Author Archives: Chris Moore

“Barely Breathing” (Duncan Sheik Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

There’s only one day left after today for our latest edition of “New Bands Week.”  It’s always sad to see it go…  Now, in the past, we have unofficially extended our New Band Weeks by quite a few days, fishing deep into our reserves to find songs from new and different artists.  I wonder if Jim and Jeff plan to surprise us with acoustic covers of new bands even after Sunday…

Unfortunately, I’ll be breaking that trend by Monday, when I post my 100th Laptop Session!  I wanted to make it a special one, so I have chosen — and no one can convince me otherwise — to perform barenaked.  Oops, that was a typo.  I meant to write “Barenaked” with a capital “B.”  My bad.  My 100th session will be “Break Your Heart” by the Barenaked Ladies.  This is one of my all-time favorite songs, ever since Jim played it for me a few years ago.  I love everything about it — the lyrics, the concept, the emotion expressed, and most of all, Steven Page’s vocal performance.  Now, I’ll admit that this song is a bit out of my comfort zone.  And I spent about an hour tonight practicing and perfecting my performance and running my voice ragged and to the edge.  Will this be my best acoustic cover music video ever?  Probably not.  But, will it set the bar higher for my next 100 session?  Absolutely!

But, that’s enough about my next session.  I should probably write at least a little bit about my cover tonight…

Before New Bands Week started, we each signed up for bands we planned to cover.  I had signed up for Jimi Hendrix, Billy Bragg & Wilco, and John Denver.  Then, I jumped the gun and released a Jimi Hendrix cover a few weeks ago.  That left me with two.  I recorded “Walt Whitman’s Niece” by Billy Bragg & Wilco for my Tuesday session, so that left John Denver.  And I truly planned on recording a Denver song.

But it was not meant to be.  Instead, I’m bringing you a Billboard Hot 100 top twenty song.  This is Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing,” a song that I’ve been practicing and wanting to record for a couple months.  Tonight, finally, I pulled it out, dusted it off, and I hope you enjoy it.  It really is one of those songs that received a ridiculous amount of radio airplay when I used to listen to it, but it absolutely deserved it.  It was easy to learn, had some interesting chord patterns, and this was probably one of the most fun recording sessions I’ve had in some time!  It was actually an odd experience — I haven’t heard the song for years, but I remembered almost all the words the first time around, and the whole experience was very natural.  For me, that was exciting!

Well, that’s it for me for now, but don’t miss the final official installment in New Bands Week for September 2008, a music video to be posted tomorrow by our very own Jeff Copperthite…

See you next session!

“The New Year” (Death Cab for Cutie Cover)

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For Death Cab for Cutie chords & lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to the first all-new Laptop Session of 2010!  It is my pleasure to kick off another great year here for the best cover song music video blog on the Internet today.  This past year has indeed been a year of changes, of many comings and goings for most of us here, and now we’re setting out to make this the best year yet. 

There’s a lot to live up to, given the past two years  and more of contributions.

Still, I think we’re up to it.

What can you expect?  Well, for now, you can expect a Chris Moore Monday and a Jim Fusco Tuesday each week.  Although Thumpin’ Thursday is no longer regularly filled, you never know when Jeff will get the itch again…  As for Guest Sessions Friday, it is my sincere hope that recent regular Jeremy Hammond will continue to send me links.  In fact, he’s already sent me the link to his video for this Friday’s post, and I can tell you that it’s a song that I remember fondly.  I first heard it on one of my dad’s “hits of the seventies” cassette tapes.  (Remember those?  They were THE media before CDs…)  From what little I know of him through our email conversations, Jeremy seems like a really interesting guy with some great ideas for cover songs to record.  Finally, as for Saturday and Sunday, there will be one edition of “The Weekend Review” each week.  On top of all that, you have the “From the Music Blog Archives” feature to look forward to each and every time you visit the site; we’ve gotten to the point where there are so many posts available to draw from that many are ones that I read as though for the first time…

If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll check out my “50 Best Rock Albums of the Decade, 2000-2009” list and liner notes, posted over the past several days.  Now, my next project is to finish off my “Best of 2009” lists.

First, though, I need to take a breather!

Today was the first day back to school, and what a relaxing start it was, due mostly to the 90 minute delay we had.  I didn’t sleep in, but I did get a lot of grading done.  When I finish this post, I’ll be returning to that seemingly endless task until I’m off to a BK Lounge run with Mike and three hours of live TNA.  This feels in many ways like the biggest single show since my friends got me interested in professional wrestling a couple years ago, so I’m looking forward to it as a full three hours of relaxation before school gets back into full swing tomorrow.

Which brings me, at last, to the session of the night.  I’m bringing you my cover version of Death Cab for Cutie’s “The New Year,” which is the opening track to their strong Transatlanticism album.  I’ve already recorded one song from that release, “The Sound of Settling,” a while back, but I couldn’t think of any better song for the first post of the New Year, 2010. 

I hope you’ve had a relaxing and productive holiday, and that the promise of more Laptop Sessions and related posts gives you something to look forward to throughout 2010.

See you next session!

CD Review: Songwriter Sheryl Crow’s New Music is Personal on “Detours”

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RATING:  2 / 5 stars

By Chris Moore:

As an album, Detours is certainly not what its title would imply. If anything, this is a further return to form for Sheryl Crow – equal parts acoustic and electric, serious and carefree. At every turn, it surprises and engages and, above all, denies the listener the opportunity to get too comfortable. She is concerned about a series of social issues, yet she does not stop there—she shares some advice for getting back on the right track and, of course, some relevant personal tales.

