Good evening! Welcome to your Friday installment of The Laptop Sessions. I hope you are ready to celebrate a three-day weekend, and plan on seeing family, friends, and perhaps enjoy a nice cookout or two in the process.
Meanwhile, I get to bring to you one of my favorite songs. It’s Pearl Jam tonight with a song from their first album Ten. Track #5 is Black from that album and that is the song I bring to you tonight.
It has a great background electric guitar and Eddie Vedder sings a wonderful vocal melody in the entire song. Vedder is known to go in between styles back and forth and this song showcases that talent of his. From the soft verses to the emotional outro of the song, I attempt to emulate what Eddie can do. I think I do a good job, but then again i’m no Eddie Vedder. I’ll let you be the judge of that.
Also, this song translates wonderfully to acoustic guitar, and I substitute a minor change in the guitar part at the end of the song instead of the vocal “do do doo doo do do dooo” that the recording has. And as with all songs that fade out, I picked the chord that sounded best to end on and went with that.
I want to thank all of you for visiting, commenting, rating, and subscribing. This is among the sessions I am most proud of.
Stay tuned tomorrow for Jim’s latest session, then come Sunday we bring another special week of songs to you. You’ll have to check out Chris’s session on Sunday to find out just what that is!
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 original 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!
Welcome to your Monday Night Football….er, edition of The Laptop Sessions! It’s the man, myth, and legend Jeff Copperthite tonight with your latest acoustic cover video for the series. I hope this song is familiar to you, because it is a good one.
The song is another one from The Wallflowers called “Some Flowers Bloom Dead” from their album “(Breach)”. I think the album as a whole is one of the most underrated of their albums. It has some really awesome tunes on it and I know that my friend Rory would belt out the tracklisting in order. I’d put down $40 that he could do it. Before session-a-day ends in a mere 4 months and 13 days (almost 2/3 done), I will do another song from this album called “Murder 101” because I think the tune is that good.
You may notice I enjoy covering this band a lot. It has something to do with the fact I haven’t had to filter many (if any) negative comments about ANY of their covers here or on Youtube. Maybe my singing style is similar to Jakob Dylan, or you can tell that I’m a huge fan when you watch me play their tunes. Regardless, I love bringing you more videos of their songs. However, I had to include a little text after my title in the video. I must admit that I was getting a little tired in this recording session. I’m have to sit down and record some videos this week so this doesn’t happen in the future. My guitar playing isn’t as clean as usual, but I was trying my hardest to not ruin another take. I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, but when it comes to recording these videos, sometimes I just have to relax and just play the song.
Terrific Tuesday is next, and Jim Fusco is on deck for that. I hope you checked out his video from Saturday. What a great, great video and great song. You’re really missing out if you haven’t seen it. Here, I’ll even give you the direct link: Ben Folds “Time”.
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!
To see how the song is played in the cover song music video, CLICK HERE!
“Good Times”
Marcy Playground
Intro: D Bm F# G Bb – A – D (sing: “Do-do-do…”)
VERSE:
D
When life has got you down
Bm F# G Bb – A – D
And everything about it makes you blue:
Pick up, keep moving on,
‘Cause that’s the very best thing you can do.
BRIDGE:
D A G F#
Say, hey, Woz, whatever this is, it’s all right.
D A G F# Bm
Hey, John, this too shall pass; it’s a season in your life.
F# G
Yeah, yeah, well, I’m…
CHORUS:
D A Bm G – F#
Kickin’ down the back streets; people wanna break my stride.
D A Bm G – F#
Everyone has a time when they lose their pride, but…
Bm F# G D
When I’m old and in my chair,
A Bm F# G
Thinking back, looking back,
A D
What will I remember?
D Bm F# G Bb – A – D
All the good times — they were all right…
(Intro)
VERSE:
When every morning brings
A struggle just to get up from the bed…
BRIDGE:
Say, hey man, whatever this is, it’s all right.
Hey man, this too shall pass; it’s a lesson in your life.
Yeah, yeah, well…
CHORUS (once)
(different chords for last line, as below:)
D Bm F# G A(hold) D
All the good times — they were all right… Do-do-do, do-do.
** 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. **
Hello and welcome to a very special Monday edition of the Laptop Sessions! What makes tonight so special, you might ask? Well, for the first time in months, I’m bringing you a cover song music video of a song that has yet to be released. No worries, though — if you like this song, then you’ll be able to buy it in stores tomorrow.
The song I’m bringing you tonight is “Who Says,” the first single from the forthcoming 2009 John Mayer studio album Battle Studies. There’s a little bit of a story behind this one, so here goes…
I first learned about this album when I happened upon Mayer’s video blog established to document the recording sessions. The first video was a tour of his newly designed and built home recording studio. Do I even need to describe it? Believe me, it’s drool-inducing. Although a couple of the entries were only jams or just a bit weird, I ended up searching YouTube for some of the new songs. As I expected, most were available as live concert performances that someone videotaped and uploaded. I listened to a couple, including “Who Says,” and I started to get excited about this release.
I have a general rule against hearing too much of an album before it comes out. After all, it’s more than half the fun of buying a new album to be able to get in the car, put it on the CD player, and discover the music for the first time. Sometimes this is an exciting, expectation-defying journey (a la last week’s Echo & the Bunnymen album The Fountain). Other times, it can be just as disappointing an experience as one can have (i.e. U2’s No Line on the Horizon deluxe edition CD).
I should also comment on my recent opinion of Mayer.
As I wrote in my review of Where the Light Is, I am a big fan of Mayer’s first three releases — the independently released EP Inside Wants Out, his debut Room For Squares, and his follow-up Heavier Things. And yet, just as he gained “credibility,” I lost interest. Yes, his third album Continuum offers some interesting guitar parts and melodies, but I resented the idea that he needed to become a blues afficionado in order to be accepted by those outside his stereotypical audience of young girls. In my mind, this was a step backward in his songwriting. Did no one notice or appreciate the effort he put into the album design for the first two albums, or the backing vocals in “Your Body is a Wonderland” that echo the chorus lyrics of “My Stupid Mouth”? There was so much care taken with those releases that the minimalism of his last release was disappointing. From the title of Heavier Things alone, one could imply that Mayer was interested in tackling more “important issues” and being taken more seriously.
But, even in Heavier Things, he retained his sense of what was important — interpersonal relations, perspective, ambition, etc. On Continuum, political and social issues apppeared as the subjects for his songs, which always seemed out of place to me.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have an intense sense of loyalty, sometimes to my own detriment. But I had told myself I wouldn’t buy future Mayer releases to spare myself further disappointment, as I did with Where the Light Is. That being said, I can’t deny that this single “Who Says” sounds more to me like the John Mayer that I enjoyed listening to on earlier works. It’s simple, catchy, and tackles the same desires that my favorite John Mayer songs always did — namely, the desire for freedom from personal and social expectations (think: “No Such Thing,” “Not Myself,” “Bigger Than My Body,” and others). I don’t read the reference to marijuana as a literal desire to get high, but rather as a symbol for what society or one’s friends and family members think you shouldn’t do because “it’s not like you.”
So, I’ll give the album a try.
And you better believe there will be a review forthcoming.
Until then, I hope you enjoy my video tonight. I’m not sure what came over me, but I made this one a real production. I tacked on a purposely goofy intro and follow-up documentary that I hope you laugh at — either because it’s funny or because you’re laughing AT me, as long as the result is the same!
And I know that I have other news and ideas on my mind that I wanted to share tonight, but I can’t remember what they are. So, for now, I hope you enjoy this video and hurry back tomorrow for an all-new Jim Fusco Tuesday, then later this week when I post another music review.
