The Laptop Sessions: “Don’t Know A Thing About Love” (Ringo Starr Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

By Jim Fusco:

Hey HEY!  Welcome to your Sunday, Sunday, Sunday fix of The Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!  Am I the only one excited to still bring you these on a daily basis?  Sure, it’s a pain, but so is seeing your in-laws…and I’m sure everyone does that more often than they’d like to.

Tonight, I bring you a song that I simply LOVE.  That kinda fits because Ringo Starr is all about peace, love, and understanding.  He’s a cool dude, and even though he didn’t write this song, I still love it.  This was from Ringo’s first “comeback” album, “Time Takes Time”, one of my favorites growing up in the early 90s.  This is the first album he did with the Roundheads and the sounds is just so classic to me.

This album is the last one before he started to write almost every song.  If you’ve been to the music blog before, you know that I’m a HUGE fan of people writing their own songs.  But, Ringo did know how to pick some great ones including “Weight of the World”, which I’ll also be doing as a cover song at some point here on the best video blog online!

This song has a great tune, a great message, and a good beat.  Sounds like a great song to me!  Plus, I get to sing like Ringo, which is always so much fun.  Don’t worry, I didn’t do an impersonation, though!  I hope you enjoy tonight’s video as we look towards the unofficial last day of summer tomorrow, fitting that we have a teacher posting tomorrow- one, Chris Moore!!

The Laptop Sessions: “Better Man” (Pearl Jam Acoustic Cover Song)

Saturday, August 30th, 2008

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening to you all! It’s Jeff Copperthite returning for another Saturday night fever edition of The Laptop Sessions! I’m back to school this week, and i’m sure if you are a student, or have children who are students, I feel your pain. Except mine is the “I have to get back into teaching mode” pain.

However, session-a-day must go on! We are nearing September, which means 2/3 of the year is nearly complete since we started this project. And not a day goes by that Jim, Chris, and myself mutter under our breath “What was Chris thinking?”.

But it will all be worth it - it already all is. That’s because you’re reading this, and have enjoyed nearly 200 videos from the four of us. I also want to thank Mike for jumping in with an awesome original song on Wednesday. Given that I haven’t been doing much writing lately, and Mike had expressed a lot of interest in doing an original, it was the natural thing to do.

Today’s song is one from Pearl Jam - a band that we have seen before on the sessions. I am covering another song from their album “Vitalogy” called “Better Man”. It starts out soft and gets much stronger and emphasized in the last part. This song received (and still does receive) much airplay on the radio.

I don’t feel this is my strongest performance, but it works much better than I thought it did while recording. Note to future artists - never eat a pack of Nutter Butters before recording a video. You’ll have to cancel it out with 1/2 a Gatorade and a Vitamin Water (”Water sucks - Gatorade is better”, to quote the Waterboy).

Anyway, enjoy this latest entry, and check back for your Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! edition with Jimnelious…er, Jim Fusco!

The Laptop Sessions: “Bob Dylan’s Dream” (Bob Dylan Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Friday, August 29th, 2008

By Chris Moore:

Thanks for coming to the best acoustic cover song music blog on the Internet!  Today, our featured cover is “Bob Dylan’s Dream.”  Bob Dylan, believe it or not, is the original songwriter.  Who would have guessed?  Well, I guess anyone could have…

This song was originally released on Dylan’s early folk album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and it is what you would call a deep track, as it was never a hit, no one that I know of ever covered it for an album, and it never appeared on any live compilations.  At least, not official ones.  But, regardless of how little attention it has received, I think that it is a perfect candidate for the Laptop Sessions treatment.  First, it’s originally acoustic, recorded once as a “live-in-the-studio” recording, which makes it easily translatable to an acoustic cover song.  Second, it has a really nostalgic feel to it.  By nostalgic, I don’t mean that it sounds like an oldtime song or anything like that.  Rather, I mean that it really makes you think about your own “first friends” — those people that you spent your youth with, engaged in simple activities that brought indescribable happiness.

Well, those “first friends” very rarely make it into your future.  And while it’s always nice to look back and remember them, it can be very sad to think about the exits they took from your life.  Like Bob Dylan, I would pay a good deal of money to go sit “simply in that room again.”  But you can never go back…

…you can only write and sing songs like this one that describe the feeling!  Another thing I love about the song is that it starts off with the line, “While riding on a train going west…”  It gives the feeling of someone nodding off as a train barrels on down the tracks, and as that person just drifts off, these memories of his life come rushing back to him.  I think that’s a great way to start the song.

