I’m from Vietnam, the South – Saigon. I’ve been a Neil Young fan since at least August 2016; well, though I had heard some of his songs (Cinnamon Girl, Cowgirl in the Sand or Heart of Gold) back in December 2010 – early 2011, and continued on doing so, now I’m happy to recall some good memories of mine being his fan, in a place where only a few people would have a bit of knowledge of what genre would be for Neil Young’s music.
Whenever I play some of my all-time-top-favorite NY songs at one of my random gigs, “Lotta Love” or other deep cuts, i.e. “The Great Divide” and “Music Arcade” – people would come up to me, mostly younger generation of kids – born at least late 1990s or so, asking what kind of music did I just play. I would tell them, that’s from Neil Young’s. They were kinda intrigued about it and wanted to hear more. But expats living here clearly do have a clue about his music; some of my foreign friends do – but only popular songs like Heart of Gold, Old Man, and that’s it. I don’t like that whenever they request me playing those cuts… but happily learning that they do call me “Neil Young of Vietnam.” Which is at least, kinda cool.
And I also started to collect NY albums, too! Since August 2017, that would be a total blast for me, as my friend who studied abroad living in Germany got me a Neil Young Greatest Hits CD/DVD combo-pak… it all started there. Now I have around more than 10 albums of him, and that’s only for CD discs. For vinyl I have quite a few since records are expensive here. Also I don’t like to collect new albums if they’re remasters. I like vintage Neil Young records, which my Godfather living in Las Vegas, he did, give me, the “After the Gold Rush” original 1970 pressing, and the only problem was it did not have the lyric sheet – it was missing.
At the present I do still play Neil’s music as my main cover tunes for my gigs’ main sets and that’s that – I’m proud to be his fan like ever, and I doubt that I will stop collecting his stuff in the near future. I even own a Martin D28 guitar copy and I totally dress just like him – ya know – flannels, fedora hat, blue jeans, boots. If you wonder which NY album I love the most – always “Tonight’s the Night.”