The songs on this album can essentially be divided into three main categories—topical songs, songs about love and peace, and personal songs. The album kicks off with a selection from the first category, the acoustic-only “God Bless This Mess.” With lines like, “The president…led us as a nation into a war based on lies,” Crow establishes early on that she will not be pulling any punches. Then, if there was any question in the listener’s mind as to whether or not this album would be too simple, she thunders into “Shine Over Babylon,” spewing lines about teachers’ hands being “overrun,” cities “drowning under boiling fountains,” and scavengers handing us “all the junk that should have damned” us. Upon a first listen, I was happy to hear that someone else is very much unhappy with the state of affairs in our nation and in our world. She goes on to address, as the title implies, “Gasoline” and the priorities that some place in parties, reality-TV, and the like in “Motivation.”

If this was her only focus, then Detours may have been quite a downer indeed. However, true to form, Crow compliments her darker songs with an equal helping of tunes calling for us to embrace peace and love. In an almost hippie-esque fashion, she declares “Everybody’s making love ‘cause love is free” and later calls upon us to invoke the refrain, “Peace Be Upon Us” At times, these songs can end in a repetitive manner or come across as too simple, but overall they seem sincere and not so out of place on an album that asks us to strip everything down to the surface, from social issues to romantic relationships. And, if the protest song-undertones of songs like “Out of Our Heads” isn’t your cup of tea, then it is hard to ignore a catchy and upbeat rocker like “Love Is All There Is.” Ringo Starr would be proud.

What really brings this album home for me is the final category of songs, namely the personal tales that inhabit this release. Both the title track and “Make It Go Away (The Radiation Song)” come across as deeply personal and, again, very sincere. Coming on the heels of her recent treatments for cancer, these songs translate as authentic glimpses into her mindset as an individual. For instance, as she explained in a recent interview, detours is a term she uses to describe experiences that force us to reevaluate our priorities and our lives. Physical health isn’t her only concern; on the contrary, the emotions of new love shine through on “Drunk With the Thought of You” and the gloom of love gone wrong can be heard in every breath of “Diamond Ring.” I thought it very fitting of her to put “Lullaby for Wyatt” last in the track listing. After an album’s worth of sorting through the world’s problems and both advocating the importance of and considering the realities of love, she ends with the realization that she loves her son, but “love is letting go.”

When she released C’mon, C’mon in 2002, I had difficulty finding merit in its pop-based sound and mentality, and I wondered what her future albums would be like. It only took a few guitar strums and the first line of track one, “I Know Why,” from her subsequent 2005 album Wildflower to put any concerns out of my mind entirely. Now, Detours has reaffirmed my interest in Crow’s music, if only for its ability to cover so much ground—political, social, interpersonal—in such a sincere manner.

** EDITOR’S NOTE **

The 2 star rating (out of five) was added after the review was written.  This is an album that had very little staying power, and I was admittedly much more enthusiastic about the release than I should have been, most likely due to events in my personal life — i.e. the decision to buy more CD’s in 2008 to really experience a broader range of new music.  I hope you enjoy the album, as I did when I first wrote this review.  However, the rating should act as a warning from a wiser listener.  🙂

“Holly Jolly Christmas” (Burl Ives Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Good evening, one and all.  This is my first solo Christmas song of the season, and I’m happy to contribute to the holiday spirit we’ve been building not only at the Laptop Sessions but also at the Fusco-Moore Experience.

(For those unaquainted with it, the “Experience” is what the condo has been dubbed.  Why it has, I’m not exactly sure, but if you’d like to find out then give us a call…)

Seriously, this song is a classic number originally performed by the one and only Burl Ives.  I still picture him as a talking snowman/host of children’s Christmas specials.  But, alas, I didn’t have my snowman costume with me tonight, so I just wore my festive green shirt.  I think it sufficed for the video.  🙂

The song itself has undergone the Chris Moore treatment, a combination of steady strumming and lower vocals.  The harmonica solo is just about as “me” as they get.  And this was actually a two-take song for me — a truly rare and pleasant surprise for me!  I actually recorded a second song tonight; it’s not a Christmas tune, so I may record a different one if I get a chance, but it’s always good to have at least one music video in reserve.  I wish I had recorded a surplus a year ago when I got sick mid-winter.  Being our first-ever (and ONLY, I’m sure!) “Session-a-Day” project, I hadn’t anticipated having to record songs with no voice.

As you may recall, I turned to Bob Dylan’s recent catalog for those times that my voice was gruff or worse…

I don’t think you can underestimate how much music plays a part in our lives here at the Laptop Sessions.  Take me, for example.  Just this morning, I kept hitting the snooze on my iPhone alarm just in time to hear only part of the chorus to Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”  Being cut off where it was each time, it sounded like, “I was gambling in a van” (instead of “Havana”).  I don’t know why that struck me as being so funny — it’s a lot less funny now that I’m fully awake and thinking about it — but I ended up staying in bed longer than initially planned just so I could keep trying to hit the snooze at the right time.

I don’t know what that says about me.  Probably just that I didn’t want to get out of bed and would do anything to justify staying in it!

I hope you enjoy my rendition of this Christmas classic and take it for what it is — my sincere wish that you all have a “holly jolly Christmas.”  It’s just over a week around the corner; can you believe it?  I know I can’t.  For once, I’m actually ahead on shopping!

Now, if I could only be ahead on wrapping…

This is why I would be a terrible Santa.  I would be trying to wrap the presents in the sleigh, between houses.  The wind would be kicking up and blowing the paper around, blowing presents out of the vehicle.  It would be bad.

Okay, that’s it for me tonight.  Don’t miss another great Jeff Copperthite session tomorrow — it’s gonna be “so amazing that you wouldn’t even mind if he changes the name of the day from ‘tremendous Tuesday’ to ‘tubular Tuesday'” good!!

See you next session!