While this is certainly not my first Bob Dylan cover song — it’s one of many Bob Dylan songs I’ve learned and performed — it is one of the few that I haven’t known for years.  Many times, when I record a Dylan music video, I just dig back to a song that I used to play all the time and re-learn it.  This song was new to my acoustic cover song repetoire, so it was really fun to learn it.  And, of course, a little harmonica on a Dylan song goes a long way…

I hope that you’ve been noticing and enjoying all of the changes and additions to the blog these past few days.  The home page has been rearranged a bit to make it easier for newcomers and longstanding fans alike to find the band categories and search for their favorite material.  In addition, the first seven volumes of the new and improved Laptop Sessions FREE MP3 albums are avaiable in the left column.  Finally, last week saw the addition of a truckload of new live music from the Fusco-Moore team.  All you need to do now is go to the Fusco-Moore Store and choose which concert you want to listen to — some music is FREE and some is avaiable for a low, low price.  I really hope you’ll go over and check it out.  We really worked hard to make some quality sets, and it’s interesting to be able to look back now.  Well, listen back — there’s no video, but it’s really the sound that matters, right?

That’s it for me for now, but don’t forget to hurry back tomorrow for another all-new acoustic cover song music video from our very own Jeff Copperthite.

See you next session!

The Laptop Sessions: “Wednesday Morning” (America Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Thursday, August 28th, 2008

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to your Thursday night edition of the Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!

To quote Jeff, “The only thing the same about the site is the background’s still gray.”  That describes the work I’ve been doing over the past couple of days.  You’ll notice the new navigation on the top of the homepage, the smaller text in the upper left hand corner, and the left sidebar rearranged.  The best part of all this is the release of the The Laptop Sessions free mp3 download series.  We tried doing it once before, but it was a LOT of work.  Okay, so it’s not as fancy now, but you still get 20 great cover songs in mp3 format as a completely and absolutely FREE download!  You have nothing to lose and a whole lot of music to gain.  I sound like an Oreck XL commercial…

We have 7, yes 7, Volumes released already.  We’re going to do them by Sessions member.  Meaning that a whole volume will be dedicated to 20 of my cover songs in order and the same with Chris, Jeff, and Mike.  Original Wednesday Volumes will be released, as well, and we’ll also come out with a holiday songs version at the end of the year- my favorite kind of music!

So, we already have 140 free mp3s for you to download so you can bring the Laptop Sessions cover songs with you wherever you will go (to quote the Calling)!

Also, you might have noticed that you can leave comments MUCH easier now- you don’t need to register or login to leave a comment for us!  We’d LOVE to read your comments and reply- we’re trying to build a community of Laptop Sessions lovers here that come back on a daily basis to see what’s new.  We hope you’ll be part of that community!

Okay, on to tonight’s video:

“Wednesday Morning” is a great tune written by Gerry Beckley off of the America album, “Human Nature”.  This is one of my favorite albums from them (probably second to “Homecoming”, which is on my list of best albums of all time).  Their new album, “Here and Now”, is great, too, as is their Christmas LP, “Holiday Harmony”.  Noticing all of these albums start with the letter “H”?  Well, about 90% of their albums do!

I love the songwriting of Gerry Beckley.  I’ve gotten to meet him on MULTIPLE occasions after shows.  He even threw me his guitar pick once during a show!  It’s funny that I actually got into America after listening to “Becky, Lamm, and Wilson” for Carl Wilson’s songs.  I knew about Chicago (with Lamm), but didn’t know much about Beckley.  I bought their “Best of” CD and never looked back.  I have every album I could find from them on CD and many on records, too.

“Human Nature” has a TON of classic songs on it, but the catchiest to me was always “Wednesday Morning”.  This album came out shortly after Carl Wilson’s death, and after hearing the “Beckley, Lamm, and Wilson” stuff, I was hurting for new, non-Christmas, material for a long, long time, especially because “Human Nature” was so good.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s Session- my first in the great outdoors!  The next five are also outside, so I hope you get used to it!  It’s been beautiful weather here lately, and at this point, I’ll take ANY excuse to get away from Chris playing off-key renditions (on purpose to annoy me) of “Who Needs Sleep” and “The Hurricane” all night…

The Laptop Sessions: “I Know A Girl” (Mike Fusco Original Song)

Wednesday, August 27th, 2008

Hey there!  Well, it’s Original Wednesday, and Original-ly this post should have been Jeff!  But he was nice enough to call me and offer the spot to get back on blogging.  So, out from the bullpen I come, (hopefully more effectively than the Mets bullpen!) with this original acoustic laptop session for you to enjoy.  I remember everything about writing this song- I remember being embarassed by the oddity of the tune.  But, as some of you may know, songs come to me.  So I don’t really have control of the style or genre or tune…and most of the time the words!  It hits me like a sack of bricks.  So what you get are raw and honest tunes, with simple lines that end up being my favorite.

