In this episode I play my album "Almost Moving Backwards" in its entirety and talk over it so you can't really enjoy it. I talk about the influences on the album and cover some personal stuff too. IF this type of episode isn't your thing, we'll be back to normal next week. But in the meantime, I hope you have fun with it. Oh, and there are more photos on the blog than I said there would be. So that's cool. Remember to e-mail me your questions and comments at db@derekbrink.com. Here's the player:
You can download the album here: https://derekbrink.bandcamp.com/album/almost-moving-backwards
Here's how the time breaks down:
- 0:00 - Intro
- Drink along with Derek! - 2:25
- Billie Eilish follow-up; and e-mail from D.F.
- 8:53 - Almost Moving Backwards Commentary
- Live Your Life - 8:53
- Then & Again - 12:40
- Rebecca - 18:41
- After the Storm - 23:22
- Every Day - 25:41
- Everybody's Wrong - 29:43
- Some People Never Change - 24:17
- Another Protest Song - 36:50
- Danielle - 40:25
- Heaven Knows - 44:53
- Those Things - 50:51
- Futile - 53:44
- 58:04 - Outro
And here's a bunch of photos and words and things...
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| Here's your cover photo. A little more literally than usual this time! Notice that little rectangle in the bottom left... "Presented in Glorious Mono." That meant a lot to me. I like mono recordings, being half deaf...which you might not know about me...I'm deaf in my left ear. So mono is very cool in my book. And presents a bunch of interesting engineering challenges you might not imagine until you do it! |
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| This is all the stuff I reference in the show, I think... I went with the Neil Young Archives (Vol 1) box set because...well...I've never posted a picture of it before. :) Also you can see my Ebow on top of the CD stack in case you'd never heard of one before I started talking about it on the show. I'll break down every CD in the pile in a little bit...keep reading... |
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| Here's a so-so at best picture of the very nice Iron Maiden Trooper: Sun and Steel beer I was drinking during the recording. Good stuff, man. I like this better than the primary Trooper beer! I thought this photo would be arty, but instead it's just mildly confusing. Sorry. This is what it's like being with me. |
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| This is the lyric sheet to "Every Day" that I mentioned in the show, with "For M. M." in the margin. Threw in a copy of one of his CDs just for reference. Big fan. |
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| This is the Gretsch 12-string that I mention several times throughout the recording. This was my 40th birthday guitar. I've named it "Croz" after David Crosby. I like how it sounds and I like how it feels to play. It's a great guitar and you can hear it all over this record. |
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| I also referenced this guitar a couple times. This is my Grandpa's old Gibson. It's not worth anything to anyone but me. (And probably also my dad and brother.) I love having this guitar around as much as I love the sound of it. |
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| I talked about these books during the song "Rebecca." That copy of the titular novel is the first copy I bought in 2000-something... It's weathered a lot and manages to still look pretty clean. I take care of my books. Not like YOU...probably... The other book is Tatiana de Rosnay's "Manderley Forever" which is a biography on Daphne du Maurier. Also great...but in a different way. |
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| So now we're into the albums in the photo. I boiled all of the Neil Young down into just one album in "Prairie Wind," which is one of my favorites of Neil's catalogue. Then there's also Jason Isbell's "Southeastern," Drive-By Truckers "Decoration Day"--one of my all-time favorite records that absolutely changed my life--and Pearl Jam's "Backspacer," which had a lot more to do with "Heaven Knows" than you might think. |
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| Here are a few, with one I didn't mention on the show--so we'll start there... The Hold Steady's "Heaven is Whenever" is a personal favorite and I can't believe that I forgot to mention it as an influence on this album. But at least it made it to the blog... Following that is Son Volt's "Trace," a formative album of the "alt-country" genre that was big news in my high school. Also an Uncle Tupelo anthology that'll do the job for most of you, even though every album is great...and the Jawhawks' "Rainy Day Music," which is a real gem from the early 2000s and informed a lot of the "clean" sounds on this record. |
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| This is a slightly weirder pile, but it get's downright strange after this... Like of this group, you can still see it...but the next picture will make you question if I even know my own influences. Anyway...this group is Mark Lanegan's "Field Songs," Paul Westerberg's "Suicaine Gratifaction," the Bottle Rockets' "South Broadway Athletic Club" (which I ALSO forgot to mention in the episode!) and J Mascis' "Tied to a Star." I feel like I've talked them all to death at one point or another...so I'll just leave it at that. |
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| See? It's getting weird now. If you listen to the episode you get a little bit of justification on each one of these, though. And this isn't even the weirdest grouping. But in this pic, we've got Rufus Wainwright's "Release the Stars" (my favorite Rufus record), Lou Reed's "Ecstasy" (you'll notice that mine was meant to be a promotional copy...which means nothing), Amanda Palmer's "There Will Be No Intermission," and David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" which I feel like is a really underrated album in the Bowie discography. |
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| This set of albums is a little more sensible...but there's still the Floyd in there that probably would make a couple people scratch their heads... Anyway, this group is... Pink Floyd's "The Wall," Pete Townshend's "Live" (and I'm sure several of those other words mean something, but they might be anything...it's a great live album that HUGELY influenced me in the early 00s and for some reason I have three CD copies of it and I'm unwilling to part with any of them), The Who's "Quadrophenia" (my all-time favorite album), and The Byrds' "Greatest Hits," mostly because I just KEPT saying "Byrds" during the 12 string parts. |
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| And this picture makes absolutely no sense. Most of them are lyrical references in "Then & Again," but I'd be lying if I said any one of these bands isn't just ALWAYS part of my consciousness. This photo features The RAMONES first album, Queensryche's "Empire," Dream Theater's "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence," Rush's "Test for Echo" (which honestly was just grabbed at random--I was aiming for "Counterparts"), and Van Halen's mid-90s "live" album "Live: Right Here, Right Now." Which was almost entirely re-recorded in the studio according to Sammy Hagar...but I still love it a lot. |
Also here are the YouTube links "D.F." provided for me, that I mentioned... Billie Eilish in her live glory!
And that's it!
As always, thanks for your support, Checkmates!
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