“I Go Blind” (54•40 Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening and welcome to Saturday’s awesome session.  I’ve got a new band for tonight’s session!

Well, I know you’ll look at this title and say “Wait a second Jeff – didn’t Hootie and The Blowfish write this song”?

Wrong!  They covered the song from a relatively unknown Canadian band named 54•40.  The band has been around since 1981 and wrote this song for their 1986 self-titled album.  See, we here at guitarbucketlist.com try to throw in a little trivia to our posts here and there.

I know you’ll like this song and this particular cover video.  It proved very difficult to sing over the riff, so I decided to go with a hybrid strum.  It works for most of the video, but there were some spots I was in and out of the entire rhythm.

Also, first video since my voice has fully returned.

Alright, i’m off to sleep – I have a lot to do tomorrow morning. 

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, Jeff’s acoustic cover song music videos are no longer on YouTube, but we decided to keep his cover song blog posts up.  We figured these music blog entries would be good for posterity’s sake and because Jeff always gave such insightful posts each Session.  We hope to see Jeff’s impressive catalog of acoustic rock songs here on the Laptop Sessions cover songs and origianal music blog again in the future.  But, for now, please make sure to check-out hundreds of other acoustic cover songs from all of your favorite bands here on the Laptop Sessions music blog!

More Laptop Sessions covers

Laptop Sessions Milestone: Jeff reaches 60,000 Youtube views!

By Jeff Copperthite:

As it reads in the subject header, I have reached another Youtube milestone.  That’s right, 60,000 views!  Most of which have come during Session-a-day.

I always enjoy seeing the highest place value increase by 1, and I know that in due time I will enjoy having to read 6 digit view counts.  Although I have come to the realization I will not achieve my 100K view goal by the end of the year, I know that over the past few months my views per day continues to increase.  I think that 70k views by years end is achievable, but i’m going to raise the bar and hope for 75k.

As a treat, I thought i’d share with you the current top 5 videos that I have posted, and some commentary on what the Youtube community thinks of them.  For your convenience, i’ve even included links to their pages on the blog.  All view counts are current as of November 24, 2008 3:39 p.m.

1) A Horse With No Name (America) (7,074 views)

I receive lots of views from various “how to play” pages, and there are many covers of this song on the website.  Most commentary about this song approves of the style, and the “ease” that the song comes out of me.  I knew that I was going to get a lot of views simply on the popularity of the song, but I did not expect it to skyrocket to 1st and beat the next closest video by so many views.  I fully expect this video to be among the first to achieve the 5 digit mark from this site.

2) Fake Plastic Trees (Radiohead) (3,297 views)

I was pleased how I played this song, but not in how it was sung.  It was partially due to a cold I had at the time.  I could’ve sang it better, but it also suffered from being recorded in the kitchen, which provided some reverb that makes it sound worse.  I have long since stopped recording in that location.  The Youtube community finds my cover “ok”, but overall people tend to look negatively on Radiohead covers overall.  They have such staunch, dedicated fans who accept nothing except the real band.

3) Something Good This Way Comes (Jakob Dylan) (2,710 views)

I was very pleased with this video, and so is the Youtube community.  I had the advantage of posting this video the day of the release of Jakob Dylan’s solo album “Seeing Things”, and the initial view spike shows this.  Youtube likes this video, and all the comments I received on it have been positive.  This is among my favorites.

4) Big Empty (Stone Temple Pilots) (2,171 views)

This was the first video I recorded for 2008, and the first to be recorded on my new digital camera (and every video since has been recorded on this camera – it gets a lot of use!).  I don’t think this was among my best since I was still a little “camera shy” at the time.  I’ve gotten a lot better as the year has gone on, but it’s good to look back at how I have progressed through the year.  I’m glad that the community likes this cover, but i’ve gotten both ends of the comment spectrum from Youtube users.  Overall it’s liked, though.

5) “Best of My Love” (The Eagles) (1,817 views)

This is among my favorite videos, because it is a favorite song of mine.  It was one of those videos that I recorded, then pumped my fist because I thought I played it perfectly.  Similar to previous videos, I get a lot of hits from “how to play” videos and other covers on the site.  Comments have been approving mostly, and viewers have enjoyed it quite a bit.

I look forward to the next milestone, and to share another top 5.  Will it be different, or the same?

Related posts

“Zombie” (Cranberries Cover

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good (late) evening to you!  It’s Jeff tonight posting (a bit late) with another…yes, another!…brand new band to the Sessions.  Lately all 3 of us have been on an unofficial New Bands 3.0 binge.

Tonight’s new band is The Cranberries, an Irish band (with another female lead singer – score another one for the Jeffster) and a song from their debut album (deep breath) “Everyone Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?”  That is the last time I write that album title by the way.

This album produced quite a few successful singles including the song covered tonight.  The song is “Zombie”, which as far as song difficulty goes this is probably the easiest of all the songs I’ve covered to play.  The challenge was singing like Dolores O’Riordan who has multiple octave range.  I decided to sing the verses in key, but drop an octave to sing the chorus parts.  It allowed me to get a little more emotional with the song as well.

I would’ve posted earlier but our Sunday Nyzul Isle runs failed miserably – not because we didn’t succeed, but in 4 boss fights we won all 4, but were awarded absolutely nothing in drops.  Oh well, there’s always next week.

I hope you enjoy today’s cover!

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, Jeff’s acoustic cover song music videos are no longer on YouTube, but we decided to keep his cover song blog posts up.  We figured these music blog entries would be good for posterity’s sake and because Jeff always gave such insightful posts each Session.  We hope to see Jeff’s impressive catalog of acoustic rock songs here on the Laptop Sessions cover songs and origianal music blog again in the future.  But, for now, please make sure to check-out hundreds of other acoustic cover songs from all of your favorite bands here on the Laptop Sessions music blog!

More Laptop Sessions covers

“Man On The Moon” (REM Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Here’s another awesome session for you.  This is a song from REM called “Man on the Moon”.  I’ve covered two songs from this band in the past, and this will make it a hat trick.

This song is from one of my favorite albums by REM called “Automatic for the People”.  This song is a great song that is a tribute to Andy Kaufman.

And, it’s just a coincidence that I had planned on covering REM and Chris had made a REM pun yesterday.  And to think, I’d have to come up with something creative in the pun department…

…maybe next post.  It’s too late for me.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, Jeff’s acoustic cover song music videos are no longer on YouTube, but we decided to keep his cover song blog posts up.  We figured these music blog entries would be good for posterity’s sake and because Jeff always gave such insightful posts each Session.  We hope to see Jeff’s impressive catalog of acoustic rock songs here on the Laptop Sessions cover songs and origianal music blog again in the future.  But, for now, please make sure to check-out hundreds of other acoustic cover songs from all of your favorite bands here on the Laptop Sessions music blog!

More Laptop Sessions covers