Back again with another edition of the Laptop Sessions!
This time I finally get to do a Moody Blues song. I just got the urge to do this one yesterday, so it gets first billing. It’s not my favorite of theirs, but it does remind me of listening to it while riding in the car when I was little.
I think it’s got a great beat and a cool chorus (especially how they do the drums in concert), but my father thinks it sounds a bit too much like “Dragging the Line” by Tommy James. I have to agree.
Anyway, this is the first of MANY Moodies songs to come, so stay tuned!
Well, I’m finally back up and (sorta) running again after almost a week without my laptop! The hard drive just crashed out of nowhere with no chance to recover my files. So, I got a new (bigger) hard drive and I hope everything will run smoothly from now on. I tell you, though- I bought Apple products for their reliability, but the hardware hasn’t always been kind to me. I just thought that quality hardware was the reason for the high prices. I guess you don’t always get what you pay for. In my opinion, it’s still better than Windows because a Windows machine will still die on you, but it’ll be even more difficult to work with when it’s still alive.
This song goes out as a request. “The Lonely Sea” by the Beach Boys is a great early tune that doesn’t get much credit because it wasn’t a single. But, Beach Boys fans know (and love) this song. I think it’s a good one to do solo because even though the Boys had background “oohs”, this was a Brian Wilson song through and through. A great chord progression goes along with this song- simple, but powerful. As I mentioned in a previous post, Brian Wilson always had a knack at coming up with a great chord progression. This song is surprisingly dark sounding for a song written by a guy in his early twenties.
Of course, “The Lonely Sea” is one of those songs that really sounds like a period piece. What I mean by that is, you can tell this song was done before the Beatles became popular in America. Songs from the early 60s and late 50s had breaks in the middle where the lead singer would just speak a few lines. Most notably, you can hear that in the Elvis Presley song “Are You Lonesome Tonight?”. It’s a great song, but you can tell the era in which it was recorded/popular. “The Lonely Sea” probably wouldn’t have sounded the same even two years later, once the Beatles changed the sound of popular music forever. The Beatles had a way of setting trends. I will always admit to that. Brian Wilson, though, had a way of pushing the envelope, musically. He didn’t necessarily change his style all the time, but he was working on perfecting his songwriting style the whole time. He would add different instruments and experiment with different chord progressions and harmony parts. It was happening from the start- songs like “The Lonely Sea” can be written off as a teenage love-sick song, but it’s got a sound that you just didn’t hear on the rest of the “teenage” music in the early 60s. And, you especially didn’t hear it from surf music groups, like the Beach Boys music was labeled.
I hope everyone’s been enjoying the Laptop Sessions and will continue to tune in every day for more acoustic cover songs here on the best music blog on the Internet! There will be plenty more Beach Boys cover songs to come.
Part 2 of this four part Laptop Sessions extravaganza comes to you with a song from the Traveling Wilburys, one of my favorite bands of all time.
I grew up listening to their music and find myself going back to their two albums over and over again.
This song is a great one to do acoustically, and like the last one, is sung by Bob Dylan. Watch for the cameo harmonica appearance by Chris Moore in this video!
I’ll be doing PLENTY more Wilburys songs on these sessions, so stay tuned! Now, onto part 3!
We finally come to one of my absolute favorite bands of all time: Barenaked Ladies. I originally got into the band after hearing their song “Brian Wilson”.
I have every album from BNL, know every word to every song–a real fanatic. I think Steven Page is the best song writer of my generation, even though he is about 15 years older than me.
This song starts off their album “Maroon”, one of my favorites from them that I played about 100 times in a row. This song is much more “electric” on the album, but I think it stands up well as an acoustic because of the lyrical content.
There will be PLENTY more videos from BNL to come, so if you love any of their songs, don’t hesitate to make a request!!
NOTE: This video was remastered in 2020 for enhanced video and sound.
