“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!

“Artificial Energy” (The Byrds Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Oh yeah – I get to bring in my favorite day to one of the cooler songs I know.

That’s right, it’s Thumpin’ Thursday® – naturally trademarked by yours truly.  I’m dedicated to bringing you not only every TT that I have left in the year, but in 2009 I hope you can count on your Thursdays every week to always be a Thumpin’ one.

And to go right along to that theme, I have a great tune from The Byrds tonight.  From their album “The Notorious Byrd Brothers” is a song introduced to me by (who else) Jim Fusco.  It’s the first track of the album and it’s a great album starter called “Artificial Energy”.  The song has an awesome horn part that overlays the entire song.  This album and song were recorded in 1967 – over 40 years ago.  A stereo version of the song is noted by having the horns loud enough to cause distortion that was still atypical to a record.

The album this comes from is one i’d like to hear.  I’ve read that it is one of their best albums, if somewhat short.

I also wanted to bring this song to the sessions to remind Jim of his days at Wesleyan University.  I hope your roommate was a Byrds’ fan man.

That does it for me tonight – but rest assured!  Tomorrow you will get to hear another song by myself, and then i’ll be back for another fantastic session on Sunday as well.  Chris will jump in Saturday to give me a break, but you can count on a session a day all the way through ’08.

I hope you enjoy today’s session!

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!

“Losing My Religion” (R.E.M. Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to your Monday edition of The Laptop Sessions. I’d like to take this opportunity (since everyone reads descriptions) to say hello to another wave of students who have discovered their math/science teacher is on Youtube.

Anyway, todays song is an awesome song from REM called “Losing My Religion”. It’s from their 1991 album “Out of Time” which contains this song among other well known songs such as “Shiny Happy People” and “Radio Song”.

I love this song a lot and always turn it up when it comes on the radio. The video is always an interesting one to watch as well. Few are sure of what the song is about – I think it could be about a forceful religious conversion.

I hope you enjoy this version – even though I sang a slightly incorrect line in the last chorus. I think this version was a great one and I hope you agree!

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!