Hi guys, sorry for the long absence but this past couple of weeks have been among the most intense of my life! Settling in here in Hong Kong has been tougher than I expected and I think 3 (long) blog posts wouldn't be enough to tell you all about it, so I'll just sum it up for you and try to get back to a more regular posting in the near future (Internet connection availability permitting). First of all, it's been great that my aunt came here with me during my first few days, it's been good to have some help and support, as things haven't been as smooth as the other times I've been abroad. Loads of things to do, documents to process and vicious circles of documents needed to do this and that, but I am slowly getting it ok. The house I had found before coming here is not the best, the living conditions are not something I can put up with for more than a temporary amount of time, so we had to look for an alternative (and more expensive) solution, which I - thanks goodness - found. We then had to go and buy the furniture for it and I will have to look for a flatmate, but first of all I still have to settle in, so for the next few days I'm still staying in the room I had previously found. Hong Kong itself hasn't been nice with us in the first few days: a lot of gray, a lot of rain, a lot of oppressive environments... then little by little we have found sweeter spots and the weather has also improved, showing us a nicer side of the city! The university seems nice: the campus is super cool, people give me the impression of being nice and helpful, even if it's not gonna be a piece of cake to get everything done, starting with the logistical point of view and going on with the academic one. Simply put, it's gonna take a lotta love (or we won't get too far)! I'll be back with more updates soon, I hope you have enjoyed your summer holidays and are ready to get back on track! I think I am!
I guess a lot of you guys are on holiday or are about to go, so I can take this excuse for my poor posting constancy of these last weeks, claiming that I am on holiday too and that you surely have better things to do than stay here and read my blabbering. Here I am now anyway, sharing with you a song that has been stuck on my mind in the very last few days! I know I'm posting a lot of Neil Young (and Zayn) lately, but I guess it pretty much sums up what music has been the soundtrack of my summer 2016 so far! Hope you can enjoy it too!
One of the songs I expected Neil Young (and his current band) to play during his Milan concert was this great tune featured on his sophomore solo album (the first one he made in partnership with Crazy Horse to be precise). Unfortunately the tune was not on the final setlist, but I was still amazed to see them play 4 or 5 longer songs (each one between 7 and 10 minutes long) straight in the second half of the set. Unfortunately for me, most of them were from more recent albums that I hadn't got the chance to listen to yet, but I can't complain too much about the setlist, the first half has been amazing!
Hello my dears, sorry for being away once again, I am trying to enjoy my summer time at best and I've been having some trouble accessing the Internet at home too (and not only that, also Pokemon GO has been a big deal of trouble, but more on that some other time). Today I came to Padua to visit my dear wife and we took a trip to the sea (if you can call it that). Last night I've been to Neil Young (+ Promise of the Real) concert in Milan and I've enjoyed it quite a bit, it's been 3 hours straight of music and it felt like he was 26 years old and I was the one in his 70s, not the opposite! The band came back for an encore and quite surprisingly they played this song, which I've been having on my mind for quite a while for no reason (call it destiny or coincidence), so I'm sharing it with you now!
Today we have gone to Saadiyat beach, a "trip" organized by our hotel (they take you there with a car, you get access and sun-beds and so on and they come pick you up). We didn't do much, just roast in the sun, venture in the not-so-warm waters a couple times with mixed success and read and listen to some music (including this song, that stuck in my head at one point). Plain and simple. Now I'm red like a pepper, but everything's under control (I hope). Still no plans about tomorrow, gonna keep enjoying our time here at our own (slow) pace! Cheers!
Hey guys, sorry for not posting anything new yesterday, but the day has been quite full and it ended with a 3-hour movie that ended very late, plus I was too emotionally involved with it and with the song that made me watch it that I couldn't find the strength inside of me to write about something else. The movie is 'Blue is the warmest colour' and I think it's worth all the time spent watching it, I really liked it, especially how the director has been able to make the characters' feelings pass through the camera and the screen and get to the viewer. The song that made me know the film is Alt-J's 'Nara', a beautiful masterpiece that I've been able to appreciate more and more last year to the point that it has probably become my favourite song of theirs. I've been listening to a lot of Alt-J today, but I'm posting something else because... of no reason in particular.
I am finally starting to get towards the middle of Neil Young's discography and listening to his (first?) collection 'Decade' I found a few songs I really like, this being one of them!
Tonight I went ice-skating for the first time in years, I already wanted to and when one of my friends asked if I wanted to join her, I happily accepted! Once again I scored a nice 0 in the chart of falls and I did quite ok, given my really bad relationship with sports! I'm genuinely helpless in many other physical activities, even if in the last few years, thanks to the Wii Fit and to my going back swimming once a week, I got somehow better! Not to the point where I could say I'm an athlete or even athletic. Not even close. Not gonna happen, I think. Not anytime soon! Yes Neil, stop saying that, I know I'm helpless!!!
I'm so sleepy I'd go to bed straight away, but I'm forcing myself to fulfill my blogger duties, especially because I had already decided to post this song sooner today. I don't know why I went to listen to Neil Young today, probably it was after I watched a video of some younger artists covering his songs at an event called Neilfest or something like this... anyway here I am, sharing one of my favourite songs of his right out of his debut album which came out in 1968 (my mother was 8 years old at the time!!). I've been waiting for you, and you've been coming to me...!!
