Tag Archives: acoustic

“What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” (REM Cover)

Posted on by
Reply

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening to you!  I just had a wonderful run of Dynamis, then realized “Oh yeah, I am fresh out of videos for today!”  Thankfully, I had one ready to play and record, and you are in the right place to listen to it!

The song I have selected for today is by one of my favorite bands from my entire life, REM.  This song “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” was a single from their album “Monster”, which is home to some of my favorite REM songs.  The album itself has a wide range of sound, but a common element is the “fuzz” guitar sound that seems constant in nearly every track.  This song is not an exception to that trend, but naturally here at guitarbucketlist.com, we give you acoustic guitar and an in-tune voice to go along with it!

There’s been some debate to the last line of the song.  Most places i’ve read lyrics to the song say the last line is “I’ve never understood, don’t f*** with me, uh-huh”.  However, the radio play version I have heard countless times does not alter this last line that is in the CD version.  It leads me to believe the last line does not include the f word.  However, I still can’t figure out what it is.  So you will notice a change in the last line which does not change the meaning of the line at all.

This is also unique because the song has no acoustic guitar track, so hearing this played back is quite unique to me as well.

I hope you enjoy this latest installment, and I know you’ll be back tomorrow for our favorite day of the week, as Jim dips into his library of original goodies for a great session installment.  I’ll be here to watch it, and I know you will be as well!

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!

“Lady Picture Show” (Stone Temple Pilots Cover)

Posted on by
Reply

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening to you. I hope you had a great and fulfilling weekend, and that you are starting off your week right by visiting us here at https://guitarbucketlist.com/!

Back to normal here, I bring you another song by Stone Temple Pilots, bringing the total of STP songs we have covered for the sessions to 5. This will be the first cover from STP’s third album “Tiny Music Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop”. We’ve had long song titles before, but not long album titles. I look forward to hearing some even longer titles.

Well anyway, tonight’s session is a single from the album called “Lady Picture Show”. Always a favorite of mine. I always thought this song and album were underrated. The track selection is unique and unlike anything from their library, and produced two of their best singles “Big Bang Baby” and “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” (speaking of long song titles…).

This song translates well as an acoustic cover. My voice was a bit tired from baseball this weekend though (a whole lot of called strike 3’s can be tough on the vocal cords). I also said one wrong word in the final verse. It should be “she hides behind the bedroom door”, but I said “she hides behind the bedroom wall” instead.

I hope you enjoyed “Title Track” week, and if you found our series as a result of our article in the Record Journal today, we welcome you and hope you enjoy our series so much that you come back every day.

Also, as a side note, I crossed 15K views on Friday night, and this video marks my 60th Laptop Session! Don’t worry – there are plenty of acoustic cover videos to come from Chris, Jim, and myself!

Stay tuned for Jim’s latest and greatest session tomorrow. Have a great day!

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!

“Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” (Bob Dylan Cover)

Posted on by
Reply

For Bob Dylan chords and lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

It was definitely one of those “clouds parting” kind of Chris Moore Mondays for me.

First of all, I should clarify that “Chris Moore Mondays” is the title we use around here to remind you all that it’s my job to post a great cover song music video for you each and every Monday evening.  Next, I should explain the “clouds parting” aspect.  Well, I woke up around 5:30 this morning and was having serious difficulty getting myself out of bed.  Then, I noticed I had an email from bobdylan.com.

Long story short, I had woken up to find the link to a free download of the new, unreleased Bob Dylan track “Beyond Here Lies Nothin.'”  It will be track one on his upcoming album, Together Through Life, to be released on Tuesday, April 28th.  Sorry, Jim — this means that your birthday the following day is going to be something of an anti-climax.  😉

In all seriousness, this is an exciting bit of New Music Tuesday news.  After all, there were five years of separation between 2001’s Love and Theft and 2006’s Modern Times.  Now, it’s been less than three years and there’s a new release.  Based on the first track alone, I couldn’t be more excited.  It’s a pretty simple song — only three chords and a basic verse, chorus, repeat structure with a few instrumental breaks thrown in and a classic Dylan chorus style in which the lines in each chorus are slightly different.  I wasn’t sure what to think of the lyrics at first, but they’ve really grown on me today as I’ve listened to the song repeatedly and learned to play it.  I’m still not sure what to think of lines like “The whole world is my throne” or “And every window’s made of glass.”

