Hello everyone. On behalf of all of us here at Fusco-Moore Productions, I’d like to invite you to the Second Annual
Fusco-Moore Productions Christmas Party!
Here are the details:
Where: Masonic Hall (same as last year!)
50 North Main Street
Wallingford, CT 06492
When: Sunday, December 30th, 2007 @ 3:00 pm
Cover: $7.00 gets you a copy of last year’s Christmas Concert on 2 CDs or 1 DVD,
Plus a FREE ziti dinner prepared by Jim Fusco, head chef for the Fusco-Moore Experience!!
RSVP: (203) 314-3556 – Chris or
(203) 500-3879 – Jim
** Various members of Fusco-Moore Productions will be playing acoustic Christmas/Holiday songs at the party, and we would love to have your input. So when you call, please give us a request for a Christmas song you would like to hear. This year, you can also come up and help us sing along!! **
I hope to see all of our supporters living in CT (or thereabouts) there!!
Back again for more Laptop Sessions! It’s been a while, but now that the planning is finally done for our annual Christmas/New Year’s party, I’ll be back doing more sessions more often! So, today, I’m actually putting four new videos online, as these were salvaged from my last laptop’s hard drive before it died. Props to me, though, because I uploaded these to my web space before the hard drive crashed! 🙂
“Lay Lady Lay” is an oddity. If you listen to Dylan’s Greatest Hits/Best Of compilations, you’ll notice that this song stands out from the rest because of, dare I say it, his good voice! For the album “Nashville Skyline” (one of my favorites), he decided to try a new style of singing and playing. Chris and I put a new spin on this song with a guitar solo, and I hope everyone likes what we’ve done with it, especially because it took about 34 takes!
Stay tuned for part 2 of today’s 4 part Laptop Sessions extravaganza!
Here’s a great tune from the Beach Boys, originally sung by the legendary Carl Wilson (written mostly by Brian). Good Timin’ is one of those gems that clocks in at just over 2 minutes. But, so do many of the Beach Boys’ hit songs. Of course, most of those I’m talking about came out in the early 60s. “Good Timin'” is from 1980, off of the “Keepin’ the Summer Alive”. (**EDIT: no it’s not! It’s from “L.A. (Light Album) in 1979! But the whole original post is about “Keepin’ the Summer Alive”, so I’ll keep the rest of the original post intact. 😃). It’s not the best album of all time, but it holds some serious sentimental value with me.
You see, every year on the last day of school, we would get picked up from school in my dad’s 1990 Camaro. He’d pull up to the school, blasting “Keeping the Summer Alive”. It was the sure-fire way to know that summer was here! So, I associate this album with being extremely happy and that great times were ahead. So, even though I know “Keeping the Summer Alive” isn’t the Beach Boys’ best album, I still love it. I’ll be doing many acoustic cover songs off of that album in the future.
“Good Timin'” just sounds like a classic Beach Boys song. I can imagine that they were all very proud of this track when they were finished. Plus, the song has a great message. I end up singing “Good Timin'” to myself quite often. And nothing feels better than when you’ve got good timing on something- it could even be a well-timed joke. When the timing clicks, you can’t help but feel good about yourself.
One note about “Keepin’ the Summer Alive”- it’s the last album Dennis Wilson appeared on for the Beach Boys, but he’s hardly on it. In fact, the credits only say he played percussion on the song “Endless Harmony”! I always thought he had the line, “Goin’ on!” in the raspy voice (in the song with the same name), but it turns out it was just a 350 pound Brian that sang that line. It’s such a shame that Dennis didn’t get to contribute, whether it was his fault or not. He had such a great contribution to “L.A. (Light Album)” the year before with songs like “Baby Blue” and “Love Surrounds Me”, plus an amazing lead vocal on “Angel Come Home”, written by his brother, Carl. I’ll probably be recording acoustic versions of those songs, too, as they could use the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover song treatment!
I love this period in Beach Boys history, as they were making great music from every one of the band members, not just Brian. I hope you’ll agree and that you’ll enjoy tonight’s Beach Boys cover song.
Here’s one plenty of people should know: the classic and beautiful “Warmth of the Sun” by the Beach Boys, written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love. The story goes that both Brian and Mike were together the night that President John F. Kennedy passed away. It must’ve been quite a night in America- I can only imagine it. But, in songwriters’ darkest hours come some great material. Most of the great songs you hear are a result of heartache- it’s usually due to losing a loved one. But, Brian Wilson and Mike Love of the Beach Boys were creative in their songwriting and made their feellings for the passing of their President known in song. Sure, they tailored it into a love-lost song (“The love of my life, she left me one day…”), but you can tell the sentiment in the song, especially considering the night they wrote it.
“The Warmth of the Sun” is a beautiful song in all ways- the chord changes are just great. Brian Wilson always had a knack at creating chord progressions that were familiar, but had a great twist. The bass line always moves in the opposite direction of where you expect it to go. In addition to great music (and the instrumental track, which I’m pretty sure was played by the Beach Boys band members themselves), this song has AMAZING harmonies. Brian Wilson’s voice simply soars in this song. With the addition of the dead-on background vocals, you’ve got a pretty perfect song. I’m just glad I found a way to put a solo acoustic performance together and record it with just an acoustic guitar for a cover song music video.
This video is fulfilling a request I received in my first week of doing the Laptop Sessions. I waited until now because I knew I had to get this one right. I had to practice the chords (not too easy, and this is my own interpretation- I didn’t even use a book), plus get the intricate tune correct. There’s so many subtleties to this tune and NO ONE was writing pop music like this in 1963. Talk about ahead of their time.
Please visit my website at http://jimfusco.com for more great music–original songs! One of the main ideas behind doing all of these cover songs for the Laptop Sessions is that if you like the style of music that I do live performances of, you’ll also love my original music, too! I really think that’s true- my original songs aren’t just throwbacks or anything like that. They’re unique songs that put a modern twist on my favorite influences, including The Beach Boys, the Byrds, the Beatles, and the Moody Blues. I hope you enjoy tonight’s Beach Boys cover song and I hope you’ll stay tuned for more. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @jimfuscomusic so you always know the latest on my songwriting endeavors, too!
