The Laptop Sessions: “Shoe Box” (Barenaked Ladies Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

By Jim Fusco:

Tonight, another event in my ongoing tribute entitled, “Steven Page, we hardly knew ye.”  Steven Page leaving Barenaked Ladies has been traumatic for me, musically.  It’s like if John left the Beatles and the band went on without him.  They’d still be a great band with three songwriters, singers, and musicians, but you would always wonder if they’ll ever get back together, etc…

At first, I likened Steven Page leaving Barenaked Ladies after 20 years to Brian Wilson taking a self-inflicted leave from the Beach Boys starting in late 1967.  But, I then realized that Page leaving BNL is much worse in a way, but better in another.

You see, when Brian Wilson stopped making music with the Beach Boys on a regular basis (and being the producer), the other Boys (Carl, Dennis, Mike, Al, and Bruce) hadn’t really been accomplished songwriters yet.  I mean, it took them until 1968 to really put together an album and it definitely sounds like a first effort in many ways.  We were all just lucky to discover five brilliant songwriters behind Brian Wilson.  In many ways, for me, Brian recessing in the Beach Boys contributes to my love of the band because, well, they really became a band after that.  You had five songwriting members that played instruments and sang and went out and played concerts- that incarnation of the Beach Boys is almost unsurpassed, for me.

With Steven Page, he leaves the band with three accomplished songwriters (especially Ed Robertson, with a #1 single in “One Week” under his belt) and some fine singers, to boot.  So, BNL has a bit of a head-start.  In fact, there shouldn’t be too much of a hiccup, other than Page’s recent flurry of depressing songs and over-the-top oparetta vocals.

The thing that makes Page’s absence worse is that, at least for the forseeable future, it’s permanent.  With the Beach Boys, Brian was always still around in some form.  He always contributed at least one song to every album, even if they had to dig it up and force him to complete it.  Fans would always hope for the next Brian Wilson gem and it was comforting to know he was there, readying himself for a possible comeback that never really came.  Of course, I say this like I was there- I wasn’t even alive until after Brian’s amazingly talented brother Dennis died- I’m just speaking from what I’ve read in the past.

So, after that whole explanation, I’m really trying to say that I’m having a hard time getting over the restructuring of my second-all-time favorite band.  Tonight’s video is a little tribute to Steven Page.

“Shoe Box” (which I always thought was “Shoebox”) was a single and had its own EP (with includes a decent song in “Trust Me’) and served as a bridge between the style of the first three albums and the albums to follow (starting with “Stunt”).  The song was also on “Born On A Pirate Ship” in a much more subdued tone, much to that version’s detriment.  The rockin’ single version is my choice, and that’s what I did my video after.  How can you tell them apart?  Well, the album verison just starts off with the instruments and vocals at the same time.  The single goes through the chord progression before Steven Page starts in.

Listen to the words closely on this one- a very interesting message to it.  Also, you may have to look up the words, as it took Chris and I about five years to realize that he’s not saying, “And Rumplestiltskin side my shoe box!” and is in fact saying, “When talk turns to single malts and Stilton and my shoe box!”  Who would’ve thought?

Okay- a long post tonight to make up for last week.  Tomorrow night, I have a BIG announcement about my new album and that just means more work for me.  So, you’ll have to stay tuned until another all-new Original Wednesday comes your way!  Have a great night and I’ll catch you all tomorrow!

The Laptop Sessions: “Green Christmas” (Acoustic Christmas Cover Song)

Sunday, December 21st, 2008

By Chris Moore:

Well, tonight’s going to be a brief one, and I apologize.  But I made up for it by calling in the big guns — aka one Jim Fusco for additional guitar stylings and harmony vocals — to make this video one my favorites that I’ve done.  It’s certainly the best Christmas video that I’ve recorded.  We had a lot of fun playing it, and I think that comes through on the recording.

I hope you enjoy it!

Oh, yeah, I should probably mention what song it is.  This is “Green Christmas,” one of the holiday originals on the Barenaked Ladies’ Barenaked For the Holidays album.  Second only to “Elf’s Lament” and maybe “Christmastime (Oh Yeah),” this is one of my favorite original tracks on the album.  There’s just the right mix of humor and seriousness on this record, and I think this one leans more toward the serious side.  I especially like the middle part — “Green, cause of everything I miss.  All this missletoe, no kiss…”

Simply put, this was a lot of fun to record.

