Ladies and gentlemen- after 25 years, I’ve finally fallen to peer pressure and decided to cover a contemporary pop song. Tonight, I covered the Black Eyed Peas’ song, “Boom Boom Pow” right here on the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs music video blog.
I’m going to let the music speak for me on this one, as I’m sure all of my friends and fans are going to need some time to pick their jaws up off of the floor after the reading the words “Boom Boom Pow” at the top of this post.
I hope you all enjoy my unique version, as it was challenging to get this to work as an acoustic song. So, this goes out to you- you know who you are! 🙂
You know, usually, I just throw in that “rock” word in my post titles because it’s a good keyword for search engines. But, tonight, I’m proud to say that it rings true. And, on a new Bob Dylan song no-less!
Tonight, I bring you a cool tune from Bob Dylan’s new album, “Together Through Life”. Tonight’s post will be partially about this song and partially my review of the album.
“Forgetful Heart” is the first real “rock” song I’ve heard Dylan do for a long, long time. Not since “Love and Theft” have we heard Dylan rock out. Yes, he’s had some “rompin’ type” of tunes, but most of them are blues and are very, very long. This song is on the shorter side and doesn’t really have that “old standard” sound that we’re so used to hearing from Dylan lately. This is a pure rock song and for this tune at least, his gritty voice serves us well. The electric guitar, although subdued, is a great addition. I hope we get to hear a live version of this song someday with a little more kick and a lot more speed. I play my version about double the speed of Dylan’s original.
Of course, my bad luck continues tonight. You can see the microphone very clearly in the shot. I even recorded an original song for tomorrow. I made sure to get the microphone even closer to my mouth so I could sing these lower-register songs over the acoustic guitar. Turns out, I forgot to select the external microphone input and it recorded off of the built-in mic. Ugh.
Now, onto the album. Let me start off by saying that I’ve heard the album about 20 times so far. I’m really enjoying it. But, it certainly isn’t as good as “Modern Times”. That album is simply great. And, I’ve discovered the reasons why “Together Through Life” doesn’t match up.
The first time I heard “Together Through Life”, I felt like I knew the words and could even sorta sing along to the tunes. The tunes are very predictable and always follow the patterns you think they’re going to follow- especially Dylan’s middle-eights. But, then again, this ablum does have things like choruses (except for a couple songs) and middle-eights, which are pretty much non-existant on “Modern Times”. In fact, the song structure on “Together…” is very similar to “Nashville Skyline” in that the songs sound, well, normal.
But, that’s one of the problems! On “Modern Times”, I still can’t remember all the words and I must’ve heard it forty times. Chris knows I’m a whiz when it comes to lyrics. Dylan has such a way with words- in fact, it really is very poetic. But, you just can’t predict what he’s going to say next. He always switches it up and comes up with great ways of expressing simple sentiments, “When you’re near, I’m a thousand times happier than I could ever say.” What a great way to say, “I love you.”
But, on this album, and it may be because of his writing partner for the project, the lyrics are much simpler and there are only a few hints of Dylan word-greatness.
Dylan’s voice on the album has continued to deteriorate from previous efforts. Honestly- he almost sounds GOOD on “Modern Times”! But, I figured this one out, too- check the songs he sings softly. Those, he sounds fine. It’s the songs he sings louder (even if just in volume and not angrier or screaming) in that he sounds terrible. I don’t care if a gruff voice would contribute to some angry songs. That’s the argument I always hear. You want that? Get frickin’ John Stamos. There comes a point when it’s too much. “This Dream of You” is a classic song. It can become a standard of American songwriting. But, this song is just ruined by his faling voice. Listen to the way his voice just dies on the word “moment” and you’ll hear what I hear. That song would sound amazing coming from a 30 year old Dylan.
Anyway, again, I really like the album, but I did find myself going back and listening to great tracks on “Modern Times” like “Spirit on the Water”, “Workingman’s Blues”, and “Someday Baby”.
I can still do without all those blues songs, though. Talk about a cop-out!
Hopefully, someday, we’ll hear a real rock album from Bob Dylan again. But, until then, I’ll hold onto “Forgetful Heart” and dream of days past.
Hey folks! On Sunday night, I ordered a nifty new webcam for my computer: the Logitech Quickcam Vision Pro. It’s especially made for the Mac and now I’ll be able to do high-definition Laptop Sessions for your viewing pleasure. The idea is that people will want to watch a higher quality video more than my standard def low-light versions.
That is, until people see what I REALLY look like in high-def! 🙂
Anyway, it was supposed to come in today, but alas, it did not. I simply can’t put forth another standard-definition Laptop Sessions cover song here on the music blog, so I’m here to say that I’ll be back for my regularly scheduled Laptop Session tomorrow night.
Until then, may your dreams be in high definition…
Hey hey- it’s another Jim Fusco Tuesday here on the music video blog. Hopefully over the next few weeks, we’ll be putting some more time into the site and getting our views back and rockin’ once more. Tonight, I’m a little depressed because I have this great new HD video camera and can’t even use it for the Laptop Sessions yet. Why? Because I can’t get my microphone to work with it and it doesn’t work as a webcam. So, I’m really stuck. Turns out that the unit has a stereo microphone built-in, but the microphone input is only in mono. What’s the deal with that?
The video quality is very nice, however. It’s such a shame- I thought I had it all figured out. So, it’s back to the drawing board for me.
Moving on to tonight’s video:
Chris and I performed “Bye Bye Love”, the classic song sung by the Everly Brothers- yet ANOTHER band we haven’t done yet here on the best music video blog ever! Man, this is a good tune. We kind of look the Everly’s, too, don’t we? I’ve wanted to do this one for a LONG time now, but Chris and I operate on two different schedules and I never got the chance to grab him for the session. Things have calmed down a bit on his end, so we’ve gotten to do a couple of duets. This was a fun one, but I wasn’t in the greatest of moods after the whole camera thing.
It was going to be very poetic, as well, as this is one of the older songs I’ve done and we would’ve been in crystal-clear, state of the art, 1080p digital video. So much for that!
This song has an interesting structure. It’s not unlike other songs of the time- a very familiar tune to the chorus. But, the verses have this very interesting twist. They go to an E chord towards the end of each verse and it makes the song sound very unique when you compare it to other songs of the period. What a cool twist!
Make sure to check out the video I did with Chris, as well, (see below) as for the first time, I’m playing my brand-new lap steel guitar! The video came out great and I actually sound like I know what I’m doing on that thing! What a great sound- I’ve been looking for that sound for a long time and can’t wait to incorporate both that and my new 12-string electric into some original tunes.
Finally, to echo Chris’ sentiment, a friend and fellow musician, Tony Persia, died yesterday. He was one of the original members of Danny and the Juniors and played that great piano on ‘At the Hop”- one of rock music’s all-time classic songs. He was a good guy and always enjoyed talking to us. We even got to sing with him! I loved hearing his stories and he will be missed by many of us that loved to see him and hear him play year after year. I know he’s rockin’ somewhere with Elvis and John Lennon.
Have a great night, everyone, and I’ll catch you very soon for another Laptop Session. Will it be a duet? Will it finally be in HD? You’ll just have to wait and see- talk to you then!!
