“Up in the Air” (Kevin Renick Cover)

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For Kevin Renick chords & lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to another week of new material from the best acoustic cover song music video blog in the universe!  We’re glad you’ve chosen to stop by and we hope you’ll read the posts, watch our music videos, and leave us some comments and requests.

Let me begin my post tonight by explaining the new background.  Although I think I will eventually establish the living room as my backdrop — better lighting, better acoustics — I wanted Laptop Sessions regulars to see that my “wall 0′ CD’s” has been rebuilt in the condo.  I just recorded this video, so there wasn’t any natural light to speak of.  Thus, the image is a bit yellowed.  Additionally, I spent the weekend working on installing surge protectors, organizing my bookshelf, maximizing space in the closet, etc., so there aren’t any posters.  The walls look pretty plain, but I promise there will be a more complete backdrop soon.  I have a cool Beatles poster that came free if you bought two or more Beatles remasters at Newbury Comics, and I’ve been itching to put that up.  And, of course, there are the Bob Dylan posters that have been with me since I lived with my parents, so it will be nice to get those up soon, as well.

Until then, let’s just focus on the music…

I’ve wanted to record this song since I heard it in the closing credits of Up in the Air a month ago.  I had planned to record it right away, but Spoon’s new album, an Elvis Costello phase, and the aborted Locksley new release all intervened.  I had considered milking the Who publicity for a session and I was looking for a fitting Jimi Hendrix song for today, but I just couldn’t put this one off any longer.

If you haven’t heard of Kevin Renick, well, that’s kind of the point.  Apparently, he wrote “Up in the Air” a couple years before he heard that director Jason Reitman was working on a film adaptation of the book.  The version you hear in the film is the original recording Renick handed to Reitman after he heard Reitman speak.  The cassette recording begins, “Hi, Jason.  My name is Kevin Renick, and I’ve written a song called ‘Up in the Air.’ I wanted you to hear it.  It goes like this…”

What follows is a home recording that is simple and wonderfully suited for the film.  Of course, it was literally no work to translate this into a Laptop Session as, for all intents and purposes, it already is.  When I read more about Renick tonight, I became even more excited about posting this session.  He is not signed to a record label.  He has never released an album before.  Being unemployed himself, he sings his song with conviction, and it was relaxing to learn, play, and record.

The lyrics, like the song, are deceptively simple.  There are some great lines here — “When people ask me what I’m doing with my life, I say, ‘It’s up in the air'” and “I’m hearing from friends; it’s that tired, old advice again: ‘You just cannot keep floating all around; oh, you got to get your feet back on the ground.'”

I can’t understate how well this song encapsulated the feel of the film and of the other excellent music chosen for the soundtrack.  The Up in the Air soundtrack includes one of my favorite Elliott Smith songs, “Angel in the Snow” (from the New Moon posthumous release), a couple of cool Graham Nash songs (one with Crosby and Stills, one solo demo), and Dan Auerbach’s “Goin’ Home” (from Keep It Hid, my pick for the #10 best rock album of 2009).

So, that’s the story behind “Up in the Air.”  Once I’ve finished posting this session, I’m off to grade some senior papers before dinner, and then I have two things I’m looking very much forward to.  The first is watching — and yes, your nerd-o-meters are about to go crazy — Star Trek: Voyager with Nicole.  I haven’t watched Voyager for YEARS, not since I watched from the sixth season or so on with my mother.  Every week, we’d meet and watch that show until it went off the air.  And I loved it!  But I never thought to go back, so that’s been my recent television indulgence.

In music-related “news,” the second activity I’m looking forward to tonight is finally being able to relax and read the booklet to the posthumous Jimi Hendrix collection First Rays of the New Rising Sun.  I unfortunately had to return a Christmas present, and although I put it off for weeks, I finally exchanged it last Friday for this Hendrix CD.  I’ve been mildly interested in it for a few years, but I wasn’t sure what it would be like.  I’m generally of the opinion that the overall consistency and quality of Hendrix’s albums started at near-perfection with Are You Experienced? (1967) and declined from there, particularly on Electric Ladyland (1968).  That’s not to say that he didn’t make some tremendous, outstanding music after his debut album — “Wait Until Tomorrow,” “Castles Made of Sand,” “Bold as Love,” “Crosstown Traffic,” and his cover of “All Along the Watchtower” — but the second and third albums themselves just weren’t as tight or compelling as the first.

