By Jeff:

Yep, welcome to Thumpin’ Thursday, which is a day where many firsts happen.  This week it’s a first from a band you wouldn’t think makes music that would be fitting for an acoustic cover.

Well, even they have to record an acoustic one here and there.

However, I refuse to stoop to their commercially successful song “Nothing Else Matters” partly because I don’t think it’s as good of an acoustic song as the one today, but also because I’m really focusing on covering the tunes that I enjoy the most.

So with that said, here’s a 12 year old song called “Mama Said” from their 1996 album “Load”.  This album was received to mixed reviews for multiple reasons.  Firstly, the music tended to lean more towards the alternative movement that was still exploding in the mid-90s.  Secondly, the album was a style change from the traditional “everything in E-minor” key that was common in their previous albums.  Thirdly, they all cut their hair and posed in some weird outfits for the album photo shoot.  While the third one doesn’t have anything to do with the music, the die hard fans enjoyed watching them sway their hair around stage as they pumped out their music.

This song is one of James Hetfield’s recurring themes when he write lyrics – his mother.  While I can’t recall every one of their songs that deals with this, it is quite numerous.  The tune is a bit of a sad one if you pay attention to the lyrics.

I also continue to focus on getting the sound to work out on the condenser mic on my camera.  I just don’t have the time to invest on anything better for recording the videos.  I’ll have to work with what I have.  Currently i’m focusing on aiming the sound hole from the guitar at the microphone to amplify the quality of the guitar.  However, in this video it does seem to be a bit much.  If you have suggestions, i’ll be happy to entertain them (short of buying new equipment).

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!