Welcome to your Saturday night fever edition of The Laptop Sessions! Today I bring you another return engagement with a band previously featured on the sessions, and it is a great song.
The band is Toad the Wet Sprocket (and again, don’t ask – I’m not too sure where that name came from either), and today I am covering another song from their final album “Coil” (well, I should now say their most recent release) called “Crazy Life”. It is a simple, yet catchy tune with a great strum pattern. The lyrics are quite interesting and I still have not fully understood what they mean. There are a few historical references you’ll hear though.
It is appropriate that I am doing this song today. I really had a “Crazy Life” kinda day, where I ejected only my 2nd coach in my 2 year umpiring career. It takes a lot to get to me, and if you go onto my ejection list, you must’ve done something wrong. Baseball coaches, if you are reading this, do not argue balls and strikes – unless you’re looking for an excuse to go home.
I hope you enjoy today’s session, and I know you will be back to see Jim’s latest installment of the sessions. We’re rolling along as usual! Seeya next 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 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!
Hello and welcome to yet another all-new acoustic rock cover song from the best cover music video blog on the Internet! Although last week was fun for me — I played covers from the Counting Crows and Jimi Hendrix, which were both a lot of fun to learn and play — but this week promises to be even better. Not only is it my turn for an Original Wednesday (when we songwriters here at the music blog break out one of our original songs), but I’m starting out the week with a song from one of my all-time favorite bands, the Wallflowers.
Which brings me to today’s video. This is “Letters From the Wasteland” from the Wallflowers’ Breach album, which was released in 2000. I was actually listening to my iPod on random earlier today when this song came up. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t already done a session of it, and I figured that Jeff might take it if I didn’t jump on it soon. In fact, Jeff is another reason I chose to record the song. He just recently recorded “Some Flowers Bloom Dead,” another great song from Breach. I love that song, too, but I’ve always been taken by “Letters.” There’s something really dark and powerful about it, and I absolutely love the drum beat and the guitar sounds.
Interestingly enough, at least for an English teacher like myself, is that the title of this song is reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, “The Waste Land.” I always wondered if Jakob Dylan intended any sort of reference, but there is a key clue that makes me believe he didn’t. Namely, the Eliot poem spells it as two words — Waste Land — whereas the Wallflowers song spells it as one — Wasteland. This may seem like a minor detail, but you’d think that Dylan, being as careful about his wording and his songwriting as he says he is, would have picked up on such a detail. It would honestly be one of the questions I would ask him if I ever met him…
That being said about the background information regarding the actual song, I have to say a bit about my night surrounding this music video. What a night! First, I’ve been hit with allergies pretty bad the past couple days, and even though I started taking allergy medication again, it hasn’t quite kicked in. Thus, my voice wasn’t exactly angelic to begin with tonight. Then, I kept recording takes of the song that I wasn’t really thrilled with, so by my tenth take or so (including brief false starts) I was dragging. My throat was pretty sore. After taking a break to watch the Mets a bit, I went back downstairs and ten or so minutes later, I had a take that I was pretty happy with. So, I went upstairs from the studio to render my video and post it…
…only to find that the last ten seconds of the recording were all audio static!!
This was devastating to me at the time and some words and phrases slipped out that I shouldn’t repeat on a family-friendly blog. (Well, as a quick tangent, a family friendly blog directory actually removed us from their listing a few months ago, so maybe we’ve crossed the line already…) But, anyway, Jim swooped in and, being the computer deity that he is, spliced and salvaged my take by using footage from previous takes. Amazing. Even though I now owe him lunch or dinner or a drink or really any sort of food/beverage outing that he chooses, it was well worth it! I didn’t mentally or physically have it in me to either record yet another take or to settle for a previous one.
And this brings us to the actual video. I hope you enjoy “Letters From the Wasteland” and I hope you hurry back tomorrow for a new acoustic rock cover from our resident Wallflowers expert, Jeff Copperthite. You’ll never know what song is up his sleeve unless you check back tomorrow…
I first got into the Wallflowers after hearing “One Headlight,” but this song (from the same album) has quickly become one of my favorite tunes to play. We’ve played it in concert often, with Mike taking the first verse and chorus, and I certainly miss the “na na na”‘s on the final verse, but it’s still fun to play. I hope you enjoy it too!
As a side note for any die hard Laptop Sessions fans, this is actually my second time posting “Sixth Avenue Heartache” on the website. The first time, the video was online for a few hours before I realized it was in the wrong key. I’ve been playing it wrong for years! So, I came home tonight and tried it again.
It has been a great week here at guitarbucketlist.com’s Track 1 week. I had the privilege of opening it up with a U2 video that many have not found due to uploading difficulties. Thankfully, Chris & Jim have posted four awesome album openers during the week, and my U2 video is finally getting some more views.
Now I get to close out Track 1 week with what is probably going to be one of my favorite performances. I am going into the library of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and performing “Saving Grace” from their most recent album “Highway Companion”. I love the bluesy guitar riff and Tom Petty’s lyrical style. We also have this in the live library for The Laptop Sessions Live tour. We did play it at Testa’s back on April 12.
Speaking of the tour, we were on fire last night with our most recent live show at George’s II. There will be audio and pictures to come from that in the near future. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, though, you can see 5 images from the show right now.
I want to point out that I used to think/was taught that the instrumental riff went E-B-A-G, but upon closer listening to the song (oh, about 22 times), I figured out it actually is E-Bb-A-G, but the B chord going into the last verse is the correct chord.
This concludes track 1 week. We hope you enjoy it and in 2 weeks we get to break out another special week for you. Thank you again for being a regular visitor of guitarbucketlist.com!
Come on back tomorrow for another great session by Jim Fusco himself!
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!