And it’s certainly not like we haven’t played it before.  It’s been a while, but this song is officially part of our MoU Christmas Chord Book, Part II.  That’s right, we needed multiple chord books to contain the number of songs we learned for our Christmas shows.

The reason this post is so brief is that I remembered and recorded my video much later than I would have liked, and then, Jim and I watched the SNL “Best of Christmas Past” DVD while wrapping our gifts for Christmas.  It felt good to accomplish that while simultaneously watching some great skits — the Matt Foley “motivational speaker” Santa, Alec Baldwin’s “Shvety balls,” Eddie Murphy’s “Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood, and boy does the list go on… — and laughing (a lot!) together.

And, now, it will feel good to sleep…

See you next session!

The Laptop Sessions: “Break Your Heart” (Barenaked Ladies Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Monday, September 22nd, 2008

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to what is a momentous occasion for me…  my 100th Laptop Session!  That’s — count ‘em — one hundred acoustic rock cover songs, recorded after almost nine months of posting every third day.  Thus far, Jim is the only one of us to reach the 100 mark and Jeff can’t be too far behind me, so this is definitely an exciting time for us here at the music blog.

I wanted to make today’s session a great one, so I decided to go barenaked.  Barenaked Ladies, that is!  As I explained in my previous post, I love the Steven Page-sung track from Born on a Pirate Ship called “Break Your Heart.”  It’s quite the emotional tune and is certainly characterized (and highlighted!) by a classic Steven Page lead vocal.  I almost felt silly even attempting this song, considering that it is not exactly in my range, but I wanted to set the bar high for my next hundred videos.  By this time next year, I would love to have 100 more songs recorded, and have many of them be more ambitious, more perfected, and overall more exciting than even the first hundred.

I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s been a crazy ride thus far.  But still, I’m excited to improve and increase the popularity of the blog.  It would be nice to know that people were actually reading these blog posts; it would certainly make me want to write longer, more interesting and informative entries.

Before I leave you to the video, I need to share one last tidbit from my day.  I hadn’t downloaded all the free music at Fusco-Moore.com/Store, so I took a little trip on over and “purchased” all that free material.  If you’re a Laptop Sessions fan in the least, then this is a must-have — we have eight volumes worth of acoustic rock covers, not to mention live shows.

Well, that’s it for me tonight — Aside from the fact that I’m nodding off as we speak and wondering when Jim will notice that I’ve completely slumped over on my laptop, I’m going to let my video speak for itself.  Stay tuned for another cover from Jeff tomorrow and another from Jim the following day.  And, guess what?  I’ll be back on the third day for yet another acoustic cover song on the best cover music blog in the universe!

See you next session!

The Laptop Sessions: “New Kid On The Block” (Barenaked Ladies Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Friday, September 12th, 2008

By Jim Fusco:

Hey HEY!  Welcome to your, as Jeff put it, Fantastic Friday edition of the Laptop Sessions here with me, Jim Fusco!  Glad to be here today, but I’ve been incredibly sick the past few days.  I have the worst head cold…  I’ve already lost two nights’ sleep to it.  I was actually saving this video because we Mike did a BNL song recently, but I put this one first because I’m not sure how well I’ll be by Monday when we’ll be doing “New Bands Week” here.  I have a new band video already recorded and ready to go, so I bought myself until Thursday when I have to record another video.  I can only assume I’ll be better by then!  Actually, I have literally sixteen or seventeen songs ready to record.  I’ve been practicing like mad over the past month and these videos, once recorded, will provide me with almost two full months worth of videos.  In that pool of songs, there’s also TEN new bands!  So, I’m working hard every day to bring fresh viewers to the music video blog and to keep all the regular viewers excited.

Today, I bring you a song that I really love called “New Kid On The Block”.  What perfect timing, too, as the “classic” early 90s band “New Kids on the Block” is in the middle of their “anticipated” reunion.  They have a new album out and everything.  This song is literally about being a member of the band.  Steven Page of Barenaked Ladies wrote this song for their first album, “Gordon”.  What a great satire.  At the time (1992), the New Kids were both “new” and “kids”…well, not really, as you’ll hear in the lyrics of the song.  But, they were popular, nonetheless, and Page must’ve thought it would be funny to write a song from the point of view of one of the band members.

