I hope you are having a great evening, and thank you for coming on to guitarbucketlist.com and checking out your Original Wednesday selection. Today I bring you a never-before-heard Jeff Copperthite original song.
The song is called “Fleeting Thought”, and was a song I wrote during the Greenlight writing sessions. No recorded version exists, except for this video. The song is about being unable to control your past, but being able to affect your future.
When I write songs, I almost always use the acoustic guitar to do so. However, before I actually record a song in the studio, the arrangement usually gets changed quite a few times. So while you will probably hear this song in a future album, the arrangement will probably be quite different.
Also, my voice was giving me some problems today, so I was unable to sing this song as well as I usually can. However, the guitar playing came out well, but it does drown out my voice a little bit. Still, the performance is a good one and I am glad I get to bring it to you today.
Come back tomorrow for Jim’s next session, and thank you again for visiting https://guitarbucketlist.com/!
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 another week of all-new high quality Laptop Sessions acoustic cover song music video blog material! (Now, that’s a mouthful!) We’ve got an exciting week lined up for you regular visitors: one classic Laptop Session post each for Monday and Tuesday, another Phish Friday with Guest Sessions contributor Jeremy Hammond, the final edition of “Yes, No, or Maybe So: One-Sentence Reviews of 2009 Albums” (finally!), and of course, another edition of “The Weekend Review” on Sunday. And you never know what impromptu posts will surface to cover Wednesday and Thursday. For instance, I’ve got more than a dozen “Yes, No, or Maybe So” ‘s on the way soon, not to mention my “Top Five Rock Artists of the Decade” series that’s stagnated; it’s all a matter of timing.
April break is coming…
For tonight, let me begin by explaining my song choice. You may be wondering, “Pink? The woman? Really?” Well, as you can see with even a quick glance at the freeze frame below, I’ve recently undergone a serious haircut. As part of the NHHS English dept. team, I participated in the St. Baldrick’s fundraiser to fight children’s cancer last Wednesday. I’m not going to lie: it was a bit scary. For one thing, I’ve never had my hair this short. For another, I’ve had issues with my scalp being dry and itchy for years, so I didn’t know what it would look like once the hair came off. Thankfully, all went well. After the event, my team went out to Harry’s Sports Bar & Grill, which a few of us thought was fantastic — I mean, come on, that’s a Dr. Keck-sized pun (watch it!) waiting to happen.
We must have looked like a band of skinheads, based on the looks we elicited from the weekday crowd…
Back to the music. Weeks ago, I knew that this would be coming up. I realized that it coincided with the season premiere of the AMC original show Breaking Bad that Dana got me hooked on last year. I took the time to look up the music that has been used on the show over its first two seasons, and I found several songs that I liked. The wildest one, I thought, was Pink’s “Trouble.” If I could pull off an acoustic cover of that song, now that would be fun. I learned it that day, and I forgot about it until earlier this weekend. I can’t tell you how weird it was to take a Pink song seriously, but I have a newfound respect for at least this song. It’s a pretty straightforward number, and it was fascinating to me just how easily I translated it to a solo acoustic performance.
I hope you enjoy the product!
In other Laptop Sessions news, I finally went back to my “Yes, No, or Maybe So: One-Sentence Reviews of 2009 Albums” post. I hadn’t updated it since September 2009, so I figured it was about time I finished it off. My main reason for neglecting it for so long was that I realized mid-way through last year that it would make more sense to publish each review as its own post. I’ve been doing that since 2010 kicked off, and it’s been so much more fun than the old system. I not only added the new 2009 albums I listened to since the previous update, but I also went back through the existing entries and adapted them to the slightly new rating system I’m using now. Essentially, each “Yes, No, or Maybe So” review has five components: the rating, the release date, the one sentence review, the top two tracks, and an image of the album cover. I didn’t go back through and add cover images for all 30 or so albums, but I did match them to my new rating system. Under this easy system, an album can receive one of five scores: Yes, Maybe So, Maybe, Maybe Not, or No. This is in line with the classic five star rating system that I use for the Weekend Review. Over the past several months, I’ve been reconsidering my older reviews. The more I listen and write reviews, the more I want the perfect “Yes” to be an elusive rating, a true five star record. Before I added the “Maybe” as an option, I found that there were simply too many “Maybe So” entries that didn’t quite deserve that score, but weren’t in the “Maybe Not” range either.
Long story long, it seems that there is a learning curve to be expected with all things.
