Category: music

Solo Piano

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A compilation of Solo Piano pieces by Ludovico Einaudi. Available to stream, buy on CD(!), several different types of vinyl, or even as sheet music. 17 tracks that between them have amassed well over a billion listens on Spotify alone.

And, given that he’s written a lot more than 17 tracks – a video with a bit of detail telling us how and why he chose the music that he did for this album.

Mmm. WordPress still not quite up to speed with sizing Youtube Shorts.

Anyway, it looks like a stress free weekend now that I have 77 minutes of Einaudi to keep me company.

The more you ignore me

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It’s been a while since I put some music up on here. And this one is nothing new. Just an earworm I picked up and I can’t get rid of. And the more I ignore it… well… you know.

Incidentally, I think I picked this up from the Amy Lamé Superfans show, which is a great listen if you know how.

The Smiths (yes, I know, I know) episode featured one woman who gave up her job to attend all of the dates on their 1986 British tour. Next level stuff, and certainly fulfilling the name of the show.

Whatever next – flying 23,000km for a concert at the other end of the planet?

My carbon footprint never looked so good.

This could be amazing.

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Or…

Look, let me preface this by saying that I won’t be going along to this anyway. But as a 90s raver and a long(ish)-time resident of Oxford, I might give it a go if I was still there.

Because it could be amazing.

The words “Tribute to” could be doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here. But they seem to have lined the best tribute acts up for the four weekend shows this summer, and if it wasn’t terrible, and if you were in the right frame of mind for some potentially iffy music and some fun, AND you had nothing else on that weekend – well, I’d probably give it a go.

I mean, how bad could it be? OK. It could be very bad.

But equally, it could be amazing.

Kevin and Perry is a bit of an odd inclusion, as is “Special Guest – Gladiators Jet”:

Jet from Gladiators to host a millennium barn dance at Yeovil Aerodrome.
Properly policed. It must not, repeat, not turn into an all-night rave.

IYKYK.

Jet will be 56 years old when this event happens. It’s 30 years since her run on Gladiators ended. That’s over half her life. She’s a fully-qualified pyschotherapist now. It won’t be the same.

But the whole thing? Overall? It could be amazing.

Get a few friends together. £40 gets you 18 hours of entertainment with full weekend access, and… well… it could be amazing.

New Phone – who dis?

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I was lucky enough to get a new phone for Christmas. It’s sleeker, faster and – most significantly – has a much better camera than my trusted old Poco F3, which lasted a whole 4 years.

The only issue with the new sparkly phone is its smaller memory size. I could have got one with a larger memory size, but that would have added a whole 50% to the price of the device.

So rather than throwing money away, I decided to use this as a downsizing, streamlining opportunity.

I use a lot of apps. But a lot of the lot, I don’t use very often. And so – and yes, it’s a work in progress – I have chosen not to load a lot of those occasionally used apps onto the new phone.

It’s actually rather liberating. Goodbye, UberEats. Goodbye, DJI Go 4 and Marine Traffic.

And several (or more) others.

And goodbye heaps of unnecessary music on my music streaming app. I’ve been unknowingly hoarding. And why? I’ll keep a couple of playlists, and I’ll ditch downloading the rest. I can always choose to grab the odd album on mobile data, and we all spend a lot of time in and around WiFi these days.

I’ll manage.

So this phone (and by extrapolation, probably my whole life going forward), will be faster, sleeker, speedier and just better than previously. Happy days.

Driving home

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I prewrote a post for today. I prewrote it at about lunchtime on Monday 22nd.

I… er… I won’t be continuing with that post now, because about an hour after I hit the SCHEDULE button, this sad news broke.

British singer Chris Rea, known for hits including the Yuletide classic ‘Driving Home For Christmas’, has died after a short illness… three days before Christmas.
British rock and blues singer-songwriter Chris Rea, known for songs including perennial Yuletide favourite ‘Driving Home For Christmas’ and the hit ‘The Road To Hell’, has died at the age of 74.

I thought that the spoof news article I’d linked to originally was actually rather funny. Having seen Chris Rea on a TV programmes and doing a few interviews, I think he’d have liked it too.

But wow. I’ve always said that I might miss something important or put my foot in it when scheduling posts while I’m away.

This was nearly a huge faux pas.

Good job I managed to spot it before it had got too far.