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“Bob Dylan’s Dream” (Bob Dylan Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Thanks for coming to the best acoustic cover song music blog on the Internet!  Today, our featured cover is “Bob Dylan’s Dream.”  Bob Dylan, believe it or not, is the original songwriter.  Who would have guessed?  Well, I guess anyone could have…

This song was originally released on Dylan’s early folk album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and it is what you would call a deep track, as it was never a hit, no one that I know of ever covered it for an album, and it never appeared on any live compilations.  At least, not official ones.  But, regardless of how little attention it has received, I think that it is a perfect candidate for the Laptop Sessions treatment.  First, it’s originally acoustic, recorded once as a “live-in-the-studio” recording, which makes it easily translatable to an acoustic cover song.  Second, it has a really nostalgic feel to it.  By nostalgic, I don’t mean that it sounds like an oldtime song or anything like that.  Rather, I mean that it really makes you think about your own “first friends” — those people that you spent your youth with, engaged in simple activities that brought indescribable happiness.

Well, those “first friends” very rarely make it into your future.  And while it’s always nice to look back and remember them, it can be very sad to think about the exits they took from your life.  Like Bob Dylan, I would pay a good deal of money to go sit “simply in that room again.”  But you can never go back…

…you can only write and sing songs like this one that describe the feeling!  Another thing I love about the song is that it starts off with the line, “While riding on a train going west…”  It gives the feeling of someone nodding off as a train barrels on down the tracks, and as that person just drifts off, these memories of his life come rushing back to him.  I think that’s a great way to start the song.

While this is certainly not my first Bob Dylan cover song — it’s one of many Bob Dylan songs I’ve learned and performed — it is one of the few that I haven’t known for years.  Many times, when I record a Dylan music video, I just dig back to a song that I used to play all the time and re-learn it.  This song was new to my acoustic cover song repetoire, so it was really fun to learn it.  And, of course, a little harmonica on a Dylan song goes a long way…

I hope that you’ve been noticing and enjoying all of the changes and additions to the blog these past few days.  The home page has been rearranged a bit to make it easier for newcomers and longstanding fans alike to find the band categories and search for their favorite material.  In addition, the first seven volumes of the new and improved Laptop Sessions FREE MP3 albums are avaiable in the left column.  Finally, last week saw the addition of a truckload of new live music from the Fusco-Moore team.  All you need to do now is go to the Fusco-Moore Store and choose which concert you want to listen to — some music is FREE and some is avaiable for a low, low price.  I really hope you’ll go over and check it out.  We really worked hard to make some quality sets, and it’s interesting to be able to look back now.  Well, listen back — there’s no video, but it’s really the sound that matters, right?

That’s it for me for now.

See you next session!



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WCJM Free Internet Radio Station: “The World Series Show” – 2000

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By WCJM Free Internet Radio:

The Subway Series.  Every New York baseball fan’s worst nightmare.  Everyone was getting on the World Series bandwagon, so WCJM free Internet radio decided to also.  This show came on the night of game 1 of the series, and had the regular cast back of Chris, Jim, Mike, Alberto, and Dave after the 3/5 cast of the Comedy Show.

This is the first Moore Hits in the Morning program to be recorded digitally on an MD, and the sound quality is impeccable.  All the songs have a theme that intertwines with the World Series.  For instance, the Mets’ motto is “You gotta believe”, and the song “I’m a believer” by the Monkees was played.

Probably the most significant part of this show was a tribute done by Dave for the victims of the USS Cole, playing a song in their honor.

But the newest addition to the WCJM family made his first appearance on the show.  A little, cute, stuffed bear named Stuffy the Bear.  Well, he made a four and a half minute clip and instantly made the whole cast uproar in laughter.  Making fun of everyone on the show, it was a non-stop laugh riot that would appear on all future shows.  Stuffy has entered the building!

This ground-breaking episode is one of many available at no charge through the WCJM free Internet radio website!

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“Letters From the Wasteland” (Wallflowers Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

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” — more Wallflowers covers from our resident expert Jeff Copperthite are in the archive.

See you next session!

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“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart” (Wilco Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

It’s no secret that I’ve been going through a Wilco phase recently.  And, by phase, I mean that I wasn’t really familiar with the band until a couple months ago.  I had read about the band a bit in music magazines, and I had read quotes by band frontman Jeff Tweedy, which I generally found interesting.  So, I finally found a copy of their critically acclaimed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album and decided to give it a spin.

And instantly loved it.

Ever since, I’ve been listening to alot of other music, but I’ve gone back to Wilco every time.  In the past two months, I’ve gone on an odyssey to discover as much about them as possible.  This has involved reading Wikipedia posts, skimming music magazines, and browsing through numerous CD store racks and used album bins.  In the process, I’ve found affordable copies of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot‘s predecessor, Summerteeth (which is the origin of the song I just added to the members-only section, which you should definitely check out soon!), and their first album, A.M.

Now, it’s not that Wilco is my new favorite band of all-time, by any means.  But there is a certain excitement that accompanies fresh territory, striking out into a land that is unusual and can present unexpected ideas, sounds, etc.  For instance, I learned all about Uncle Tupelo — a band I had heard OF but had never actually HEARD — because Uncle Tupelo, minus one member, became the first incarnation of Wilco.

But, I guess that’s a story for another time.

Suffice it to say that Uncle Tupelo is credited with founding the “alt-country” genre that I didn’t even know existed until recently.  As Tweedy progressed, he became more and more experimental with his music, particularly after the first couple Wilco albums.  He seems like an interesting musical figure to me, as he embodies that rock songwriter ideal; he has made some great music, and from many reports, he can be a bit of a jerk.  For instance, members of Wilco have been essentially summarily dismissed to make way for new musicians with new sounds to bring to the process.  While this may not make for pleasant interpersonal relationships, it has certainly made for some interesting musical variations and evolution in the band.

When I think of this song and this album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, in particular, I am reminded, to a degree, of some of the classic albums that have initially been criticized or even rejected by record company executives.  In this case, the hype surrounding the making of the album seems to have only aided and increased its eventual popularity.  Essentially, as Wilco recorded this album, but the powers-that-be needed to make some cuts at the label, so they released the band.  There are several conflicting stories, but the end result is that Wilco got to keep the recordings and rights to the then-new material, going on to another division of Warner Bros. to officially produce and release the album.  This caused a bit of a stir in the record industry at the time — particularly the public perception of the label’s treatment of this fairly longstanding act — and even though I wasn’t nearly as interested in music industry news as I am now, I remember something about this at the time.

The track I chose for tonight is the opening song, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.”  For better or worse, my version does not do justice to the studio version, which you should definitely listen to; for that matter, you should definitely listen to the album!  But, when I discovered that Jeff Tweedy does an acoustic version of this song in his acoustic sets, I couldn’t resist.  It’s a great song that sets the tone remarkably well for the album to follow.

I hope you enjoy my version — more from Jeff and Jim are in the archive.

See you next session!



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