Let me tell you: it’s a SHAME that Hendrix never finished First Rays of the New Rising Sun.  Even as a 17 track collection compiled “under the direct supervision of the Hendrix family,” this disc is easily the best, most dynamic work he released after Are You Experienced? Given the time, Hendrix may very well have topped even that.  Anyone who owns the greatest hits collection Experience Hendrix already knows the rocking “Freedom,” the jaw-droppingly beautiful “Angel,” and “Dolly Dagger.”  If you like those tracks, you should check this out as well, especially for great work like “Night Bird Flying,” “Hey Baby (New Rising Sun),” and “In From the Storm.”  Great stuff indeed.

Well, that about does it for me this week.  Of course, you should hurry back every day of this week for fun new material — you can bank on another full Laptop Session, a three-part “Yes, No, Maybe So, Retro” series, a Guest Session of a great Buddy Holly song, and an all-new Weekend Review.  Don’t miss any of these great music-related posts — you’re only going to find them here…

See you next session!

R.E.M. announces breakup… a primer on the reactionary articles

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By Chris Moore:

R.E.M. is a band that I feel like I have always known about, a group that has somehow worked its way into the cultural fabric of the past several decades.  Watching a post-apocalyptic thriller, the chances are better than not that you’ll hear “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).”  The number of classic, epic, and usually beautifully simple ballads that they’ve released is staggering: “Losing My Religion,” “Everybody Hurts,” and “The One I Love” to name only a few.

Now, after over thirty years as a band, they have, according to the official announcement on their website, “decided to call it a day as a band… [and] walk away with a great sense of gratitude, of finality, and of astonishment at all we have accomplished.”

So, before you take the time to scour the internet, looking for articles, yearning for some sign that this might all somehow be a mistake, allow me to save you some time.  First: as of this writing, my best advice would be:

Skip the articles and go directly to the R.E.M. H.Q. official home page.

That’s where you’ll find the band’s official announcement, direct messages from each of the band members, and the Warner Brothers press release.  All the other articles I’ve read have simply copied and pasted from these sources, and added little or nothing to the conversation.  The only other vital piece of information has come from owner of the R.E.M. fan community Murmurs and former Senior Vice President of Emerging Technology at Warner Bros. Records Ethan Kaplan, who has suggested that internal pressures at the label may have been the catalyst for this breakup.  For that, you should cruise on over to Wikipedia and prepare to hate all things corporate even more than you might have before.

I suppose there isn’t much to say right now.  There isn’t much to do, except cue up some R.E.M. on your iPod, reminisce about their hits and misses, and prepare for the slew of retrospective articles and “essential songs” playlists that are certain to saturate the world wide web in the coming weeks.  While I wait, perhaps I’ll add my own brief story to those even now being written around the world:

My knowledge of R.E.M. in a vague sense finally passed away the day I stood, as a college student between classes, in the aisle of Best Buy, interested in their greatest hits.  Of course, there wasn’t one definitive collection, so I stood pondering between the best of the I.R.S. years and the best of the Warner Bros. years.  Eventually, I chose the pricier third option of buying them both!

What I heard didn’t thrill me at first.  And, even to this day, I understand the opinion I’ve heard from others that “all their songs sound the same.”  That being said, discovering the music of R.E.M. has been like an adventure for me, one that began not with the greatest hits, but with 2008’s Accelerate.  The grungy, subversive rock and roll vitality of this album turned me on to the band in a way that none of their other music did or has since.  Since then, I have been picking up their back catalog one used CD and one remastered Deluxe Edition at a time.

