Tag Archives: acoustic

“Livin’ With A Heartache” (The Beach Boys Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

I kick off the year with a new Beach Boys acoustic cover song.  I bribed Chris (by making clams and spaghetti for dinner) tonight to do this video with me.  He was a welcome addition and really helped to fill-out this song.

Carl Wilson wasn’t the most prolific songwriter, but when he did come out with a new tune, he made it count.  He really took over the role as “leader” of the Beach Boys in the 70s and 80s.  When “Keepin’ the Summer Alive” came out in 1980, he had to juggle his brother Brian’s worsening condition and his brother Dennis’ increasingly tragic lifestyle.

It’s no surprise that I love this album.  Something about it… The Boys just knew what they were doing.  Yes, it’s really cheesy at points, but it’s a really diverse album.  The only true disappointment for me is the lack of ANY Dennis contribution at all.  Oh, wait, I take that back- I think he plays the tambourine on one song…  That’s especially disappointing because Denny had such an amazing contribution to LA (Light Album).  Those songs were supposed to be for his ill-fated (until recently) Bambu album, but even his vocals on Carl’s amazing “Angel Come Home” made the album that much better.  “Love Surrounds Me” is also an incredible song- to me, it just sounds EXACTLY like a song from 1979 should- with elements of rock, blues, disco and mostly funk.  Of course, Bruce Johnston took the “disco” part waaaaaayyyy too far on the horrible (and horribly long) rendition of “Here Comes the Night”.

Anyway, Carl’s best “albums” (meaning albums where he contributed the most) were “The Beach Boys (1985)” and this one, “Keepin’ the Summer Alive”.  These albums will forever remind me of the last day of school each year, as my father would pick us (my brother and me) up from school in the Camaro and we would go have fun on our first day out.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown to love “Livin’ With A Heartache” more and more.  At times, Carl had a bit of a tendency to sound a bit over-dramatic and kind of like a lounge singer (“It’s Over Now” comes to mind), but that may have been just a style of the time.  In this song, Carl sounds angrier and his voice is in perfect form.  I love the country-tinge to this song- another trait I’ve gotten to like more and more as time’s gone on.

I hope you enjoy my first entry for the year.  I hope to bring you a very special duet next week with a new guest to the Laptop Sessions.  We’ll be doing a great Beatles tune, so make sure to come back each and every Tuesday for Jim Fusco Tuesdays!  Oh, and by the way- make sure to check out all the great new sections on the site.  As Chris mentioned yesterday, we have a new homepage design that makes all of the important information and links easier to find.  I hope that the site in its current form will welcome new viewers to the blog better than ever before.

“Baby I Love Your Way” (Peter Frampton Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

My LAST post of the year is the my last entry into our “Session a day” project.  I can’t believe it’s over, but I also can’t believe that it took this long to get where we are!  I mean, yes, we’ve gotten some success, but it certainly hasn’t been overnight.  We’re talking over a year now!  But, I do see many great signs of progress every day here on the best music video blog ever created.  Tell your friends- tell your enemies- tell everyone!

Tonight, I bring you a classic tune off of the album that Peter Griffin asked, “You what was huge?  ‘Frampton Comes Alive.’  Honestly, was there even one person you knew who didn’t have that record?”  It’s so true.  I went out and got a copy on CD a few years back.  I’m not a huge fan of long, drawn out, jam sessions, so the concert was of limited enjoyment to me.  But, I did get a few great songs off of this album, especially because the famous versions are from that concert.  I first bought a copy of a Frampton Greatest Hits, but it had the studio version of “Show Me the Way”.  The version everyone knows is the live version!  And then, I had always heard the studio version of “Baby I Love Your Way” on the radio.  Guess what?  The live version graced that disc.  I was pissed.  That actually happened to me once before with a Neil Diamond greatest hits album.  I so desperately wanted the studio version of a certain song and the collection only had the live cut.  This was back in the days before iTunes and commercially available mp3s, so no help there.

I really enjoy “Baby I Love Your Way”.  It’s a simple song- no odd stops or middle eights or guitar solos- but it gets the sentiment across well and has a nice, recognizable tune.  I had fun playing this one.  I’m always concerned that I look angry while I’m playing these songs.  That is, angry or just very hurt.  I have to catch myself on things like that.  For this video, I had to do about ten takes (only one other full one) to get it right.  I kept putting the wrong emphasis on words or I would look in the camera and notice I had this scowl on my face.  Ah, the Laptop Sessions…

THANK YOU to all who have supported us in our efforts to bring you a cover song a day for the entire year of 2008!  We’ll be donig a video a week (each) next year, but to make up for the slower schedule, we’ll be writing articles, posting music reviews, and adding the chords to your favorite songs so you can play along!  Have a GREAT New Year.  My next scheduled post won’t be until Tuesday, January 6th, but I don’t think I can be away for that long, so I’ll be on here, redesigning the homepage for the site for the new year and new schedule.  Until then!

“House of the Rising Sun” (The Animals Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Christmastime will have to wait another year to come around again. But, things went very well over the past couple of days. Christmas Eve started with breakfast at McDonald’s before work with Chris and Dana. Then, we got out of work at 2:00 and I came home to clean up and take a nap before my family arrived for dinner. We all ate and ate and ate until Mike and I went over to Hubbard Park in Meriden where they have the whole park decked-out in Christmas lights. There’s always so many interesting animals made out of wire and lights- turtles, a beaver, moose, and even frogs. After that, Mike and I watched an episode of the show Freaks and Geeks before bed.

We woke up to our usual bounty of Christmas presents. I was happy because this year, I actually got everyone a TON of stuff, too, and was pretty excited to see if they liked it all. I got what I was hoping for- a Playstation 3! I’m so excited because I have a great Samsung HD television, but I haven’t gotten to use it to its full potential yet. With the PS3, I’ll be able to play games and movies in high-def.