Some of my favorite all-time BNL lines are in this song, including “Well we may not write the songs we sing, but look at Elvis, he sold his soul and you crowned him King.”  The New Kids are pretty much everything I hate in a band, and BNL is truly everything I love in a band.  That’s why this song is just about perfect in my eyes.

One of the other parts of the song I love is at the end with the inclusion of a few New Kids on the Block songs.  I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to incorporate those parts into my solo acoustic cover version here, and all on the first try!

Enjoy today’s video and stay tuned for New Bands Week here on the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover and original songs music video blog starting on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

The Laptop Sessions: “Maybe Katie” (Barenaked Ladies Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Tuesday, August 19th, 2008

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to your Terrific Tuesday edition of the Laptop Sessions!  Tonight, I’m the first person to post using our brand new Wordpress 2.6.1 version of the blog.  Of course, on your end, you shouldn’t see any difference, but on our end, the difference is vast…and great.  For one thing, our visual editor won’t mess with our code anymore, so we’ll be able to post chords to our cover songs more often than before.

Also, things seem to work a little better now, so I hope our sitemap and the live site will work a bit smoother than before.  If not, we don’t have much of an option but to upgrade, but honestly, we don’t have the money for that right now.  Did I mention that there’s a donation button on the left side bar?  Right now, we have a package that’s only about $5 a month.  In order to get “server priority” as they call it…which I assume means more server resources, the price goes up to $20 a month.  That’s quite a difference for “server priority”.  But, I do believe that it will help keep the site running quickly, as we already have over 500 posts and hundreds upon hundreds of pages.  I hope many people will come to our site’s aid and give us a donation!  Oh, and that includes you, too, Jeff, Mike, Becky, Sarah, Chris, Dana, Dave, Alberto, Matt, Stuffy, Palumbi, et al.

Okay, on to tonight’s video.  Tonight is a classic one in terms of my live performances.  The “band” of Chris, Jim, and Becky (see Chris’ post a few days ago) was formed in 2004 and we loved to sing this Barenaked Ladies song, “Maybe Katie” in concert.  Then, we didn’t realize we were singing it in the wrong key- a half step below the original key.  Rest assured that for this video, we fixed the error, as all the Laptop Sessions songs are always in the original key- the ONLY way it should be!  Listen up, cover song musicians on YouTube and elsewhere: YOU REALLY STINK IF YOU DO IT IN THE WRONG KEY!!!  There’s no exception to this- if it’s out of your range and you change the key, then you don’t deserve to do the song.  I sang “Baby Please Come Home” by Darlene Love at our Christmas party in the original key and that song is ridiculously high.  You didn’t see me take the easy way out.  And this is why our motto is “Putting an end to bad YouTube covers FOREVER!”  Wow, the tangents tonight…

Moving on, this song is off of one of my favorite albums, “Everything To Everyone”.  I do believe that it’s probably their fourth best album behind “Gordon”, “Barenaked Ladies Are Men” (the almost 30-track version), and “Maroon”.  This album has some input from the other band members, which if you’ve read some of my past rants, means a lot to me in a band.

We do “Maybe Katie” a bit differently than the album’s version in the sense that the BNL version has some heavy electric guitars on the chorus and middle sections.  Our version is completely acoustic and has more of a “folk” feel to it.  That’s what happens when you don’t have a drummer handy…that isn’t already reserved to play the solo like I am.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s Laptop Session and I do hope that you’ll consider donating to the site, even if it’s just a few bucks.  Thanks again and see you tomorrow!

The Laptop Sessions: “Pinch Me” (Barenaked Ladies Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

By Mike Fusco:

This song was done on the first take with the help of my bro Big Fusc, which was a lot of fun to do on the fly.  I heard this catchy pop song first in the Meriden Mall shopping and it was after I was into BNL, but before I realized “Wow, this song was THEM!”  And I cracked up at the line “I could hide out under there… I just made you say underwear”, which, comically enough, Jim JUST got this joke on Sunday night.  (how many years???  haha make sure to give him grief over that!)  This is from the album Maroon, a great album, and this song captures how I’m feeling right now… Not necessarily bad or down, actually very upbeat.

But,  I still feel like I’m walking around in a state of disbelief.  (so, Pinch Me!)  I hope you enjoy this acoustic cover me and my brother whipped up for the LaptopSessions.com blog!

Leave me some love!

~mikey