Outside of the head shaving and blog posting, life has been good recently. Busy, to be sure, but good. I’m still deep in the middle of a Star Trek: Voyager viewing marathon with Nicole, and I couldn’t be happier to indulge my dorkier tendencies. I’ve also been busy musically in a couple different ventures. The first is my next album, titled simply The 2010 Project for now, that I’m only just now taking seriously. After almost four years since Love Out of Fashion, I decided it was about time I took some ownership of my next project. So, I’ve polished and restrung my acoustic and electric guitars, borrowed my sister’s bass guitar, and taught myself how to use loops in GarageBand. There are only two missing pieces that I am in the process of researching: first, a guitar pedal to replace my Zoom pedal (lost to battery acid damage…) and second, a good USB microphone to record vocals, harmonica, etc. I’ve had such an itch to record recently that I’ve been playing around with demo versions of some of the fully written songs.
I’m excited that they don’t sound nearly as cheesy as my previous attempt at synthesized drums on Looking For You‘s “Shut Up, Bob”!
Outside of the recording, I’m still deciding which songs will make the cut, what concept/theme I think should drive the record, and I’m still writing verses, middles, and lyrics to finish off several songs that have been incomplete for days, months, or even years.
My other project involves the band I’ve jammed with on and off since I first started teaching. This go-round, there are five of us — a lead guitarist, me on rhythm (electric!), a keyboardist/harmonica player, a bass player, and a drummer. They’re all terrific musicians, so I definitely feel like I need to be on my toes constantly. Specifically, we’ve been practicing to play two songs for the Teacher Talent Show this Thursday: a parody of Bob Marley’s “Jammin'” (based on the challenges of using the Xerox copier at school) and a parody of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” I haven’t really rocked out since MoU’s last show, so being up on stage Friday to rehearse was great. We’re playing in the school’s beautiful theatre, and my bandmates have furnished us with some powerfully loud amps. We jammed on each song for about fifteen minutes straight last Friday, and I played “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” until I thought my left hand was going to fall up and all the muscles in my arm would snap. Any guitarist who’s played rock music knows that this discomfort is all code for having a great time!
So, at long last, I’ll leave you to my cover song music video for the week. As for me, I’m off to the BK Lounge to kick off TNA night part two (after last night’s very entertaining PPV).
This isn’t an acoustic cover as the previous ones that I used to submit here…
I played this song with my electric guitar with a light distorsion and I hope it does sound good! This is a great song from The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars by David Bowie (1972).
** EDITOR’S NOTE: **
I have a reason to be personally excited about this song — a while back, I recorded my first David Bowie cover, of “Hang on to Yourself.” That song is the one that precedes “Ziggy Stardust” on the aforementioned 1972 album.
Now, thanks to Federico, we’re happy to present the title track of the album, a song that ranked in the middle of Rolling Stone‘s 500 Best Rock Songs list recently. As usual, Federico has done an excellent job of stripping a song down to its basic elements, and electric guitar was a great choice for this one.
As a final note, I’m very happy to be able to promise you some great Federico Borluzzi sessions in the coming weeks and months, as I’ve recently built up several songs in reserve.
So, without further ado, enjoy this one and be sure to hurry back for more!
A couple years ago, a friend at work asked me for some information about Bob Dylan and his work in the 1960s. Little did she know I would not only give her son as much verbal information as he required, but I would also type up a brief discography of his albums. I just came across it today, and I figured I would share it with you all!
Bob Dylan Discography
– The Sixties –
1961 – January: Moves to New York
1962 – March: Bob Dylan
-Very folky album, mostly comprised of covers. His early original “Song to Woody” (for his hero, Woody Guthrie) is notable.
1963 – May: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan
-His first big success and one of his true classics! This is the album that made bands like the Beatles stand up and take notice of him.
1964 – January: The Times They Are A-Changin’
-Deep in the heart of his “protest song” era, this topical album solidified his standing with the folk artists of the 1960’s.
August: Another Side of Bob Dylan
-In this album, Dylan’s desire to break away from topical songs and write more personal material—“My Back Pages,” etc.—becomes evident.
1965 – March: Bringing It All Back Home
-Dylan begins to “go electric” with this half acoustic, half electric album.
August: Highway 61 Revisited
-This is where Dylan pulled out all the stops and made a sound that was all his own. Best known for its lead-off song, “Like A Rolling Stone.”
1966 – May: Blonde on Blonde
-Dylan pushes his sound a step further with this album; widely considered to be among the (if not THE) best album of his career.
1967 – December: John Wesley Harding
-Following his motorcycle accident in 1966 and the cancellation of his upcoming tour dates, fans were somewhat thrown by his return to a more folky sound.
1968 –
Records in a basement with the Band; those widely bootlegged takes were later
released as The Basement Tapes
1969 – April: Nashville Skyline
-Making the transformation complete, he released this country rock album with a new version of “Girl of the North Country” (originally from Freewheelin’) as a duet with Johnny Cash.
