“The River” (Bruce Springsteen Cover)

By Federico Borluzzi:

Acoustic cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “The River,” from the homonym 1980 album. Played with acoustic guitar and harmonica in the key of G.

** EDITOR’S NOTE: **

It’s been a while since we’ve hosted a Guest Session, so it is with great pleasure that I give you a Federico Borluzzi cover song music video this Friday.  He is one of our most consistently excellent guest artists and is certainly the most prolific, and he’s gone to the Boss’ first number one album for this week’s selection.

I’m always excited to see harmonica in a video, and it makes me want to break out my own on a future video…

With that said, I’ll let the video speak for itself.  (And I’ll admit, hesitantly, that I’ve never listened to The River.  I picked it up a while back, and after hearing Federico’s selection from it, I’ll be listening to it this afternoon.)

Happy Friday to all, and hurry back for more new material this weekend!

“Whatever I Fear” (Toad the Wet Sprocket Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to Sunday’s edition of the Laptop Sessions, and I am VERY excited about this upcoming week. A lot will be happening over the course of the next 7 days, but in all of it we will continue to provide you with a new session every day, and as we roll onto the week all of our sessions will be from bands each of us have never did a session for.

Our first entry to this mini series is a song from a little known band named “Toad the Wet Sprocket”. The band is known for singles such as “Fall Down”, which still may make an appearance in future sessions. But for now, I will do a song from their last album before their breakup “Coil”, the song “Whatever I Fear”.

This song is the album opener, and the album itself is full of introspective melodies, including this one. If you have a chance to listen to it you’ll find a few songs on it that really stand out. The singles that were released didn’t chart except for the song “Come Down”, and the album is probably the least known of theirs.

Regardless, I bring to you “Whatever I Fear”. I hope you enjoy it, and remember my new album “Greenlight” is coming out next Sunday!! I hope you find your way over to the Fusco-Moore Store and take a listen, and perhaps a purchase, of my new album.

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!

“In Dreams” (Roy Orbison Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to another terrific Thumpin’ Thursday edition of The Laptop Sessions. Today I bring you a new artist, and the next entry into our “Title Track” series. This also goes out by request from Rory, so thanks for this request!

Roy Orbison becomes our latest artist to enter our library and I am covering the title track from Orbison’s 1963 album “In Dreams”, naturally titled “In Dreams” (Yeah, like I needed to type that twice). This is a great mellow song, has a unique structure (read: none), and showcases Roy’s incredible range and voice. Orbison really had a gift and I am glad that future generations like me get to experience his music over and over like this.

I definitely want to cover more of Roy’s work in the near future. It really is amazing how many songs are by him that float around the radio stations.

Title track week continues tomorrow with Jim’s 2nd pick, then closes on Saturday with Chris’ 3rd pick (including his AWESOME original Wednesday pick from yesterday). Be sure to keep coming back as we approach the halfway mark of session-a-day!

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!

“Astronomy” (Blue Oyster Cult Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening to you, and welcome to your newest addition to The Laptop Sessions library!  It’s Jeff here bringing you a somewhat surprising song.  One can make the argument that we have not covered a band like this on this site.  But I hope that, if you never have heard of Blue Oyster Cult before (BOC), that you will enjoy this cover video.

BOC is the topic today (another new band!  I guess we had like New Bands 3.0 this week or something) and I have a great song by them from 1974.  Now if you don’t know who this band is, I will tell you a song that will instantly make you say “oh that’s who you’re talking about” – that song is “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”.  Yeah, they wrote that song.  It was also the same song that was being portrayed as recorded in an SNL sketch, where the now famous line was uttered by Christopher Walken – “needs more cowbell”.

Well, tonight I am not covering that song – but I am learning how to play it and I will be recording it before the year is out (may save it for a Thumpin’ Thursday – it is an awesome song).

Today I have a song from their 1974 album “Secret Treaties” titled “Astronomy”.  This song has a nice soft feel to it, and a completely kickass solo from their lead guitarist Buck Dharma.  Eric Bloom is their lead singer, and I discovered I can emulate his voice quite well.  Therefore, you’ll notice that my voice is a little different in this session.

I was introduced to this song because I heard a version of this song by Metallica from their 1998 covers album “Garage, Inc.”.  I decided I wanted to stay true to the original BOC version, so if you’re comparing this cover to the Metallica cover, you will notice quite a few differences between them.

For the performance, I tend to be a bit more “forgiving” of myself when the song is long.  This song’s recorded version clocks in at nearly 7 minutes.  I cut out a lot of the last “solo” time so that I would not have to play near-perfect guitar for 7 minutes.  The arpeggiated parts that I play in the song are not as clean as i’d like them to be.  But if I ever wanted to finish recording this video and upload it on time, I had to allow a minor glitch here and there.  I actually think this is one of my better singing performances, however.  I hope you feel the same way.

I am glad I was able to bring a new band your way this evening, and on Monday, i’ve got another new band – heck, let’s make it 4 new bands in a row by me by making next week’s Thumpin’ Thursday a new band as well!

Tomorrow Jim will return to his library of cover songs and lay another on us.  Come back for that – you know I will!

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!