Pounding The Keyboard

     Today is Roger Waters’ birthday so I would listen to nothing but his solo songs all day. First on my list is his brilliant first solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking . Released in 1984, it's a concept rock album based on his series of dreams one night—he dreams about picking up a beautiful and sexy female hitchhiker and thinks of having an affair with her despite him being a married man. I love this album because Roger here is often angry and screams quite a lot. His powerful (and blood-curdling, lol) vocals is at full display in some songs here. He always sings passionately and emotionally and I love it when he screams.   It is probably due to all these screaming and wailing, and of course his age, that his voice is sort of shot now.       It also should be noted that Roger Waters presented the concept and demo tapes of  both this album and The Wall to Pink Floyd then, and made them choose which one they’d...

     So this tricycle passed by our house, blaring this Leo Sayer song, “When I Need You,” a song about masturbat—, er, pining over your love during a long-distance relationship, and I recalled again the cassette tape of   Pink Floyd’s Animals that I bought many years ago. In that tape, an instrumental would play right after the song “Dogs” (an awesome seventeen-minute long song about charming but greedy, ruthless and manipulative businessmen). The instrumental was not listed in the album, so I thought it was part of “Dogs,” sort of an outro. The instrumental had a lovely melody, and was not too trippy or psychedelic and thoroughly enjoyable. But as I learned later, it wasn’t part of “Dogs,” so it was most likely a bonus instrumental track.           And that instrumental will thoroughly remind you of “When I Need You.” They sound so similar  that they might as well be twins, the only difference is one’s an in...

           I Liked so many Pink Floyd pages and groups in Facebook that there’ll be days when my News feed will show almost nothing but posts about Pink Floyd. Anyway, I saw a thread that asked, “Aside from 'Comfortably Numb,' what song is your favorite in the album The Wall ? The thread starter correctly assuming that everyone's favorite song in the album is '"Comfortably Numb." Almost every song in the album is fantastic but my favorite, aside from 'Comfortably Numb' is “One Of My Turns,” which is written and sang (emotively, of course) by Roger Waters.       In the song, Pink (the main character in the concept album/movie version, who is now a famous but emotionally-tortured, drug-addicted rock star), brings home a groupie, but he just then ignores her and her invitation for them to take a bath together. He instead watches TV while he contemplates on his disintegrating married life (his wife is che...

“Arnold Layne Had a strange hobby Collecting clothes Moonshine washing line They suit him fine…”                       “Arnold Layne,” Pink Floyd       I saw a lot of posts about Pride Parade in my News Feed these past few days, and it reminded me of how a few editors (this was when I was writing for komiks two centuries ago) asked me to have a few pen names so I could submit more stories to them (a writer was allowed only limited number of stories per issue of komiks ). Choosing a pen name or even choosing a name for my characters had always been my weakness so I decided to just look at existing names and saw a Pink Floyd song entitled “Arnold Layne.” The name seemed smart and scholarly so I decided   to use it.       I only stopped using it when I discovered the story behind the song: it was written (and san...