By Jim Fusco:

Welcome, everyone, to another Thursday edition of the Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!  I’m back for my bi-weekly video and I’m in a great mood tonight.  I have tomorrow off (going to a Mets game with my good friend, John) and tonight, I had a great dinner over the in-laws house, where I was fed all of my favorite dishes!  I also got a cool new gadget for the guitar called the Voice Capo and basically, it allows you to pick any chord and then all you need to do is strum.  At that point, you can experiment with other notes and “voicings” that let you expand on your guitar playing!  Pair that with my new Martin guitar and you’ve got some major creativity happening over here!

Speaking of creativity, this past weekend, I had my first writing session with a new collaborator.  He helped me try some new things and we worked on two songs.  One of them, I’m still working out, but the first one we did is AWESOME!  If I finish the lyrics to it, I’ll make sure to do an Original Wednesday Laptop Session for you!

Regarding the Laptop Sessions, I’m sure by now that you’ve noticed some changes.  Well, I got to thinking- why did I do over 200 cover song music videos here on the blog just to have them get “old” and fall off the face of the Earth?  So, I found a great way to refresh the old posts and bring them back to the front page again.  The best part is that, according to the search engines, these posts seem “new” and thus get back in the search engine results!  I have to say- this site has more traffic than New York City on a weekday morning now!  Honestly, on my birthday, April 29th, the Laptop Sessions music video blog had close to 10,000 views!  Now that’s what I call progress!

And, speaking of my birthday, boy, did I make out good.  I got more than I could’ve hoped for, mostly due to my father’s incredible bargain-hunting skills.  I’m now enjoying a new TV for our kitchen, a surround-sound bar for the living room, and even a new lawnmower!  Now, all I need is the lawn…  Anyway, my brother Mike got me Hulk Hogan’s autograph and MLB 2010 for PS3, which I’m really enjoying playing online with my new friend Mike from work.  Add to that the gifts that my wife got me (Dumb and Dumber on Blu-Ray, a George Harrison record set- see below), my new extended family (on Becky’s side), and my cousin, I’d say it was a great 26th!  We also went out to two great dinners- one on my actual birthday with my family, and the other the next night to my favorite restaurant, Jimmie’s in West Haven with my friends from college.

Now, back to that George Harrison album…  Well, as you might have read previously here on the music blog, I’ve been buying record albums (LPs) lately.  I love them- they’re collectible and are fun to find in stores and flea markets.  I just completed my Moody Blues collection last weekend!  Anyway, Becky went on eBay and got me an original copy of George Harrison’s 3-record set of his first solo album, “All Things Must Pass”.  It’s such a cool collector’s item and I’m proud to own a copy.  Becky’s always very perceptive on stuff like that.  She saw me drooling over a new vinyl copy of the remastered version and thought it would be cool to get a vintage one for me.  What a girl!

So, I decided to record my first Laptop Session acoustic cover song music video using my new Martin MMV acoustic guitar tonight!  The vocals are a bit muted in this version, but that’s because I wanted to focus on the sound of this new guitar.  The harmonics are just great- they sing themselves!  The guitar is bright and loud, but maintains such a clear bass that I can’t stop playing once I pick it up!  It just looks like a normal guitar, but you can see the logo on the headstock- it’s a Martin for sure.  I’d love to hear what you think of the new sound!

George Harrison, like most famous guitar players, owned a Martin acoustic, and I wanted to play “I’d Have You Anytime”, which is the first cut off of “All Things Must Pass”.  He co-wrote “I’d Have You Anytime” with Bob Dylan, too.  It’s a short song, but has such a cool sound.  George was so laid-back and made everything sound effortless.  “I’d Have You Anytime” is a perfect example of a fairly simple song that’s stood the test of time because of its sound and its style.

Okay, that’s enough from me tonight- I hope you all have a great week and I’ll catch you next Thursday for another update.  Make sure to check back in two weeks for another cover song music video from yours-truly!

UPDATE: For some stupid reason, I’m locked out of my Google/YouTube account.  I can’t get in because YouTube doesn’t accept their original username and passwords anymore.  I used Final Cut Pro to upload the video, so I’m guessing that it attempted to login too many times or something.  I hope I get access back soon!  I’ll post the video as soon as I can.

By Jim Fusco:

Hello everyone and welcome to my first installment of “Title Track Week” here at The Laptop Sessions! Chris and Jeff have already put forth two strong efforts, so I had to follow suit. I have such a list of songs to add to the Sessions, but I can’t seem to sit myself down to do a few lately. Don’t have much choice come Friday!

Tonight, I bring you the title track of the most successful post-Beatles solo album from one of the group’s members: “All Things Must Pass”. This is a great album, of course, and expect to hear many songs from this one in the future.

This is a great song that has a very insightful message, especially considering that George is now passed. We actually played this song in tribute to him on one of our radio shows over at WCJM.com Free Internet Radio.

This video was done a bit differently- I used my new ZOOM H2 microphone, which is really awesome, to record the audio. It came out great, but unfortunately became kind of a big project because the H2 wouldn’t properly connect to my Macbook. I hoped to do all of my Sessions with this microphone from now on, but the Mac doesn’t give the option to use the internal camera’s video and the ZOOM’s audio. Of course, you know I’ll keep trying to find a solution…

I hope you enjoy today’s Session and come back to http://LaptopSessions.com tomorrow for another great “Original Wednesday” video from Chris Moore!

By Jim Fusco:

Hello all, and welcome to another edition of the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs music video blog! It’s me, Jim Fusco, back here again with another cover song video.

This one is from one of my favorite albums ever- “Cloud 9″ by George Harrison. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but something about the albums from this late-80s period is just so great to me. It’s probably because I grew up listening to them and it’s nice to think of a time I was alive AND people like George Harrison were still really popular. Plus, I think listening to rock music at such an early age (I was three years old when “Cloud Nine” came out) like this really sticks with you. There have been some songs that I heard back in the late 80s and I haven’t really listened to since. When I finally hear them again, somehow I know all the words! It’s really incredible to think that those lyrics stuck with me over all those years and that I learned them when I was so young. I guess that’s why they try to teach a second language to kids that are under ten years old- it really does stay with you! Of course, instead of a foreign language, I learned a ton of rock music lyrics.

For my iTunes, I have a song rating system I devised. Basically, it’s a way of sorting through all of my music and categorizing the ones I truly love. It also helps me weed-out all the songs I don’t like but have in my music library just to complete an album. Anyway, my 5-star songs are my favorite songs of all time- these are the classics like “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys and “You Just May Be the One” by the Monkees that I just can’t live without. The next category down, 4-stars, is for songs that, when they come on, I say to myself, “Oh man, I love this song.” This category is reserved for songs that make my eyes widen and my ears perk up as soon as the first chords kick in. “This Is Love” by George Harrison is one of those songs. As soon as the song starts, you’re hooked in- the great chord progression and the wonderful late-80s guitar sound get me every time. I can only hope that my acoustic cover song version I’ve done here for the music video blog does the song justice.

This song, “This Is Love”, is a classic. It’s got that unmistakable George Harrison sound. If you don’t know it, get ready to have a new favorite song, because this song has a great melody and, of course, great chords and style- George all the way! Of course, there will be many more George Harrison songs done here for the music blog in the future. I recently got into listening to all of his solo albums and was blown-away…no pun to another George Harrison song… In the meantime, I hope you enjoy today’s video and will come back for more great cover songs from The Laptop Sessions music blog!