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!

By Chris Moore:

This is the second installment in my Christmas music playlist series, perhaps my most brilliantly titled one yet! 

As you’ll notice, I’ve done my best to present a wide span of time periods and topic matter, including songs that touch on winter in general, the legendary figures of Christmas (such as Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, etc.), and the spiritual music honed in on the “reason for the season” (i.e. the celebration of the birth of Christ).

Perhaps my greatest failing in this list (and, with a subject as broad as Christmas, I am sure to have many) is the lack of traditional Christmas songs, hymns and otherwise.  I have two comments about this: first, it is simply a fact that many, if not most, artists have tended to pour more of their creative energy into non-denominational tracks, perhaps hoping to avoid alienating their audiences, and second, there is also a tendency for truly great bands to record some of their best performances on their own original holiday music.

For this reason, you’ll see a lot of contemporary classics of the Christmas genre represented here.

If you’re a person who appreciates and perhaps even prefers traditional music, I would strongly recommend checking out the original Beach Boys Christmas album for “We Three Kings of Orient Are,” which was cut from this list only because “We Three Kings” is included in the BnL/Sarah McLachlan version of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.”  Brian Wilson recorded some fine renditions of traditional tracks on his 2005 solo release What I Really Want for Christmas, including “O Holy Night,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” “The First Noel,” and “Silent Night.”

And, if you can get beyond the gravel in his voice, Bob Dylan gives a bang-up, wannabe 1940’s treatment to many of these tracks, plus “O’ Come All Ye Faithful” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

The track listing below is another assortment of Christmas songs, fast and slow, happy and sad.  In fact, starting with the hopeful but tentative tenor of Stevie Wonder’s “Someday at Christmas,” I plugged in several of my favorite somber yuletide tunes: BnL’s “Green Christmas,” the Moody Blues’ “A Winter’s Tale,” and Ben Fold’s Grinch soundtrack offering “Lonely Christmas Eve.”

Don’t fret, though, there are plenty of upbeat tracks to balance it all out.  Consider the typically punky/poppy Weezer take on “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” the disaster-averted hilarity of Relient K’s “Santa Claus is Thumbing to Town,” and the Temptations’ excellent and unique arrangement of “Rudoplph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

As always, I hope you enjoy reading through this playlist, and that I’m able in some small way to nudge you toward getting into the spirit of the season, despite how busy or how burdened you may be.

Check back next week for the third installment in the series!

1. “Santa Bring My Baby Back (To Me)” – Elvis Presley

2. “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” – Weezer

3. “Jingle Bells” – The Brian Setzer Orchestra

4. “The Man with All the Toys” – Brian Wilson

5. “Someday at Christmas” – Stevie Wonder

6. “Green Christmas” – Barenaked Ladies

7. “A Winter’s Tale” – The Moody Blues

8. “Lonely Christmas Eve” – Ben Folds

9. “Away in a Manger” – Johnny Cash

10. “Wonderful Christmastime” – Paul McCartney

11. “Feliz Navidad” – Jose Feliciano

12. “Christmas All Over Again” – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

13. “Santa Claus is Thumbing to Town” – Relient K

14. “I Wanna Be Santa Claus” – Ringo Starr

15. “Hey Santa!” – The Wilsons

16. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” – The Temptations

17. “Frosty the Snowman” – The Beach Boys

18. “Merry Christmas, Baby” – The Beach Boys

19. “Christmas Evening” – Jim Fusco

20. “Auld Lang Syne” – Barenaked Ladies

Hi all! It’s shaping up to be a busy Christmas season, but I wanted to come on and post a Christmas tune in preparation for the annual Fusco-Moore party, to be held this Sunday. YOU’RE INVITED!

