Tag Archives: acoustic song

“American Girls” (Counting Crows Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Happy Labor Day to one and all!  I’ve always thought that it was interesting that there is very little “labor” accomplished on Labor day, but I suppose it’s more an appreciation and celebration of all the labor that is done on the other 364 days of the year.  Regardless, I’m not complaining that I don’t have to work on this beautiful, sunny day — what a magnificent first day of September it is, at least here in good ole Connecticut, USA!

And September 1st is not only Labor Day, but it’s also the birthday of my girlfriend, Nicole.  So, to help her celebrate it, I figured there’s no better way than choosing and recording a song for my music video today that she would love.  This is actually a song that I just played her for the first time a couple of days ago, and she immediately loved it.  “American Girls” is the second track on the Counting Crows’ Hard Candy album.  It’s notable for being one of two songs from this album to make the greatest hits.  Although it was a very mild hit, I think it’s a great song.  And I can’t believe that it took me years to figure out that Sheryl Crow contributes the background vocals!  I picked up this album used from FYE a couple weeks ago and figured that out as I read the liner notes.  It was definitely a “Duh” moment…

The album is one of those that starts extremely strong — the first four tracks are simply amazing.  “Hard Candy” starts off the album and the first couple lines are among my favorite that Duritz has ever written.  Then comes “American Girls.”  The third track, “Good Time,” is not anything special, I suppose, but I really like it.  And I love “Richard Manuel is Dead.”  Those first four tracks are a tour de force.  Then, the next few tracks slow it down, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it never really picks back up to the quality of those first four tracks.  So, while I like the album, I can’t really fall in love with it.  It’s one of those albums that, by track eight, you’re fighting the temptation to skip back to track one.

But, if you buy this album, don’t flip back to the first track without hearing the last track, “Holiday in Spain”!  It’s one of my favorite songs from the Counting Crows.  It starts off with just piano and Duritz’s vocals, and gradually builds up to a triumphant final verse and chorus.  For those of you who don’t know me, I just love it when a song begins with no drums or minimal drums, then really kicks into high gear!  For instance, that’s probably why “Pretty (Ugly Before)” is my favorite Elliott Smith song on From a Basement on the Hill.

Well, that’s enough music commentary for one day.  I’m off to have some lunch, celebrate Nicole’s birthday, celebrate Jim’s groundbreaking new purchase (I’m sure he’ll tell you all about it in his next post!), and try to get some work done amidst all the excitement…

See you next session!



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“Wednesday Morning” (America Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to your Thursday night edition of the Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!

To quote Jeff, “The only thing the same about the site is the background’s still gray.”  That describes the work I’ve been doing over the past couple of days.  You’ll notice the new navigation on the top of the homepage, the smaller text in the upper left hand corner, and the left sidebar rearranged.  The best part of all this is the release of the The Laptop Sessions free mp3 download series.  We tried doing it once before, but it was a LOT of work.  Okay, so it’s not as fancy now, but you still get 20 great cover songs in mp3 format as a completely and absolutely FREE download!  You have nothing to lose and a whole lot of music to gain.  I sound like an Oreck XL commercial…

We have 7, yes 7, Volumes released already.  We’re going to do them by Sessions member.  Meaning that a whole volume will be dedicated to 20 of my cover songs in order and the same with Chris, Jeff, and Mike.  Original Wednesday Volumes will be released, as well, and we’ll also come out with a holiday songs version at the end of the year- my favorite kind of music!

So, we already have 140 free mp3s for you to download so you can bring the Laptop Sessions cover songs with you wherever you will go (to quote the Calling)!

Also, you might have noticed that you can leave comments MUCH easier now- you don’t need to register or login to leave a comment for us!  We’d LOVE to read your comments and reply- we’re trying to build a community of Laptop Sessions lovers here that come back on a daily basis to see what’s new.  We hope you’ll be part of that community!

Okay, on to tonight’s video:

“Wednesday Morning” is a great tune written by Gerry Beckley off of the America album, “Human Nature”.  This is one of my favorite albums from them (probably second to “Homecoming”, which is on my list of best albums of all time).  Their new album, “Here and Now”, is great, too, as is their Christmas LP, “Holiday Harmony”.  Noticing all of these albums start with the letter “H”?  Well, about 90% of their albums do!

