“Happy Together” (The Turtles Cover)

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome, welcome to another edition of “You Bet Your Life”…oh wait, that’s Groucho Marx.  This here is another edition of the Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!

I don’t care what anyone says- I’m actually a big fan of my newest song, “Winning You Over”.  I know the subject matter is up for debate, but if you just listen to it as a song: the tune and the way the lyrics are written, even the chord progression- I think you’ll find that it’s pretty awesome.  Not to toot my own horn- I just can’t get the stinkin’ song out of my head!

I’d love to hear Jeff’s thoughts on the song- both in subject matter and how he likes the real tune.  This is a great chance to make sure Jeff is still paying attention to these posts! 🙂

Anyway, tonight I bring you a great and classic song by The Turtles, whom we haven’t covered yet here on the Laptop Sessions.  That’s the way it goes: another night, another “new” band to the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs music video blog from me, Jim Fusco!

Of course, I put “new” in quotations because the band was popular back in the sixties, so even though we haven’t done a cover song from them before, it’s still technically not a “new” band by any stretch of the imagination!

I couldn’t believe how well the opening guitar part came out- doesn’t it sound exactly like the original?

Well, I actually have a little game for you.  On my solo radio show (So-low that you can’t hear me?  That’s for Stuffy D. Bear) Jammin’ with Jim on WCJM Free Internet Radio, I’m “famous” for my twin-spins, which are two songs played by the same artist.  I even did an entire show of twin-spins…twice!

Well, Tuesday, I’ll be doing a second song from the Turtles.  To tell you the truth, I didn’t even realize that I was doing two songs by them until after I recorded the music videos!  I recorded both songs and went, “Huh- they’re both from the Turtles!”  So, I have a nice twin-spin setup for you.  Can you guess which song it’ll be?  BIG points to the winner of this competition.  Again, this will be a good litmus test to tell if Jeff is still reading these posts!

Okay- it’s been a long day and I can’t wait to kick back and relax to yet another Chris Moore acoustic cover song music video tomorrow.  I’m sure he’ll do Sunday proud.

Jim Fusco Hits 130,000 YouTube Video Views, Plus New Domain Launched

Big news here at Fusco-Moore Productions, as we’ve acquired the domain name cover-songs.com!  That’s right: now your source for cover songs has a great name to go along with it!  Over the next few days, we’ll be working hard to get photos of ALL the bands we’ve covered here on the Laptop Sessions and organizing them on the frontpage of the site.  The site really is just a section (or portal) to the familiar Laptop Sessions site.  I may decide to come up with a new design for it.  The goal of this site is to get people to find our cover songs, then to have them make the connection to the blog community over here at the Laptop Sessions.

Ideas are (as always) frantically running through my head, but I feel awfully tired, so they’ll have to wait a bit more to come to fruition.

Also, probably last night, I hit 130,000 views on YouTube!  I’m still holding out hope that I can get to 150,000 by the end of 2008, which I think would be a nice accomplishment.  Hopefully there will come a time where I can only announce in 50,000 view counts, but for now, it’s still a nice event at each 10,000.  This time it took me 21 days, which is right on schedule, as of late.  Of course, I’d like that number to decrease as time goes on, so we’ll have to see if the new domain name helps us at all.

Just another step towards greatness here at Fusco-Moore Productions!

“Searching For A Heart” (Warren Zevon Cover)

By Jim Fusco:

**I hit 120,000 YouTube video views today!  It’s another milestone and another testament to the popularity and success of the Laptop Sessions!**

Sorry for the late post tonight, but the video has been up on YouTube now for over 24 hours.  I had to record the video late last night and publish it because I had a very, very busy day today.  At least it wasn’t work!  I had my usual “Luncho Marx”, followed by a trip to Becky’s house, a trip to my cousin Louie’s house, a trip to get my cousin Sarah (and see my cousin Gerry, of course), and then finally a trip up to Mohegan Sun casino for shopping, gambling, and a concert with one of my favorite bands: America!  I got to get a t-shirt signed by Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley- always exciting!

I had fun playing on the new Star Trek slot machines, but not nearly as much fun as Chris “I win at everything I try except for PS2 baseball” Moore, who won big.  I then had the task of dropping everyone off and am finally home.  We had a great dinner tonight, too, at Sol Toro restaurant, which is a great authentic Mexican place.  They have the best guacamole you’ll ever taste.  The lime and the cilantro made it for me.

Tonight’s song is a great, albeit sad, one from Warren Zevon.  Unless you’re a fan of his “Best Of” compilations and some of his albums, you’ve probably never heard of this song.  It’s my favorite from him.  I truly only listened to the “Best Of” CD, but I listened to it a lot.  This song stood out the most.

One thing that I DON’T like about the song is one line in the chorus.  He says, “Searching for a heart…searching everyone…they say love conquers all…you can’t start it like a *****…you can’t stop it with a gun.”

Okay, I bleeped out the word (don’t worry- it’s not a swear).  Now, you would think by reading that line that the words “everyone” and “gun” would rhyme.  They do!  Now, that would leave the other two lines to rhyme: “conquers all” and the word in asterisks.

For me, I always thought that word was “call”.  The idea I had was that love isn’t just something you can start up instantly like making a phone call.  “Call” rhymes with “all”, so I thought it made sense.

As usual, I’m wrong, but I can’t understand why.

Instead, Zevon says, “You can’t start it like a car”.  Same sentiment as mine, right?  You can’t just turn love on like a light switch…or like starting a car…or like picking up the phone.

But it doesn’t rhyme!  Since when does “all” rhyme with “car”?  So, when I found that out, I was a little disappointed.  But, it doesn’t take away the fact that I love this song and that it’s got a great message to it.  Yes, I may have rhymed differently, but no one ever said Zevon was an “ordinary” guy like I’d like to think I am when it comes to matters like this.

Okay, I think I’m making less and less sense now, seeing that it’s 4 am.  It’s time for bed and I have to just pray that tomorrow’s lunch meeting (our usual Burger King lunch today was halted by the fact that they LITERALLY had a sign on the door that read, “No beef or grilled chicken”) doesn’t begin with a call from Stuffy D. Bear at 10:30 am saying, “I’m hungry” over and over again! 🙂  See you folks on Tuesday for another great acoustic cover song from yours truly, Jim Fusco.

Chris Moore reaches 50,000 video views landmark on YouTube!

By Chris Moore:

Well, after weeks of lessening views, I have finally achieved half of a hundred grand views on YouTube.  By “a hundred grand” I of course mean 100,000 (as opposed to 100 grand views; although I’d love for all of my views to be grand…).

And, based on that confusing introduction to this post, you may be starting to see why less people view my videos than Jim’s!!  Seriously, though, I’m very excited to hit the 50,000 view mark on YouTube, as I’ve had my hopes set on 100,000 for a long time.  I think I would start to feel accomplished on YouTube if I were to reach 100 grand.

Then, once I reached that, I would look around and realize how insignificant even that number is.  But, by that time, I’ll be aiming for a million views!

So, as session-a-day rolls onward — ever closer to the new year — I’m more excited than ever to make and break some new records for the Laptop Sessions music video blog…

…and you’ll see another reason if you’ll just read my next post!