I also got some other great stuff, including a TON of accessories for PS3 (and also the game MLB 08) from Mike. I got some very useful stuff for my condo, as well, as I tend to neglect buying things I truly need for everyday life and just focus on saving up for large purchases.

After we ate dinner, we took our annual trip to my Aunt’s house. We opened presents and I played a Nintendo DS game with my little cousin Gerry where the object of the game was to make Daffy Duck angry. How fun!

I then came back home for, as Chris said, a great episode of TNA iMPACT! Oh, I also got that video game, too!

After that, I finally got to come home and open presents I got from Becky. She got me a train set (I was right!) for around the tree, some “hot packs” of baseball cards (when you’re guaranteed to get a jersey card inside), and six (yes, 6!) Blu-Ray movies for my new player! I got one from every category, including scenic, action, music, etc.

I got up this morning and went to the train station with Becky to catch the train to New York City. We had an appointment at the NV Perricone Cosmeceuticals boutique on Madison Avenue, where I scheduled a spa treatment for Becky. Thankfully, I work for NV Perricone’s headquarters in Meriden, CT, so it was a lot easier (and less money) to get an appointment. I couldn’t believe how upscale that area was. I ate lunch at a nice European cafe…that is, if you consider lunch to be a piece of pie and a cup of coffee for 14 dollars!!! I sat down and looked at the menu first. I was so surprised at the prices for lunch that I forced myself to just get the pie and coffee. I would’ve been out forty bucks easy if I got lunch…for just me! So, to ease my hunger, I got a $1.50 hot dog from a street vendor, then went back to find a glowing Becky after her treatment.

We then saw the Rockafeller Center Christmas tree, then won a lottery where we got FRONT ROW seats to see Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” on Broadway for only $27 each! Those tickets were going for $120 at the box office! We were pretty pumped. We ate a nice meal at Bubba Gump shrimp (I knew the answer to the trivia question about how many Dr. Peppers Forrest drank at the White House) and then saw the show. It was a long train ride home, especially because I knew I had to record a video!

Tonight’s video, after 640 words of writing, is one of the most covered songs of all time. Just about every folk singer has done this, but the reason I know it is probably the reason why you know it, too- The Animals. Their version of this traditional song is just so cool. The ripping vocals, the wailing organ solo, and of course, those four to five chords that just give you instant recognition of this tune. The strumming pattern is cool, but not the easiest thing to do while singing. At least they’re easy chords.

I’m glad to add another “new” band to the best video blog ever created- it’s like “going to bed at 4 am knowing that this was the night you were supposed to catch up on your sleep, but who cares because it’s the weekend of Christmas” good! I only have ONE MORE video to do to complete our entire year’s worth of Laptop Sessions acoustic cover and original songs videos and I feel very accomplished right now. Enjoy tonight’s video and I’ll see you for my year’s swan song on Monday!

“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” (Darlene Love Christmas Song Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Okay, this one was for fun, and I implore you- just for fun!  I was planning on doing this one all day.  I needed one more Christmas song before the big day and I’ve always enjoyed singing this one.  For the most part, I can sing the whole song without going into falsetto.  Of course, I usually have to project (a nicer word for scream) when I sing this song, so it was nicer to be in a quiet environment.

This was a LANDMARK day for the Laptop Sessions- we reached our highest view total yet for one day- 263 visitors!  Thank you to all who came to the site today and we sincerely hope you’ll continue to come back.  There are no plans of stopping here on the best music video blog in the universe.  Every time I say that, I think of those TV political news shows.  They always claim they have the “Best political team…” and then add: on television, in America, in the world, in the solar system, in the universe, of all time…

“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is the perfect album closer to probably the best Christmas album of all time- “A Christmas Gift For You from Phil Spector”.  That album was so innovative and actually featured GOOD original songs in a holiday mood.  Everyone whose been reading this blog for a while knows that I’m a fan of great album closers.  I hate when a band just shoves some plain old solo acoustic number at the end of the album.  It’s always such a downer and makes you long for Track 1 all over again.  Tonight’s song is one of those album closers that gets you goin’ again!  Plus, it’s the best song on the album, which is a rarity being right at the end.  I do need to point out that after this song, there is a special “Silent Night” track wiht a Christmas message from a very wimpy sounding Phil Spector, so that’s technically the closing track.   But not until I got the album on CD (we just always listened to a compilation of a hundred great Christmas songs my father put together) did I even know that track existed.  And, I shouldn’t have doubted my father’s choice to leave it off of his compilation- that track stinks.

Darlene Love’s vocals are just great on this track.  I hope I didn’t miss her singing this song on David Letterman this year.  She always sings it and she still sounds great.  Although, the pitch of the song has dropped down considerably over time.

I guess this song tonight just proves that I will go to great lengths to sing songs in the original key.  You may have noted that I sang the high parts in my last Christmas music video (Happy Xmas, War is Over) in a lower octave, albeit in the same key.  But, as always, I had a reason for that rare exception to my hard-and-fast rule.  Singing that part in the high register just sounded WAY too much like Yoko Ono, so I decided to salvage the song by taking Yoko out of the equation completely! 🙂

Enjoy tonight’s cover song music video.  I’m very excited, of course, for Christmas.  I know Chris and Jeff will make you proud with their holiday offerings over the next two days.  I can’t wait to see what I got, but more importantly, to see the reactions on the faces of people I got gifts for.  This is shaping up to be a nice Christmas.  I won’t talk to you until after the holiday, so I wish everyone the very best and I thank you all for such a great and exciting year!