The Laptop Sessions: “The Girl With No Name” (Byrds Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

By Jim Fusco:

Okay, really obscure territory here.

When my family was getting into the music of the Byrds back in 2000, we really went head-first and listened to every album they made throughout the 60s. Some were better than others because you could tell they were doing a lot of growing up, musically. Plus, many of their later-60s songs were very drug-tinged.

After Gene Clark left the band in late ‘65 or early ‘66, the band came out with one of their worst efforts, “5D”. I still liked most of the songs, but the playing was sloppy and they were high as a kite.

When we got to the superb “Younger Than Yesterday” LP (on Jim Fusco’s list of “Albums You Should Listen To”), I instantly gravitated to the songs of young Chris Hillman, bassist for the band. He is an amazing bass player, mostly because he was an accomplished mandolin and guitar player, so he took his soloing skills over to the bass for the Byrds.

I love his voice- it’s just so natural. There’s no weird accent. He doesn’t say the words in an odd way. He just sounds good, you know?

He wrote some of my absolute favorites: “Thoughts and Words”, “Have You Seen Her Face”, and “Time Between”, just to name a few. I plan on doing all of them in the future.

But for now, I give you this song off of “Younger Than Yesterday”, “The Girl With No Name”. It was a lot of fun to play and is a very short song. But, I’m gearing up for next week’s big “#1 Week”, in which (other than Original Wednesday) we’ll be playing only songs that hit Number One on the Billboard charts.

Stay tuned for other great specialty weeks coming soon, too!

Video Blog Milestone: Songwriter Jim Fusco at 40,000 and counting!

Thursday, April 24th, 2008

By Jim Fusco:

In my world, goals are made to be broken. I’m that “Type A” personality that needs to get things done and won’t stop until it’s done completely. That said, I made a goal for myself to get 100 subscribers and 35,000 YouTube views by my birthday next Tuesday, April 29.

I made that goal about two months ago, and today, I reached 40,000 views to go along with my 128 subscribers!

It’s a nice milestone, but I need to make a better goal for next time around, so here it is.

I would like 225 subscribers and 55,000 views by May 31st. It’s a lofty goal, seeing that as of now, I’m averaging about 10,000 views a month. I’m hoping May brings me 15,000. I think it’s possible, though.

Between the three of us, I don’t see any reason why we can’t shoot for 250,000 total views by the end of the year. We’re currently on pace to get 211,920 views by year end, but as we’ve seen in the past four months, this keeps growing by leaps and bounds. I can only think that we’ll easily eclipse that 250k number because the viewership seems to grow somewhat exponentially.

That said, goals are great if you intend to complete them, and that’s what Jim, Chris, and Jeff ALL plan to do here at the Laptop Sessions. Thank you for your support and we hope you’ll tell all your friends in person, on MySpace, and on Facebook to come watch some great videos here at http://laptopsessions.com!