While it has been a very rewarding experience and I’ve developed a serious appreciation, and even a love, for R.E.M., nothing I’ve heard has equaled the force of Accelerate (and I realize I’m about the only person on the planet who feels this way).  This year’s Collapse Into Now is a marvelous record, if only for the manner in which they merged the energy of Accelerate with the classic sound they created in their youth and developed over a long career.

I will end with a plea to all those paid writers out there now, preparing their pieces for the major magazines and websites they work for:  Please avoid the mundane reductions of this band’s massive career.  And please — pretty please — don’t add to the “R.E.M. had declined recently” rhetoric that is still out there.  The late nineties and early 2000s was a period of decline to be certain, but they had recently undergone an infusion of energy and vitality that I, for one, have been excited about — it has been the one force, of all their various talents expressed throughout the years, that has interested me in their music — and it will be sorely missed.

“Living Well is the Best Revenge” by R.E.M. – Chords & How to Play

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“Living Well is the Best Revenge”
R.E.M.

B
It’s only when your poison spins into the life you’d hoped to live
and suddenly you wake up in a shaken panic
B            A         B
now…

You had set me up like a lamb to slaughter,
Garbo as a farmer’s daughter.
Unbelievable.  The gospel according to… who?
I lay right down.

F#
All your sad and lost apostles
A                             E
hum my name and flare their nostrils,
F#                                                     A
choking on the bones you tossed to them.
F#
Now I’m not one to sit and spin because
A                       E
living well is the best revenge, and
D               A                    E
baby, I am calling you on that.

Don’t turn your talking points on me.
History will set me free.
The future is ours and you don’t even rate a footnote.
now…

So who’s chasing you?
Where did you go, you disappear mid-sentence in a judgement crisis…
I see my in and go for it.  You weakened shill.

All your sad and lost apostles
hum my name and flare their nostrils,
choking on the bones you tossed to them.
Now I’m not one to sit and spin
because living well is the best revenge,
and baby, I am calling you on that.

You, savor your dying breath.
I forgive but I don’t forget.
You work it out.  Let’s hear that argument again.  Camera 3.  Go.  Now.

All your sad and lost apostles
hum my name and flare their nostrils,
choking on the bones you tossed to them.
Now I’m not one to sit and spin
because living well is the best revenge,
and baby, I am calling you on that.
baby, I am calling you on that.
baby, I am calling you on that.

** These chords and lyrics are interpretations and transcriptions, respectively, and are the sole property of the copyright holder(s).  They are posted on this website free of charge for no profit for the purpose of study and commentary, as allowed for under the “fair use” provision of U.S. copyright law, and should only be used for such personal and/or academic work. **

“World Gone Wrong” (Traditional, Bob Dylan Cover)

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For Bob Dylan chords & lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

As a general rule, I’m not a big fan of traditional folk songs. Most often, I’d rather hear original songs from the artist. No one really remembers Dylan’s first album, which was comprised of almost all covers of traditional songs; it was his second album and his original songs that were groundbreaking. But, in the end, it really isn’t a hard and fast rule. For instance, I love both Johnny Cash’s and the Band’s 1968 versions of “Long Black Veil,” and one of my favorite tracks on Johnny Cash’s posthumous A Hundred Highways album is the traditional “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” However, when Dylan came out with two back-to-back acoustic-only albums of traditional folk songs, it wasn’t an exception, at least in my opinion. They’re the only two albums of his that I never really got into.

That being said, there were two songs that I really did get into, both from 1994’s World Gone Wrong. Thus, I decided to cover the title track for today. (Seeing as how Bob Dylan is my most-covered artist here on the Laptop Sessions, I figured I wouldn’t feel so bad if I wasn’t technically covering another Dylan song…)

It seems like we can’t express it enough — the collaboration and the taking-turns schedule we’ve adopted this year works for so many reasons, not least of all that it helps us feel like we’re all in it together. I’m really excited for the release of the free “The Laptop Sessions: Volume One” mp3 download, coming later this month. It will, of course, remind me of how I really was the last one to hop aboard the Laptop Sessions train, though… (If memory serves, I think I posted one session out of the first fifteen.) That’s all the more reason to keep posting now!

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for an all-new Laptop Session from Jeff!