The conclusion I’ve come to is that this is a deceptively simple song.  In the beginning of the song, Dylan sings of a lover in terms that express fairly standard love-song mentalities.  Still, by the end of the track, he compares himself to a ship in harbor with the sails up.  This implies that the ship is about to leave harbor, or perhaps that he is ready to move on to something — or someone — new.  And yet he goes on to tell his lover that she should lay her hand upon his head.  In typical Dylan fashion, even a love song has darker overtones, as played out in the chorus lines.  The choral sections really are my favorite lines.  “Beyond here lies nothin,'” he sings, “But the mountains of the past” or “Nothin’ done and nothin’ said.”  There is simply nowhere else he would rather be than where he is, as he acknowledges that there is nothing “beyond here.”  The questions, of course, are 1) where is “here”? and 2) does he really want to be “here” or are there simply no better options?

As I mentioned, it’s a fairly simple song.  Even I was able to figure it out in short order.  It’s three chords — Am, Dm, and E — easily within my register with an uptempo beat.  It’s actually caused a bit of a debate among Dylan fans who have disagreed over the use of accordion in the song and the state of Dylan’s vocal abilities.  As far as I’m concerned, the instrumentation is excellent, raw and loose but very intentional and fitting, accordion or no accordion.  As for Dylan’s voice, I read one user’s take on the fansite expectingrain.com.  He essentially said that Dylan’s vocals have deteriorated even more than they had on Modern Times.  My reaction is simple:

Really?

I mean, if you’ve followed Dylan over the past decade and enjoyed Time Out of Mind or the aforementioned two albums, then you know that his gritty vocals are fitting.  He may not stand a chance on American Idol, but I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing!  Another post that I read made a great deal of sense.  This user basically argued that Dylan’s vocals on studio recordings and during live performances should be weighed separately.  I agree with this — while his vocals may be a bit difficult to understand and follow in concerts at times, his studio recordings haven’t failed to impress me — including vocals, instruments, etc.

Needless to say, I hope you enjoy my take on this brand new Dylan song.  If you’re a guitarist, you should check out my chords and lyrics (see the link above) and have fun playing it yourself.  And, without further ado, I wish you a good night and a great week…

See you next session!

“Runnin’ Down A Dream” (Tom Petty Cover)

Posted on by
Reply

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening and welcome to your Friday edition of “Da Sessions” (as a student of mine put it – well, it could’ve been from Ditka too).  Tonight I bring you another one of those “sorta” new band (solo artist?) songs that we like to break out quite frequently.

Tonight’s song is a Tom Petty classic called “Runnin’ Down A Dream”.  It is from his first solo album called “Full Moon Fever”.  This song is well known as having that really cool riff, with the fuzzy guitar and acoustic guitar and constant rock drum beat.  Well, that doesn’t narrow it down much.  Petty is known for having a lot of kick ass tunes in his library.

Tonight I had a battle with myself.  I had no idea which song to record tonight out of the 5 I have remaining for the year.  I spent about an hour deciding to record this song because I felt it was the least intensive on my voice.

I actually had myself a great day today.  I woke up very early and discovered that I was getting an early start to my weekend.  I do so love snow storms and I love it when we get an unexpected day off to enjoy it.  I ended up doing some decorating around the house for Hanukkah, made pancakes for breakfast, and got to enjoy a lot of different things in Final Fantasy XI today.  Because it didn’t start snowing here until about 11:30, my wife still got to go out to the lunch with her coworkers that she wanted to do, and I got to hit the gym like normal.

Now all I got to do is find a time tomorrow to finish my holiday shopping.  Thankfully my wife took care of most of it :).

And I also have tomorrow morning off as well.  Snowstorms do rule.  They’re so good, “It’s like jumping into a foam block pit after being launched off a trampoline 15 feet into the air and you lay there for a while staring up at the ceiling thinking how cool that whole thing just was good”.

Well, tomorrow you can count on Jim to enhance your viewing experience with another acoustic cover song.  I’ll be back on Monday for my next installment.  Seeya then!

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!