This song has a spanish-feel to it, and the middle where chords ring out is very Dennis Wilson sounding.  Some of my favorite lines are “She’s easy to love, and you can bet she’s so good lookin’…but in this case there’s more than meets the eye…”  All of these words were auto-biographical, and you can hear it in the lyrics, like you’re a fly on the wall for these interactions- “And sometimes when I look in your eyes, I see confusion”…  “When she sits across from me”…”Sometimes when I sleep, your eyes- they look so deep,..and in them I can see nothing but love”.

It was about the stress of romance and the meaning of dreams (where this song was written) and how during the day, facades can be put on, but at night, your conscience isnt always there to protect you from talking in your sleep.  One of my favorite lyrics, in its simplicity, is “And somehow I know that I’ll never stop loving you”.  The last verse, after a pause- was a joke in music form… when people think it ends, I hop in saying I wasn’t through speaking (hope i got you on it!)  I remember playing it for Jim when it was recorded, saying “Wanna hear this stupid, weird song I just did?” and when he finished listening to it, he kept the headphones on and said, “Are you kidding me?  Are you kidding me?…that’s the best song you’ve ever written” =)

oh jim, this is for you… you’ll be the only one that gets it.

3 = ooO

The Laptop Sessions: “Automatic” (Weezer Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Tuesday, August 26th, 2008

By Chris Moore:

Welcome to a fresh new Tuesday installment of the best acoustic cover song music blog series in the universe! That’s right — not just the country or the world, but the universe! Of course, I said the series is good, so that doesn’t guarantee that I’ll be any good, so you’ll just have to take your chances tonight…

Tonight’s music video is an acoustic cover from the new Weezer (Red Album). “Automatic” is track nine of ten — a powerhouse of an electric number with a great distortion guitar riff — and written by drummer Pat Wilson. I read that Wilson actually played the guitar for this one and frontman Rivers Cuomo sat at the drums. If you search YouTube videos like I did, you’ll find that there are some live versions of the songs from the Red Album already available and the one for “Automatic” is definitely worth checking out, if only for the alternative arrangement of the band.

I love to see when the bands I love switch it up a bit and allow other members to take the center stage, if only briefly. Some great bands that have done this on a regular basis are the Band, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Barenaked Ladies, the Moody Blues, and — now — Weezer! Still, many of my favorite musicians and bands are really one-man shows with a band to support them. Take Jakob Dylan (Wallflowers) and Adam Duritz (Counting Crows) just for a couple examples. Dylan and Duritz are two of my favorite songwriters, and although I like their bands, it is really their songwriting and lead singing that makes me love the bands and continue to buy their albums.

Even as I’m writing this, I can only think of one real exception to this songwriter-over-band preference of mine. Namely, Matchbox Twenty. I love Matchbox Twenty, and I have since their first album. I have bought every album and even loved their recent EP. But I just didn’t understand why Rob Thomas had to go off separately and try a solo career. For all intents and purposes, he really IS Matchbox Twenty. I mean, up until the EP, he wrote literally every song on each of their releases!

Exception aside, I have thoroughly enjoyed the new Weezer album, and I hope you have too. If you haven’t, you should really check it out. I found that the first couple tracks threw me a bit at first, but I quickly fell in love with a number of the songs — such as “Though I Knew” (a previous Laptop Session I recorded) and “Miss Sweeney” (a bonus track on the special edition).

Well, I’m off to do some work to promote all the great things happening here at the music blog. If you haven’t already, you should really check out the past couple days’ worth of posts — there is some great stuff, and much of it is FREE! There are live concert tracks, TNA pictures, and of course, great acoustic cover songs!

And, guess what?… Jeff Copperthite will be back tomorrow to post yet another all-new awesome acoustic cover, so don’t miss it…

See you next session!