I love the songwriting of Gerry Beckley.  I’ve gotten to meet him on MULTIPLE occasions after shows.  He even threw me his guitar pick once during a show!  It’s funny that I actually got into America after listening to “Becky, Lamm, and Wilson” for Carl Wilson’s songs.  I knew about Chicago (with Lamm), but didn’t know much about Beckley.  I bought their “Best of” CD and never looked back.  I have every album I could find from them on CD and many on records, too.

“Human Nature” has a TON of classic songs on it, but the catchiest to me was always “Wednesday Morning”.  This album came out shortly after Carl Wilson’s death, and after hearing the “Beckley, Lamm, and Wilson” stuff, I was hurting for new, non-Christmas, material for a long, long time, especially because “Human Nature” was so good.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s Session- my first in the great outdoors!  The next five are also outside, so I hope you get used to it!  It’s been beautiful weather here lately, and at this point, I’ll take ANY excuse to get away from Chris playing off-key renditions (on purpose to annoy me) of “Who Needs Sleep” and “The Hurricane” all night…



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“I Know A Girl” (Mike Fusco Original Song)

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Hey there!  Well, it’s Original Wednesday, and Original-ly this post should have been Jeff!  But he was nice enough to call me and offer the spot to get back on blogging.  So, out from the bullpen I come, (hopefully more effectively than the Mets bullpen!) with this original acoustic laptop session for you to enjoy.  I remember everything about writing this song- I remember being embarassed by the oddity of the tune.  But, as some of you may know, songs come to me.  So I don’t really have control of the style or genre or tune…and most of the time the words!  It hits me like a sack of bricks.  So what you get are raw and honest tunes, with simple lines that end up being my favorite.

This song has a spanish-feel to it, and the middle where chords ring out is very Dennis Wilson sounding.  Some of my favorite lines are “She’s easy to love, and you can bet she’s so good lookin’…but in this case there’s more than meets the eye…”  All of these words were auto-biographical, and you can hear it in the lyrics, like you’re a fly on the wall for these interactions- “And sometimes when I look in your eyes, I see confusion”…  “When she sits across from me”…”Sometimes when I sleep, your eyes- they look so deep,..and in them I can see nothing but love”.

It was about the stress of romance and the meaning of dreams (where this song was written) and how during the day, facades can be put on, but at night, your conscience isnt always there to protect you from talking in your sleep.  One of my favorite lyrics, in its simplicity, is “And somehow I know that I’ll never stop loving you”.  The last verse, after a pause- was a joke in music form… when people think it ends, I hop in saying I wasn’t through speaking (hope i got you on it!)  I remember playing it for Jim when it was recorded, saying “Wanna hear this stupid, weird song I just did?” and when he finished listening to it, he kept the headphones on and said, “Are you kidding me?  Are you kidding me?…that’s the best song you’ve ever written” =)

oh jim, this is for you… you’ll be the only one that gets it.

3 = ooO

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“Depending On You” (Tom Petty cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Oh yeah- welcome to the new and improved Laptop Sessions website!  What, you don’t notice a visual difference?  Well, great!

The only thing you should notice is how much faster the site is running and will continue to run.  Our sitemapt program is chugging away and our site will be running at tip-top shape so we won’t have to turn those short-attention-span visitors away.  You know on the Internet crowd only gives you like ten seconds before they get bored and leave.  This morning, while we were still on our other server, I waited 26 seconds for the front page to load.  Now, at least on my machine, it’s almost instant.  And if I want to speed it up even more, I can fully transfer the domain to the new HostGator servers.

On to today’s video!

Chris and I wanted to do this song for so long, but never got a chance until recently.  I love this tune, as I do with all the songs off of “Full Moon Fever”, and thought it would be great with that cool chorus riff and the harmonies on the bridge.  So, of course, this has quickly become one of my favorite Laptop Sessions acoustic rock cover songs and I hope it’s one of yours, too!

I expect to do most of the songs off of “Full Moon Fever” in the future (except for maybe “Zombie Zoo”) because whenever I hear it, it just sounds like “growing up”.  The album came out when I was very little, but we always listened to it in the car alongside the Traveling Wilburys.  No “Wheels on the Bus” for us!

And how about Jeff’s video yesterday?  Impressive, I must say.  His voice was so sweet and it was a really good song, too.  I think what I loved about the video the most was the easy-going flow of the song and Jeff’s performance.

You should really check it out!  Enjoy the newer, faster Laptop Sessions website, as we continue our quest to solidify our spot as the greatest music video blog of all time!

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