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

The Laptop Sessions: “7 8 9″ (Barenaked Ladies Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Monday, June 30th, 2008

By Chris Moore:

And now for another milestone here at the Laptop Sessions — my first Barenaked Ladies music video! This is a track from their 2008 album Snacktime. The opening track, “7 8 9″ was an instant favorite of mine — even though it is children’s music, this is some of the best new music of the year and definitely deserves a listen.  Being the Barenaked Ladies fan I am, I actually bought the book that accompanies this disc.  The book is essentially an enlarged version of what can be found in the CD booklet, but it’s a really great children’s book to have on the shelf.  And illustrated by BnL’s own Kevin Hearn!  As if that wasn’t enough, the “7 8 9″ music video is simply excellent, with a hilarious twist ending…  You have to search YouTube videos for it and watch it!

You may wonder why tonight’s written portion of this music blog post is is so brief. Well, that’s because I sat down just before dinner to work on my session and other http://LaptopSessions.com work. This would have been great until… the ants invaded. One by one, Jim and I found ants throughout the kitchen, basement, and then found them all around the front corner of the yard. Many paper towels were lost in action this evening…

See you next session, hopefully when I’m not so terribly tired!!

The Laptop Sessions: “These Apples” (Barenaked Ladies Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Sunday, May 18th, 2008

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to another edition of The Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!

Of course, The Laptop Sessions started partially because I loved Ed Robertson’s “Bathroom Sessions” so much. He’s so great on the guitar, it makes me feel very inferior.

But, I still love his music and I love to play it! This song, “These Apples”, is infectious and I was so happy I finally got a chance to play it.

Next week, we’ll be doing “Title Track Week”, but this week is anything-goes! Make sure to come back tomorrow for another great Session from Chris and check out the Blog at http://laptopsessions.com for Jeff’s most recent video, as well!

The Laptop Sessions: “Brian Wilson” (Barenaked Ladies Acoustic Rock Cover Song)

Friday, January 25th, 2008

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to your Friday edition of The Laptop Sessions! After two strong Sessions from Chris and Jeff, I’m glad I can follow up with a song that I’ve been playing for a long time now, Barenaked Ladies’ “Brian Wilson”.

This song is very important to me, as it was the song that initially got me into BNL because a friend played it for me thinking I would like the Brian Wilson references. Of course, I did. But, I loved the song, too.

I now own all of BNL’s albums, have met them and got them to sign their latest (and greatest) album, and they are now my second favorite band of all time behind the Beach Boys at a permanent #1 spot.

I love the way Masters of the Universe did this song- I had the privilege of singing lead on their version. We did five part harmonies on the chorus. There’s a live version of it here on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0rBfLk70vU

So, you have a song by my second favorite band ABOUT my favorite ever songwriter! Doesn’t get much better than that.

So, here’s my solo version- I could play this one with my eyes closed, so the performance is very smooth and comfortable, if I do say so myself!

A story for another time is my theory on why I love BNL, the Beach Boys, the Moody Blues, the Byrds, and bands like that so much more than I like the Wallflowers, Ben Folds, and Dylan. I love all of their music, but I gravitate towards the first set of bands. I smell a future article!

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Session- sure to be an “Instant Classic” by Chris!

The Laptop Sessions: “Elf’s Lament” (Acoustic Rock Cover Song by MoU)

Saturday, December 22nd, 2007

By Jim Fusco:

Hello everyone! Continuing with our last couple days of Christmas, we give you “Elf’s Lament”, a great song by Barenaked Ladies. We’ve always been happy with the way our live version came out, so I got the guys together to do a special acoustic version for the Laptop Sessions!

To learn more about our music, please visit http://moumusic.com and to watch ALL of the Laptop Sessions, visit http://laptopsessions.com!

I’ll be posting again tomorrow (or later today, depending on the timing), as we count down the hours ’till Christmas!