“Walter Johnson” (Jonathan Richman A Cappella Cover) – OPENING DAY DOUBLE HEADER 1 of 2

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For Jonathan Richman lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Hey there, sports fans!  Welcome to yet another “Chris Moore Monday” here at the Laptop Sessions new music video blog.  Today, as you may already know, is the opening day for the 2009 season of the New York Mets.  Ah, America’s favorite pastime…

Baseball!

Because I couldn’t be home in time to watch the first Mets regular season game, I decided to celebrate by learning and recording not one but two cover songs tonight.  This is the first video, inspired by an encounter with one of my colleagues.  At the end of school on Friday, he stopped by my room and said simply, “Listen to Walter Johnson before opening day.”  All I could think to say was, “Is that a song or a person?”  Sure enough, it’s a song.  He smiled as he replied and repeated that I should listen to it before opening day.  So, as suggested, I looked it up on YouTube early this morning and found the Jonathan Richman song “Walter Johnson.”  It’s an a cappella performance from his 1995 album You Must Ask the Heart.

A search of Wikipedia produced a brief biography and a picture of Richman with a guitar and prominent eighties-era Tom Selleck chest hair.  I don’t know what I expected, but it was certainly interesting to put a face to the singer of this unique song.

Truth be told, I have no real idea what possessed me to record a version of “Walter Johnson.”  There’s something about recording your own version of a song that forces you to become intimate, if only temporarily, with a track.  In this case, I don’t have any plans to buy any Richman albums in the near future, so I figured it would be a long time before I heard “Walter Johnson” again.  Being that it was opening day, it only seemed appropriate that I would pay tribute to Walter Johnson by singing my own version of the song.

I hope you enjoy it.  Feel free, of course, to laugh as you wish.  The “bum ba bum ba bum” parts are pretty funny — at least, they were to me at first.   But, really, this is the perfect day to sing this song!

And this is only the first of two baseball-related tunes I’ve carved out for you today.  Tune into the next one, “Joe DiMaggio Done It Again,” coming very shortly (watch it!)…

Wilco Summer 2009 SET LIST – Wappingers Falls, NY: Saturday, 7/18/2009

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The SET LIST is below…

For a detailed review, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Well, it’s only been three days and here we are again, seated in a ballpark waiting for an event to begin. And it won’t be a baseball game…

Wednesday was a phenomenal Bob Dylan concert in New Britain, CT and today, Saturday, is the Wappinger’s Falls, NY stop on the Wilco summer 2009 tour.

As I type, there are a few last minute adjustments being made to the equipment onstage before the opener at 7pm – Conor Oberst & the Mystic Valley Band. I have no idea what they’ll be like, so more to come about their performance soon…

I’ll be posting up-to-the-minute details of the Wilco set list as the songs are played, so check back soon for that. (I’ll do my best to report accurately, but they have quite the variety of covers that have slipped into their set lists in the past. Either way, it’ll be interesting!)

Conor Oberst and company just finished their set. Overall, they were an energetic and entertaining band, but I’m anxiously awaiting my first Wilco concert…

Jeff Tweedy and the boys of Wilco will be onstage any minute now, so stay tuned for the set list updates.

WILCO SET LIST:

1 ) “Wilco (the song)”
2 ) “I’m Always in Love”
3 ) “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart”
4 ) “Shot in the Arm”
5 ) “Bull Black Nova”
6 ) “You Are My Face”
7 ) “One Wing”
8 ) “Side with the Seeds”
9 ) “War on War”
10 ) “Deeper Down”
11 ) “Impossible Germany”
12 ) “Far, Far Away”
13 ) “Too Far Apart”
14 ) “Handshake Drugs”
15 ) “Can’t Stand It”
16 ) “Jesus, etc.”
17 ) “Sonny Feeling”
18 ) “Theologians”
19 ) “Hate it Here”
20 ) “Walken”
21 ) “I’m the Man Who Loves You”
22 ) “Hummingbird”

ENCORE 1:

23 ) “Poor Places”
24 ) “Spiders (Kidsmoke)”

ENCORE 2:

25 ) “The Late Greats”
26 ) “You Never Know”
27 ) “Heavy Metal Drummer”
28 ) “Hoodoo Voodoo”
29 ) “I’m a Wheel”

The Best of the Bob Dylan Covers – Playlists on Parade

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By Chris Moore:

With some sources placing Bob Dylan as the #2 most covered artist (behind the Beatles, of course), there are some excellent performances of his songs.

