Category Archives: Ben Folds Five Songs

Ben Folds Five covers: Acoustic cover songs – music videos by the songwriters of the Laptop Sessions video blog. Daily music blog with new indie rock acoustic songs.

Best Album Covers of 2012: A Weekend Review Special Edition

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By Chris Moore:

The BEST ALBUM COVERS of 2012

 

Even in an age of increasingly digital delivery of music media, album covers continue to be an integral piece of the vision for an album.  In a sense, they are rapidly becoming the primary, if not sole, physical/visual component of the album.  That being said, it also feels like, in many cases, album covers have fallen to the wayside as hastily composed and inspired out of necessity.  Nevertheless, there are always some that stand out of the crowd; this year, there are five that deserve to be honored. 

 

1)  The Sound of the Life of the Mind – Ben Folds Five

2)  Ten Stories – mewithoutYou

3)  Those Around Us – Jim Fusco

4)  The Idler Wheel… – Fiona Apple

5)  Born and Raised – John Mayer

 

Honorable Mention:

Glad All Over – The Wallflowers

Best Packaging of 2012: A Weekend Review Special Edition

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By Chris Moore:

The BEST PACKAGING of 2012

 

For this year, I’ll reserve my perennial rant on the decay of the album as an art form and the loss that is represented by the turn to digital delivery of music.  Instead, I’ll take this opportunity to point out three special albums this year that embraced the possibilities that are available for expanding the vision of the album to a more total view, including the physical representation of the themes and images of the music and lyrics.  The highlight of the year was Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel…, which presents drawings and handwritten lyrics which give the sense of flipping through a writer’s notebook.   Go Fly A Kite can be  fitted into place as a 3-D diorama, which is unique at the very least, not to mention that the lyrics include chords.  Finally, The Sound of the Life of the Mind is brilliantly designed, but for the fact that far too much space is taken up by names of fans who bought into the project as sponsors, particularly considering that there are no lyrics in the CD version, which is a shame based on how artful they are.

 

1)  The Idler Wheel… – Fiona Apple

2)  Go Fly A Kite – Ben Kweller

3)  The Sound of the Life of the Mind – Ben Folds Five

The BEST COMPILATIONS of 2011 (The Year-End Awards)

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By Chris Moore:

Every year, there are a wide variety of compilations, best of’s, essentials, greatest hits, and retrospectives that are released.  I usually only buy one here or there.  This year, there were three outstanding compilations, which are recognized below.  In each case, the packaging is excellent, notable if only for the excellent attention to liner notes that provide further context and insight into the tracks.  Even though all three were of high quality, Ben Folds’ reasonably-priced, beautifully packaged, well-selected Best Imitation of Myself takes the prize without debate.

1) The Best Imitation of Myself: A Retrospective – Ben Folds

2) Twenty – Pearl Jam

3) Outside Society – Patti Smith

“Jane” (Ben Folds Five Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to your Fabulous Friday edition of The Laptop Sessions, and I am proud to bring you a session that I’ve been waiting to do for a while.

This session is “Jane” from Ben Folds Five’s last album “The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner”. I last did a song from this band as my 2nd Laptop Session – “Emaline”. That session is close to 1,000 views, so I thought this would be a good time to do another from Ben Folds Five.

Not only that, but for this video I kept my guitar on the stand, and performed it on my keyboard.

I think this version came out quite well, although I did have a bit of a “crack” in the chorus as I changed to falsetto. Ben Folds has an incredible vocal range that is just slightly out of reach to my voice. Other than that, I think that this video is a great one (it better be after 23 takes).

Oh, and I should break 4K views over the weekend! Thank you everyone for making the Laptop Sessions so popular!

I hope you enjoy “Jane”!

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 original 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!