heads up when each week’s playlist hits elephant journal. For more of our yoga playlists, including Bowie Yoga, Grunge Yoga and Disco Yoga, visit Bright Antenna’s Spotify page.

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Editor: Kate Bartolotta

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