I must confess that going through the discography of some artists is a pretty long and not-always-so-enjoyable task, especially when these artists have released tens of albums and have been making the history of last century's music (with some of them), but also been trying different things or anyway been producing stuff that won't be remembered, or that anyway doesn't fit the musical taste of a millennial like me. Nonetheless a few good songs are always to be found here and there, and this is exactly the example of what I've just been writing about, so in case you want to know Neil Young better but don't know where to start, here is a good point!
My training course is going on, it's very hard for me to be awake because I'm totally not used to waking up early in the morning, and before and after lunch it really kills me, I wish I had a bed to take a nap on... but I'm still getting the best I can out of it, and a few useful things are coming out of it for sure! In a moment of (fb) distraction I noticed a news reporting that Jimmy Fallon performed this song in his show dressed like Neil Young together with the real Neil Young, so I went to watch it as soon as I got to my hotel room and my computer and... it's just amazing! I'm linking you here the original version of the song and also this awesome performance, you have to check it out!!
After Lorde yesterday, it's time for me to get back and post a few other good songs from my recent playlists that went a little bit unnoticed but are nonetheless worthy of posting. Today I'm devoting a little space of one of the bigs of last century's (and also current) music history, i.e. Mr. Neil Young. I'm slowly going through his discography and I must confess that the last albums I've been listening to did not excite me as much as some of the very first did, but I'm confident I will find more great stuff soon! Yet it would be unfair to say that none of the last things I've been checking out didn't leave any mark: this is one of these songs that are not "loud" but that one tends to go back and listen with pleasure every time, so here it stands as a representative for Neil Young's mid-70s repertoire!
I'll start off this post by stating that this is not the song I meant to post for today, it has not been until like 2 minutes ago. It's not something new anyway. I was planning to start posting the first highlights out of the new shift of stuff I'm listening to, but well... I decided not to. Funny thing, one of Neil Young's albums is part of this new shift, ok it's the last thing I've started listening to and I haven't familiarized with any songs yet, anyway... I was watching a series of short movies and the last one I've seen (Lucky Blue) was about a kind of romance growing between two teenagers in the context of a touring karaoke act. In a very romantic open air environment, with the stage filled with light bulbs and couples dancing together, one of the two guys start singing that song that goes "Words don't come easy to me...", I love you but this is the only way I'm able to tell you and so on like this. I'm not posting that one, yet it made me think of another "Words" song, which is the exact reason why I'm posting this now!
In this stormy thursday I'm starting to post a song outside from my playlist. Last night, after a weird day, I was having a bit of a sad moment and I went back to listen to some of my best songs of last year's playlists and I got (Neil Young's original version of) the song after a couple of others and it made perfect sense, especially regarding the thoughts that were crossing my mind.
Don't let it bring you down, it's only castles burning,
Just find someone who's turning and you will come around.
It made so much sense that I decided already I would post it and here it is! This morning I started listening to it again and then I reverted to Annie Lennox's cover and I ended up listening to her whole album Medusa. Thus I didn't know which version to post and, well... I'm posting them both! Choose the one you prefer or, even better, listen to them both!
The weekend and blogging don't go well together, I always end up having little or no time to write a decent post! Anyway, I'll just pick a great song that doesn't need any comment: an instrumental one, the opening track of Neil Young's debut self-titled album. 'Cos on saturday we all feel the emperors of Wyoming, don't we? (Well, ok, maybe not...!)
I've been pretty doubtful today about which song to post, there are a few that fit but no one of them is screaming to be posted. So to be coherent with this, I will just post a song that has not been screaming to me but that I kind of grew a liking for. Actually this happened with the whole album this song belongs to. I've been listening to it lately in my path throughout Neil Young's discography and I must say it's the one that stroke me the least, not that I like it less than all the others, it's just that no song on it stuck in my mind. This is probably the one that struck me the most among them, especially due to my passion for Aztecs and pre-Colombian history, but being quite long it is kind of not-so-catchy. Anyway, it seemed fair to me to give at least a little room to this album on here, so here we are!
Hey guys! First day of work today, it's getting pretty busy, then I went grocery shopping on my way home, had dinner and got out for a drink right after! Little time to post for me, and little chances to get to listen to some good music today...! I'll have to pick another one of my songs from the new January playlists: this one is coming out of Neil Young's "Tonight's the night album", I think I already posted another song out of it a few days ago. This is Albuquerque, enjoy and have a good night!
I think we are finally all the way into the new year, so it's time to start with posts about what's happening now to my music world! I have started my way through Neil Young's discography a few months ago, I am now listening to his eight album, Tonight's the night (and I'm just close to getting a quarter of the job done, you can imagine how many albums he released!). I must confess I'm really enjoying this one, it's probably gonna be among the top three of what I've listened to up to now. The title track is divided in two parts, one is the opening track and the second one is the closing. Even though I prefer part II, I could only find the opening one on Youtube; they're anyway pretty similar to each other, so no big deal!
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