“Jane” (Ben Folds Five Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to your Fabulous Friday edition of The Laptop Sessions, and I am proud to bring you a session that I’ve been waiting to do for a while.

This session is “Jane” from Ben Folds Five’s last album “The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner”. I last did a song from this band as my 2nd Laptop Session – “Emaline”. That session is close to 1,000 views, so I thought this would be a good time to do another from Ben Folds Five.

Not only that, but for this video I kept my guitar on the stand, and performed it on my keyboard.

I think this version came out quite well, although I did have a bit of a “crack” in the chorus as I changed to falsetto. Ben Folds has an incredible vocal range that is just slightly out of reach to my voice. Other than that, I think that this video is a great one (it better be after 23 takes).

Oh, and I should break 4K views over the weekend! Thank you everyone for making the Laptop Sessions so popular!

I hope you enjoy “Jane”!

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!

“Dimension Breach” (Chrono Cross OST Piano Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to the final month of The Laptop Sessions session per day project!  Today I kick it off with a great cover from something most of our fans have never heard of.

Waaaay back in January, I did an acoustic guitar cover of a song from the video game Final Fantasy 8, and the reception was nice from users who have heard it (although I admit, it wasn’t played PERFECTLY).  Well, today I bring you another cover from a song in a video game.  This time, the game is Chrono Cross, a game from 2000.  The game itself is one of the best of all time, so if you’re a role playing game player and have not played it, check it out.

I bring this song to you for 3 reasons.

1) I’ve been playing the Chrono Trigger DS port since I got it on Saturday, and have had both playlists on my Winamp for a few days now.

2) I’ve been meaning to do another instrumental cover from a video game, so this provided me the perfect combination with reason #1.

3) I called in sick to work today because yesterday I had a sore throat, and lo-and-behold, my voice was not up to singing today.  Therefore, an instrumental is just what the doctor ordered.

The song is called “Dimension Breach”.  It is played just after the main character Serge, crosses into the space between dimensions – one of which is his “home”, and another dimension in which he had passed on 10 years ago.  The tune fits the mood of the game at that point in the story.

On Thursday I will be back for the first of 10 videos that I will be recording to close out my portion of session-per-day.  I as well am looking forward to hearing the 10th anniversery show that we here at guitarbucketlist.com recorded along w/ the other 3 cast members of WCJM this past Saturday.  I hope you do too – we laughed a lot as well.

Tomorrow Jim will be back for his terrific Tuesday cover.  Don’t miss it!

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!

“Two Coins” (Dispatch Cover)

By Pat Noonan:

Dispatch has been one of my favorite acoustic bands since the first time I heard The General back in high school. So a couple hours ago I found myself dying to record an acoustic cover because my good friend/producer Peter Dupre lent me his beautiful Taylor guitar, which sounds too sweet not to record. So I tossed up some mics, slapped the camera on a tripod, and attempted to do a better job at providing sufficient light for the flip mino to do it’s thing. Anyway hope you like it, if you haven’t already you got listen to the Dispatch album Bang Bang, it’s a classic.

** EDITOR’S NOTE: **

It’s with great pleasure that I welcome the latest guest performer to the Laptop Sessions blog: Mr. Pat Noonan!  He has sent several videos my way recently, and I knew instantly that it wouldn’t be a question of whether or not to feature him on the site, but rather which video to choose.

When I read his YouTube description for this cover, I felt this would be a great introduction to the Guest Sessions for him.  I hope you’ll enjoy his performance as much as I did, and check back soon… there’s sure to be another Pat Noonan guest session appearance soon!

“California Callling” (The Beach Boys cover)

By Jim Fusco:

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the Laptop Sessions with Jim Fusco!  Today I go back to my ol’ stomping grounds to give you another Beach Boys cover song.

“California Calling” is from their self-titled album from 1985.  It’s the only track on the whole album that features real drums…and as an added bonus, they’re played by Ringo Starr!  Of course, Dennis Wilson, the band’s drummer since they began, passed away in 1983.  I think Ringo is just about the only drummer fitting enough to be the first person to play drums on a Beach Boys song after Dennis’ passing.  And the drumming on “California Calling” is very similar to what Dennis would’ve played.  I like to think they did that as a tribute to Dennis.  Supposedly, the sequenced drum track on the hit “Getcha Back” was done in the style of Dennis Wilson as a tribute.  I hope that’s true because it would be a great tribute.

To be honest, this really wasn’t one of my favorite songs on the album for many years.  I think I was just irked by the fact that it’s another Love/Jardine “Don’t F with the formula” song that didn’t fit in with the rest of the album.  But I’ve changed my mind on that recently.  I mean, when you’re looking for a Beach Boys song, you’re looking for a song just like “California Calling”!  Plus, it’s a good tune and I’m a sucker for that classic Beach Boys sound.

Onto some personal business: “The Easy Ways”, my new album, is coming out very, very soon- on September 20th, in fact!  It’s an album full of 16 original songs that are assembled into a true “album” instead of just a collection of songs.  You’ll just have to check back soon and grab a copy of the album on CD or digitally to hear what I mean!  I’ve been practicing non-stop for my album release party, so I hope everyone in the Connecticut area will come check it out!  It’s at 5:30 on Saturday, September 20th at Silver City Restaurant in Meriden, CT.

I’ll be back next week with another original song in anticipation of my new album’s release.  I hope everyone enjoys tonight’s Laptop Sessions cover song music video of The Beach Boys’ “California Calling”!