Good evening and I hope your weekend is off to a good start. It’s Where-the-heck-is-Jeff Copperthite here today to bring you the latest installment of the Laptop Sessions, another in our series of Beatles cover songs, and session cover song music video #90 overall.
I am continuing to delve into the libraries of previously covered bands, and I have always enjoyed todays song a lot. It really is amazing just how many Beatles’ songs I know and am familiar with. Of that huge library, this is probably my favorite.
“You’ve got to hide your love away” is from the Beatles’ album “Help!” and it’s extremely incorrect Semaphore album cover. You may also be familiar with the cover version of this song by Eddie Vedder. And while that is a good version, it’s hard to beat the original.
You will notice a singing style that i’m not used too, and I feel it is quite effective. Lately I have been hearing great things about my most recent video, and that my ability to sing on video has taken a lot of leaps. i’m glad you think so! Thank you for all your support.
Also, i’m nearing 39K views, and while I fell about 2K short of my 40K goal by the end of August, I still did quite well and I am very proud of how we are doing. No reason we can’t continue to increase our views per day.1
I hope you enjoy today’s session, and return tomorrow for another great song cover by Jim Fusco!
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!
Hello and welcome to the next installment of “Track One Week” at https://guitarbucketlist.com ! Today, I’m taking a temporary break from playing songs from new artists to play track one off of one of my favorite albums of all-time, “Red Letter Days.” This is the Wallflowers’ “When You’re On Top.”
For anyone who has heard the studio version before, you may miss the synthesized effects, but all I had was my acoustic guitar, so I made due with what I had… And this should help me to prepare for Jakob Dylan’s new album, “Seeing Things,” which is going to be a very acoustic affair (judging from tracks he’s already released, such as “Something Good This Way Comes,” which I hope to record in the near future!).
I hope you enjoy this video, and I especially hope you’ll stop by tomorrow for an all-new track-one selection from our very own Jeff Copperthite!
Acoustic cover of Michael Jackson’s song “Beat It,” from the 1982 Thriller album. I changed the guitar parts, creating an alternative version of this song which is okay for my acoustic version.
** EDITOR’S NOTE **
This is a moment I didn’t see coming…
Introducing the first Michael Jackson acoustic cover song to the Laptop Sessions, care of Guest Sessions regular Federico Borluzzi! For tonight’s installment, he’s come up with quite an interesting arrangement for this early eighties hit. On his YouTube page, Federico writes, “This cover is intended to be a tribute to Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, who’s gone too soon and whose death shocked me and the whole world. He left us a legacy of great songs, such as this one… I did an alternative, quiet and acoustic cover…”
I think you’ll agree as you listen that this is a fitting tribute, and it’s done in the Laptop Sessions tradition of stripping a fully produced (and sometimes over-produced) song down to its core elements. From the opening moments of the video, Federico sets a mesmerizing fingerpicking pattern that will guide the whole song, and is indeed one of the highlights of his performance.
I hope you enjoy this video — I know I did, and I couldn’t be happier to present this week’s Guest Session. Hurry back for new articles and announcements throughout the weekend!
It is my pleasure to welcome you once again to a brand-new week of all-new acoustic cover song music videos here at the Laptop Sessions. Following up my version of “Just Breathe” from Pearl Jam’s new 2009 album, I’m happy to present to you a new band to the blog and a new 2009 single.
If you’ve visited our site before, then you know that “New Music” is my niche here at the blog. I get a great deal of direction in terms of what to learn, record, or write about from the new music that I’m listening to, week by week. Up until last week, it had been a while since I delved into the new release racks for a session, so I’m attempting to make up for that tonight and later this week.
My video tonight is the mid-album cut “Cornerstone” from the Arctic Monkeys’ 2009 release Humbug. Previous to hearing this record, I didn’t know all that much about the Monkeys, and frankly, there wasn’t much that I found appealing. Since their rise to fame via the Internet in 2006, their work has been praised by some — Rolling Stone, for one — as outstanding, and it has also been disparaged as overrated. In addition, they received a backlash of criticism upon releasing their Who the Fuck are Arctic Monkeys EP merely three months after their debut album. Some called it a greedy move, while the band maintained that they wanted to release new material that they would be adding to their live shows. Now, I’ve certainly never been one to defend EP’s (Ben Folds and the Supersunnyspeedgraphic nonsense, anyone?), and I don’t plan to start here. Still, one should keep in mind that an album is typically recorded a significant time before its actual release — in this case, the EP was released seven months after the band finished recording their debut album.
Anyway, this album was recommended to me by a former student and friend who has tuned me in to some great material from Beck, Cold War Kids, and Harvey Danger — in other words, bands that I wouldn’t have listened to on my own. He described it as being more “slow and contemplative instead of just in your face punk music” which, for anyone who knows me, immediately got my attention!
While I rated this album as a “Maybe So,” it really is one of my favorites this year. It’s the type of album you can listen to again and again without it getting old. I love their style here: the songs are unique, and yet reminiscent of some of the greatest rock of the sixties, and their lyrics really make the music stand out to me.
Which brings me to “Cornerstone.”
I will never forget driving to school, listening to this song for the first time. I had been enjoying the album, but this song really made me stop and take notice. There is this devious tone in Alex Turner’s voice as he sings the story of a man searching for a girl who has left him. Did she break up with him? Has she died? Regardless, he is prowling the dirtiest-sounding dives, flirting and engaging with women of whom he soon makes an odd request.
He asks if it would be acceptable for him to refer to them by the name of his ex-lover.
No big deal. It doesn’t hurt to ask, right? Well, that’s not the case for most of the song. But you’ll have to listen until the end to find out how he fares.
In other new music news, I’m excited about picking up Bob Dylan’s first ever Christmas album, Christmas in the Heart. Of course, this is a mixed bag. After all, contrary to the fact that several holiday albums are coming out tomorrow, I think that it’s far too soon to start listening to Christmas music. I’ll probably end up listening to it once before I tuck it away for the day after Thanksgiving… The other question in my mind is whether or not the deluxe edition is worth the extra money. From what I can tell from the limited descriptions I’ve been able to find online, there are some greeting cards attached in the special edition. Well, how many? Do you save them or do you send them? How many people would truly appreciate a Bob Dylan Christmas card? Is his face on the cards? Could be scary to small children or residents of small New Jersey towns…
Well, that’s enough for tonight. I hope you enjoy my video. If you like it, you should mark your calendars for October 15th when the official music video for “Cornerstone” is set to be released. It has also been scheduled to be released as the second single from Humbug about a month after that.
