Hello and welcome to this Easter Sunday edition of the Laptop Sessions! Yes, that’s right, during 2008 we’re playing a song a day, even on the holidays…
I thought it would be fitting to play Johnny Cash’s “I Hung My Head” for Easter — it involves death and the idea of moving on to heaven (or hell, depending on how you interpret his lyrics). This is from the same album as his final hit, his cover of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt.” I’ll be recording that one in the future, as well.
On a side note, I should reach my 100th subscriber by my next session on Wednesday, and I’ll be giving him/her a $10 coupon to the Fusco-Moore Store, as promised! To think that, at the beginning of February, I only had 10 subscribers and I wasn’t planning on 50 until the end of the year…
I hope you enjoy this video, and I hope you’ll comment or rate it!
Cover of “Up from Under” by the Wallflowers. I did this with a freeware webcam recorder – sorry about that… Thus the audio and video are kinda crappy, plus that annoying watermark. But the vocals/guitar is all me, just a bit delayed.
** EDITOR’S NOTE: **
Ladies and gentlemen, let’s extend a warm welcome to the latest addition to the Guest Sessions team of performers… Ryan!
Ryan’s choice is an excellent one for an acoustic cover song. In fact, after all the Breach covers that Jeff Copperthite and I have done over the years (“Sleepwalker,” “Hand Me Down,” “I’ve Been Delivered”), we’ve somehow managed to miss this little gem. Breach really is an underrated album with a wide selection of beautiful songs, and Dylan and company strike a perfect balance between electric and acoustic work.
As Ryan points out above, the quality lags a bit on this music video. Still, I think you’ll find it to be a solid, faithful cover version with some great fingerpicking. He’s been watching the Laptop Sessions for some time, and I’m proud to welcome him to the blog via this performance. Seeing as how we were less than ten days away from the one year anniversary of our last Wallflowers post (Jeff’s February 27, 2009 cover of “I’ve Been Delivered”), we thank Ryan for sending this in just in time…
Here’s to many more great cover song music videos!
Welcome to my all-new edition of Original Wednesday here at the Laptop Sessions. This week, I have chosen “Words,” a song I’ve recorded twice over the years — once for my album Looking For You (I recorded the title track for my last Original Wednesday video blog) and again on the Chris, Jim, & Becky debut album Live in the Studio. After recording a new cover song music video every three days, it’s always a lot of fun to turn to my own catalog of songs and revisit songs I haven’t played in years or ones I play all the time on my own. That’s the concept behind the Original Wednesday tradition — allow the members of Fusco-Moore Productions to showcase our pride and joy, our own music.
“Words” inspired the early sketches for a script and some unscripted scenes filmed while Jim and I were on vacation in Massachusetts. The basic premise of the movie was two characters on a journey who disagree on the essential question, what is a more important/effective form of communication — music and sound or words and written forms? For those who know me, it won’t come as a surprise that my character (the Eli mentioned in this song) believes in the power of words to express that which we as humans are simply unable to communicate to each other. Jim’s character (named Brian, if my memory serves me well…) believed less in the ability of mere words to convey the complex emotions we have. Nothing ever or probably ever will come of it, but it was great fun to revisit the song and the concepts.
I’ve written very little about Eli as a character — really only these lyrics — but I’ve always liked him. I hope you do too! As a songwriter, I always wished I could have written more into the song or additional songs, but I think this says enough on its own.
Well, I hope you enjoy this one. If it doesn’t whet your appetite, then don’t forget to rush back tomorrow for Jeff’s all-new Laptop Session as session-a-day rolls on for all 366 days of the year 2008…
If you enjoyed Jim’s rendition of “To Be Alone With You” from yesterday’s Laptop Session, then I hope you’ll love this Bob Dylan tune, too! Going right along in chronological order, “Oh, Sister” is from his 1975 album Desire. Better known for the song “Hurricane,” Desire really is one of my favorite Dylan albums. It doesn’t hurt that I have fond memories of this one — I’ve been listening to it since Jim bought it (before me!) and brought it to our drivers’ education classes. In contrast, I suppose anything would be more exciting!
I have some good news — by the end of the day, I’ll be joining Jim and Jeff in the 5,000+ YouTube views club!
I’m really excited, so thank you to all who have been watching and supporting these videos.
I hope you’ll keep coming back as “One-A-Day” rolls on in 2008 at guitarbucketlist.com!