Predominantly, though, there are hundreds and hundreds of inferior versions of his work, ranging from mediocre all the way down to openly offensive.

As a Dylan fan now for over a decade, I have accumulated quite a number of covers.  Folk?  I have it.  Bluesgrass?  Regrettably, yes.  Gospel?  You betcha!  Reggae?  For reals.

Suffice it to say, there’s some utter crap.

I’ve been thinking for weeks now about putting together a playlist of my favorite Dylan covers.  Finally, after coming across a Jimi Hendrix recording of “Tears of Rage” on iTunes today, I sorted through the archives and pieced together eighteen of my favorite recordings.  For those who don’t know me, you should understand that I’m often the guy who will remind you that, “This song was actually written by…” or ask you, “Have you ever heard the original?”  So, for me to say I love these songs means that they’ve truly made the cut for me.

And I hope you’ll enjoy them as well!

The artists are as wide ranging as George Harrison and Beck.  They go back as far as the sixties, with a sampling of classics by the original masters of the Dylan cover the Byrds, and are as recent as the Dead Weather, that super-ish-group co-fronted by Jack White.  In the case of the former, I love the Dylan versions about as much as Roger McGuinn and company’s, but in the case of the latter, a forgettable Street Legal track was revived and successfully reimagined.

There are some that you absolutely must listen to the originals – “Simple Twist of Fate” for one, and “Born in Time” for another (that is, if you find the Bootleg Series version).  There are some that are, frankly, better as covers – I’m thinking of “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” here.

So, go explore.  Visit Amazon and iTunes.  Expand your Dylan horizons.  And, most of all, remember why Bob Dylan was, is, and forever shall be the freakin’ man.

1)  “Mr. Tambourine Man” – The Byrds

2)  “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat” – Beck

3)  “All Along the Watchtower” – Jimi Hendrix

4)  “If Not for You” – George Harrison

5)  “Mama You’ve Been on My Mind / A Fraction of Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie” – Jack Johnson

6)  “Masters of War” – Pearl Jam

7)  “New Pony” – The Dead Weather

8)  “Simple Twist of Fate” – Jeff Tweedy

9)  “My Back Pages” – The Byrds

10)  “Absolutely Sweet Marie” – George Harrison

11)  “Tears of Rage” – Jimi Hendrix

12)  “I Shall Be Released” – The Band

13)  “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” – Eric Clapton

14)  “Mississippi” – Sheryl Crow

15)  “John Wesley Harding” – Wilco

16)  “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” – The Byrds

17)  “Born in Time” – Eric Clapton

18)  “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” – Warren Zevon

“Nobody” (MoU Original Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

That’s right – it is the best day of the week.  A day where you can hear something from the Fusco-Moore library.  As promised on Sunday, I present you with…well, more than a Jim Fusco song.  It’s actually a Chris Moore, Jim Fusco, and Mike Fusco song.  Heh – finally I get to do a song that has Chris Moore in the credits.

It is from their MoU EP “Meaningless” (check it out on Jim’s website here), a song called “Nobody”.  The song, like every song on this EP, has a double meaning (or, a “meaningless” meaning).  Short and sweet, this song was originally conceived on the piano.  I decided it needed the guitarbucketlist.com acoustic treatment, and covered it on my acoustic.

Of course, I also made a couple other changes that only Chris, Jim, and Mike may notice.  Well, you may notice it too if you have listened to the EP!

Make sure you come back all week, where Jim and Chris will post their latest acoustic cover videos, and on Saturday you will see me cover my third Pink Floyd song – also by request.  If you’ve been paying attention to recent posts, you can probably guess which song it’ll be.

Enjoy today’s original, and come back tomorrow for the next Jim Fusco pick.  You may notice he’ll look a bit scared, because he knows who will be crushing him in a homerun derby on Friday.

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!