Here are the details:

Where: Masonic Hall (same as last year!)
50 North Main Street
Wallingford, CT 06492

When: Sunday, December 16th, 2007 @ 1:00 pm

Cover: $7.00 gets you a copy of last year’s Christmas Concert on 2 CDs or 1 DVD,
Plus a FREE ziti dinner prepared by Jim Fusco, head chef for the Fusco-Moore Experience!!

RSVP: (203) 314-3556 – Chris or
(203) 500-3879 – Jim

[in my best Conan O'Brien voice:]

Merry Christmas, babies!

For Chris Moore chords & lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Good evening and welcome to what has become a Christmas tradition for me here at the Laptop Sessions.  Each year since 2007, I have posted one yuletide original during the month of December.  Last year, I wrote and recorded a song on Christmas eve, so this year I wanted to post another on the last Original Wednesday before Christmas Eve.

This year’s selection is one I wrote years ago and was first included on the Chris, Jim, and Mike holiday album Our Christmas Gift to You.  To be honest, I don’t remember exactly when I wrote this song, but I certainly remember my first recording.  I had never recorded using a multi-track mixer, so Mike lent me one that he had inherited from a local photographer.  In its day, it had been a really nice system.  Unfortunately, some of the controls were off and there were certain tracks that would become spliced together — I’m not sure how else to describe this.  Essentially, I couldn’t lower or raise the volume on one track without another following it.

That being said, it felt like Mike was handing me a portable professional studio!

I rushed home late from Mike and Jim’s house that night, quietly snuck into my house (my parents were fast asleep), and set up in the small bathroom in the basement.  After about twenty minutes of silent trips up to my bedroom, the mixer had been set up on the toilet, the microphone stands near the shower, the keyboard by the towel rack, and I was sitting on my stool with my back against the sink.

And yes, I am holding myself back from making the obvious stool/bathroom pun here…

The version I recorded that night was quiet and a bit sloppy, but it really wasn’t as sloppy as it should have been for my first recording.  To be certain, many songs that I would record later on more reliable equipment seemed, at least to me, to be inferior to the overall feel of my first “Moment.”

The next version that I recorded was for the November 25, 2004 release of Our Christmas Gift to You.  I felt very much like the rawer, indie cousin of my future bandmates, as my two songs weren’t as fully produced as Jim and Mike’s were.  Still, it felt — and still feels! — exciting and, to be honest, like an honor to hear “Christmas Cards” and “Moment” alongside some of my all-time favorite Christmas originals, like “The First Snow” and “Christmas Evening.”

Although “Moment” sounds very quirky and I salivate just thinking about a day in the future when I might re-record it with a minimalist drum kit keeping time, I always liked it (and, of course, I’ll always have the MoU Christmas Concert 2006 CD to hold me over…).  “Moment” is one of those songs that makes me feel something when I listen to it.  Even now, years and years after writing it, I remember exactly how I felt the day I wrote it.  It’s like being able to pick up a guitar or put on a CD and go back in time to the end of high school/beginning of college.  As you’ll hear, it’s a song about a person who has just learned that the love of his life is returning to town after being away for a year, ostensibly as a journalist overseas.  The narrator hasn’t heard from the person, only rumors, and is frustrated that no one seems to understand how important this news is to him.  As the song continues, we get some flashbacks to the previous Christmas and a vague but satisfying real-time encounter set during a Christmas eve church service.  The final line explains the title: “Hay was all they had in the manger — hay was all that Mary had; but that didn’t matter none to Mary ’cause Mary had Joseph to share each and every moment…”

If you’ve ever found yourself at Christmastime, connected to what used to be close friends merely by rumor and third-hand report, then you’ll understand where this song is coming from.  For this recording, I tried to harken back to my first off-the-cuff, essentially one-take recording by staying in my pajamas and simply playing it once to rehearse it before hitting the “record” button.

The result?  My third Original Wednesday post on the eve of Christmas.

The problem?  I’m fresh out of original Christmas songs for next year…

I’ll just have to hope inspiration strikes before then!

Merry Christmas, and I’ll see you next session!