“White Christmas” (Irving Berlin Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

I want to welcome you to the ultimate Thumpin’ Thursday edition – the Christmas edition!

Today I bring you an acoustic cover of Irving Berlin’s classic song “White Christmas”.  It’s a song we all know and love.  I won’t get mad if you sing along.

I had a great Christmas – I got to spend it with my family all day.  We talked, ate, opened presents, gave each other presents, and had an overall wonderful time.  Sherry & I then came home and exchanged the nights’ worth of Hanukkah gifts.  She loves her new digital photo frame too!

Tomorrow Sherry & I are going on vacation to a resort in NY.  We will be gone until Tuesday.  Because of this, I will have a post “auto-publish” on Sunday.  But if you just can’t wait, look me up on Youtube to see a preview of Sunday’s song.

I hope your Christmas was wonderful, and I hope you have nothing to bring back tomorrow.  Come back tomorrow for Jim to enlighten us with another wonderful acoustic cover.  See you 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!

CD Review: Brian Wilson’s “SMiLE”

RATING:  5 / 5 stars

By Chris Moore:

SMiLE has arrived!

This was the general battle cry that my closest friends and I sounded after we heard official reports of the scheduled 2004 release of an album that had originally been conceived nearly four decades earlier. Billed as “the abandoned follow-up to the Beach Boys’ classic Pet Sounds,” SMiLE was indeed released in 2004, accompanied by a tour that left nothing to be desired. Short of going back in time and releasing a SMiLE that would have been fronted by Carl and Dennis Wilson and would have gone up against the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Brian Wilson could do little more to truly do this album—his album—justice.

To critique the songs or to analyze them at any length would be, for me (the amateur critic), an exercise in misconceived self-importance. This is an album that has been elected Album of the Year by Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, and USA Today. According to one advertisement, “…it has been declared a ‘masterpiece’ by Newsweek, and ‘a serious contender for the greatest album ever made’ by London’s The Independent.” Widespread acceptance and acclamation of this caliber must be taken seriously and, to an extent, must be questioned. Can one album be so wonderful as to deserve such accolades? Can the fact that SMiLE holds a historical importance have colored the reviews that it is receiving? I hesitate to heap additional praises on the album for this reason, as well as the fact that I have little to add that has not already been said.

This being said, I must heap additional—yet not undue—praises upon this album and the tour that accompanied it. I attended the SMiLE concert at Carnegie Hall and again when it came to my hometown of Wallingford, at the Oakdale (reluctantly I now say, Chevrolet) Theater. Additionally, I watched the DVD release that was filmed during a concert in Los Angeles. This is a body of work that I am well familiar with. This is the Brian Wilson who earned his fame leading the Beach Boys during their surfer music days. This is the Brian Wilson who paved the way for songwriters everywhere with the conception and creation of Pet Sounds. And this is the Brian Wilson who continued to create music, ranging from mediocre to incredible, both for better (think: Imagination) and for worse, remaining in relative anonymity for all these years. This is indeed the Brian Wilson who deserves all the credit in the world for reaching back into an “abandoned” project, pushing aside personal demons—both figurative and literal, and injecting new energy into what is essentially a forty-year old concept.

This is the most and the best I can say for SMiLE: it is not a wanna-be Beach Boys album. It is not a simple re-recording of demos and snippets that fans have been listening to for decades. This is an album that stands on its own, interweaving the old and the new, bringing the old voices—Van Dyke Parks’ pen and Brian Wilson’s mouth—together with the new voices—Darian Sahanaja and Nick Walusko of the Wondermints and eight other talented musicians and singers, not to mention the eight-piece Stockholm Strings ‘n’ Horns section that followed him on tour.

The album is a three-part composition. The songs range from light-hearted and even silly (think: “Vega-Tables”) to poetic (think: “Surf’s Up”) to vocally brilliant (think: “Our Prayer”) and sometimes all in the same track (think: “In Blue Hawaii”). I was particularly impressed by the manner in which Wilson utilized the Beach Boys hits “Heroes and Villains” and “Good Vibrations” as book ends for this album.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. And you might even smile.

11/2005

“Better Man” (Pearl Jam Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening to you all! It’s Jeff Copperthite returning for another Saturday night fever edition of The Laptop Sessions! I’m back to school this week, and i’m sure if you are a student, or have children who are students, I feel your pain. Except mine is the “I have to get back into teaching mode” pain.

However, session-a-day must go on! We are nearing September, which means 2/3 of the year is nearly complete since we started this project. And not a day goes by that Jim, Chris, and myself mutter under our breath “What was Chris thinking?”.

But it will all be worth it – it already all is. That’s because you’re reading this, and have enjoyed nearly 200 videos from the four of us. I also want to thank Mike for jumping in with an awesome original song on Wednesday. Given that I haven’t been doing much writing lately, and Mike had expressed a lot of interest in doing an original, it was the natural thing to do.

Today’s song is one from Pearl Jam – a band that we have seen before on the sessions. I am covering another song from their album “Vitalogy” called “Better Man”. It starts out soft and gets much stronger and emphasized in the last part. This song received (and still does receive) much airplay on the radio.

I don’t feel this is my strongest performance, but it works much better than I thought it did while recording. Note to future artists – never eat a pack of Nutter Butters before recording a video. You’ll have to cancel it out with 1/2 a Gatorade and a Vitamin Water (“Water sucks – Gatorade is better”, to quote the Waterboy).

Anyway, enjoy this latest entry, and check back for your Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! edition with Jimnelious…er, 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 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!

“She Drives Me Crazy” (Fine Young Cannibals Cover)

By Jeff:

It’s that time – Thumpin’ Thursday!  And it’s the 2nd to last Thursday that I have before the prom that I have been helping to plan.  Everything is starting to fall into place for it, and I will be the happiest person alive next Friday once I can wake up and say “well that was fun and worth it”.

Until then, I have a great song that is perfect for this week.  Obviously not in reference to anybody in particular, but just the fact it has the word “crazy” in it makes it appropriate.

The song this week is from a new band to the Sessions called “She Drives Me Crazy”.  I’m sure everyone will instantly recognize this tune.  It was a #1 hit (among another song off of the same album) in the 80’s, and the original version of this song has one of the coolest music videos i’ve ever seen.  The album by the way is called “The Raw & The Cooked”.

This song is an ok translation to acoustic guitar.  Part of the allure of the song is the percussion and “beat” that is provided throughout the song.  Don’t get me wrong – i’m glad that we can now say there is an acoustic cover of the song, but i’m not sure that the original version was meant for an acoustic guitar.

That being said, my Roland Gift impression is not that good :(.  I always said to myself he looks like someone I know, but I can’t place who it was or who I thought it was.

This song is also quite easy to play.  If you can play a D – G – Bm – A progression, and switch up the strum patterns for verse & chorus, then you can play this one.

Ok i’m going to head to bed so I can take care of some more prom planning, then I have a Dr.’s appt., then I get to umpire a Varsity game tomorrow that I got moved to today!  That’ll make 3 Varsity games this week.

I hope you enjoy your weekend, and make sure you keep returning to 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!