Pounding The Keyboard

       “Play some love songs,” somebody requested while I was listening to some old progressive rock songs in my cell phone (which was connected to the stereo). I stopped what was playing and searched for love songs on YouTube, saw a previously played video of Roddy Frame, Surf, and played it again.        Surf is of course the title track from what I think is Roddy Frame’s best solo album, Surf. High Land, Hard Rain is his best Aztec Camera album, in my book. Surf is the best song in the album, it’s slow and quiet, like most of the (love) songs in the album, and utterly beautiful.        "Play some Bruno Mars songs," the requester said when the song finished. I searched for some Bruno Mars songs, played it and then went to my room and slept. Surf Roddy Frame Amazing, grace-filled guiding light See her safely home tonight The east-end squares've grown cold and loud Since I lived there with the twilight crowd The west end lights have lost their

       "I was just a child then, now I'm only a man..."                                                           Pink Floyd, "Your Possible Past"        A genius and absolutely one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Roger Waters (Pink Floyd bassist, singer and songwriter) celebrated his birthday yesterday and here’s one of my favorite stories about him:        When The Final Cut (a very underrated anti-war album dedicated to Roger’s father, a soldier who died in World War II) came out, it didn’t sell as much as the other Pink Floyd albums, prompting David Gilmour (Pink Floyd guitarist and vocalist) to quip, allegedly, “I told you, it (the album) was a piece of shit and nobody bought it.”        At that time, there had been bad blood between the two Pink Floyd   frontmen—Roger was accused of controlling the band creatively; he'd been writing all the lyrics and almost all the songs for the band and rejecting the other members

A gentle college boy accidentally met a young, enticing female stranger. They had drugs and kinky sex in her house, and when he awoke the next morning, still reeling from the drugs he had taken the night before, he found her dead. She had been stabbed repeatedly. College boy, accused of killing her, went to jail and an eczema-stricken lawyer, sleazy but sympathetic, defended him. While incarcerated, naive college boy became a hardened drug addict and an accessory to a murder. Meanwhile, the trial to determine his innocence or guilt continued...        Not the most original of plots, but The Night Of, HBO’s limited crime-drama series which starred Riz Ahmed and John Turturro, stood out because of how it presented its story—the critically-acclaimed, eight-episode series was dark, realistic, depressing and gritty.   The satisfying season finale aired a few days ago. Its last shot was fascinating: the lawyer going out of his flat to meet a new low-life client and his