“Lives of Crime” (Fruit Bats Cover)

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to your first post by someone other than Jeff since Saturday.  There’s no need to fret, though…

For tonight, however, I’m bringing you yet another new band to the blog.  I’m fairly certain you’ve never heard of this band.  In fact, if I were a betting man, I’d be willing to put down serious money on it.  Why did I choose this song, you may be wondering?  Well — and this is no lie — this one actually came to me in a dream.  I had a dream a few nights ago that I woke up, walked over to my CD shelf, and began looking through the cases to find bands that hadn’t been covered yet.  Among the bands I thought of, my Fruit Bats CD came into my vision (in my dream) and thus popped into my head when I woke up.

If this doesn’t show just how pervasive the Laptop Sessions “session-a-day” project has been in our lives, then I don’t know what will.  I mean, how many people dream about things like this??

The Fruit Bats are an interesting band.  There is very little information available about them; even their Wikipedia page is fairly brief.  I found out a little more than I already knew — Eric Johnson is the lead guitarist and songwriter who formed the band in 1999.  He has been the only constant member.

I did learn that he used to be with a group called I Rowboat before the Fruit Bats.  What a name!  Currently, he’s working with the more popular indie/alternative group the Shins.  Also, I went to their official website for the first time.  It’s pretty plain — what they should do is hire one Jim Fusco of Fusco-Moore Studios’ Web Design Services to really make it stand out — but I learned that they have several tour dates planned for the west coast and that they have plans to record a new album.  Also, there’s a new “Blog” section on the site and the first post was made by “the Fruit Bats” last month.

See, blogs are where it’s at!…

So, I hope you enjoy this acoustic rock cover song.  If you get a chance to hear the real version, I think you should, as there’s some cool piano components to the studio recording that I, for obvious reasons, couldn’t and didn’t include.  I think it shows that I had a lot of fun recording this video.  And, truly, it reminded me about one of the best aspects of the Laptop Sessions project — we get to rediscover music that we have forgotten over the years and, through learning the songs, get to understand the music in a way that we previously had not.

Without further ado, here’s the song.  Don’t forget to rush back tomorrow for an all-new and excellent Original Wednesday with Jeff.  It’ll be good.  It’ll be “I fractured my skull by banging my head against a wall because Jeff wasn’t posting today but now he is so I’m still in pain but really happy to watch his new video” good!!…

See you next session!

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WCJM Presents: “The Tenth Anniversary Show”!!

By Chris Moore:

Hey, there, all you listeners out there in Internet radio land!  Have I got news for you!…

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was a momentous occasion for those of us at Fusco-Moore Productions, as all seven original WCJM cast members re-united for a nearly three hour morning show that took place in the morning!  (If you’re a long-time fan, you may be aware that we often record in the late afternoon or evening.)

The title of this new installment is the Tenth Anniversary Show, as it was recorded only three months after the ten year anniversary of our very first WCJM Moore Hits in the Morning show, starring (then) only Chris, Jim, and Mike.  Well, ten years later we’re still recording these shows, now with the longtime additions of Alberto, Dave, Matt, and Jeff.

This show is truly our best yet.  I say this without having heard the show yet, but just being there…  If you combine a year’s worth of quality skits, an amazing variety of music chosen by all seven cast members, and fairly equal distribution of talking by all during the show, you get “The Tenth Anniversary Show.”

So, to answer the question that’s on everyone’s minds…  How do I watch the show??

Well, I’m glad you asked.  It’s as easy as going to www.wcjm.com and clicking on the “Moore Hits in the Morning” section.

Or, click on this direct link:

wcjm.com/moore-hits-in-the-morning.php

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Chris Moore’s 200th Subscriber

By Chris Moore:

Well, it’s happened…  I’ve finally reached a milestone on YouTube: my 200th subscriber!

I passed the 200 mark on my YouTube.com channel a few days ago, but it’s been a crazy week.  When I wasn’t at school planning, teaching, grading, and filling out paperwork, I was at home helping Jim pick out the perfect Christmas tree (if you’re a fan of symmetry, you’d agree!), recording Laptop Sessions, and watching TNA Impact! with the hope of possibly seeing Christian Cage’s triumphant return to the program.  That’s the question on my mind now: Is Christian staying with TNA?  Is he going back to WWE?  I’ve spent a considerable amount of time and energy searching this online, and there are some decent arguments (with somewhat shady and vague sources, mostly) for each side.  I’ll just have to wait and hope.  Truly, he’s one of the reasons I watch every week.  Even Sting, although he’s been there every week, has been in a transition period of sorts, having made friends of the bad guys.

Oh, well.  What was this post about again?  Oh, yeah…

I have 200 subscribers!  Thanks so much to all who have clicked that little “Subscribe” button above my YouTube channel icon.  I hope my videos continue to interest and entertain you!

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“Forever Young” (Bob Dylan Cover)

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to my second to last Laptop Session of 2008!  For my selection tonight, I’ve gone back to the formidable catalog of Bob Dylan.  Specifically, I’ve chosen a song that I think everyone should hear — around this time of the year, especially.

“Forever Young” is a fairly simple and straightforward song, one about wishing someone health, happiness, self-confidence, and an overall high quality of life.  I think it’s really interesting that Dylan recorded two versions of this song.  Now, you may be wondering why this is out of the ordinary, as Dylan is well-known for recording multiple versions of the same song, often with various arrangements and different lyrics.  However, in this case, both versions (each very unique) were included on the same album, 1974’s Planet Waves…  Back to back!

I hope you enjoy my cover of this great song, and I hope you’ll accept it as a blessing extended from me to each one of you, each of you that has taken and continues to take the time to listen to my cover songs.  It’s been quite a year with some great videos, some mediocre videos, and a few that stretched the range of what I’m able to do.  And, at the end of this noble experiment we like to call “session-a-day,” I find myself being able to sing a song — this one, “Forever Young,” — that I wasn’t able to sing and play comfortably as recently as a year ago.

Before I leave you to watch the music video I’ve posted on YouTube for today, I’d like to thank Jim’s cousin Sarah for having us over tonight.  Jim, Becky, Sarah, and I went to see Jim Carrey in Yes Man (and it was excellent fun!), eat at Luigi’s (where I had delicious scallops over ziti), and even got to play Wii tennis, dodgeball, and volleyball.  Sarah and I were an unstoppable team, but Jim did beat me mercilessly in the gladiator event.  It was good to get out.

And, as a final note, I just finished reading Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which was a Christmas present from my sister Jaime.  It was an excellent book, and as I mentioned to her, I wish I had read it in high school, as I was trying to figure out some essential things about myself.  That was in large part what the novel was all about — learning to understand and be confident about yourself before you can properly fit other people into your life.  Now, I’m 25 pages into Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and really enjoying it.  Vonnegut is great; his final novel, Timequake, really impressed me, and I have no doubts that I’ll be equally amazed with this one by the time I’ve finished reading it.

Okay, but this is enough for now.  You should go watch my video, and I’m going to go back to watching episodes from the eighth season of ER, one of my favorite shows of all time.  I forgot how much I cared about these characters — Greene, Carter, Lewis, and others.

See you next and last (for 2008) session!

More Laptop Sessions covers