Tag Archives: cover

“For What It’s Worth” (Buffalo Springfield Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to yet another all-new cover of an all-new band to the blog!  Straight from the treasure trove of genre-crossing singles and album tracks that is Dana Camp’s iTunes library, this is Buffalo Springfield’s early hit “For What It’s Worth.”  This is one of those songs with a title that is not used at any point during the lyrics, so my initial response to the title was, “How does that one go?”

Of course, from the first strum of the first verse, I instantly recognized this hit sixties protest song.

I’ve always loved this song, and I loved it all the more this afternoon as I realized it was right in my vocal comfort zone!  Still, as fun as it was to learn and play it, I do wish there had been some way to include that awesome reverberating lead guitar and solo.  I guess you’ll just have to imagine it as you listen…

About a week ago in one of my posts, I started out by saying it would be a short one.  Then, I proceeded to write one of my lengthier posts.  This time, however, I’m going to cut my writing short, as I’m fading fast and need my sleep on this final night of the weekend.  I spent the last forty-five minutes or so helping Jim with the new cover songs branch of the Laptop Sessions music blog series.  He put me in charge of finding good photos for each band/songwriter to use for the new site.  Probably the most fun so far has been searching for the best Britney Spears photo — and, yes, we DO have a Britney Spears category!  Meanwhile, Jim was doing the hard work (i.e. making the site run, run properly, and look good while doing it!).

And, on a final note, this is my final in a series of political songs.  I like these unnofficial themes I’ve been doing, first with three female lead songs in a row, now with three political songs in a row.  I’d probably find another one to record, but my next session will land on a by-now-infamous Original Wednesday!

With that, I’m closing my laptop and closing my eyes to the sounds of R.E.M.  What better band to encourage a healthy sleep cycle?…  Get it?…  Okay, that was bad, and I apologize.  At least you’ll be safe for at least a couple days, as I’d challenge Jeff and Jim to make a pun worse than the aforementioned REM cycle one…

See you next session!

“Letters From the Wasteland” (Wallflowers Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to yet another all-new acoustic rock cover song from the best cover music video blog on the Internet!  Although last week was fun for me — I played covers from the Counting Crows and Jimi Hendrix, which were both a lot of fun to learn and play — but this week promises to be even better.  Not only is it my turn for an Original Wednesday (when we songwriters here at the music blog break out one of our original songs), but I’m starting out the week with a song from one of my all-time favorite bands, the Wallflowers.

Which brings me to today’s video.  This is “Letters From the Wasteland” from the Wallflowers’ Breach album, which was released in 2000.  I was actually listening to my iPod on random earlier today when this song came up.  I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t already done a session of it, and I figured that Jeff might take it if I didn’t jump on it soon.  In fact, Jeff is another reason I chose to record the song.  He just recently recorded “Some Flowers Bloom Dead,” another great song from Breach.  I love that song, too, but I’ve always been taken by “Letters.”  There’s something really dark and powerful about it, and I absolutely love the drum beat and the guitar sounds.

Interestingly enough, at least for an English teacher like myself, is that the title of this song is reminiscent of T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, “The Waste Land.”  I always wondered if Jakob Dylan intended any sort of reference, but there is a key clue that makes me believe he didn’t.  Namely, the Eliot poem spells it as two words — Waste Land — whereas the Wallflowers song spells it as one — Wasteland.  This may seem like a minor detail, but you’d think that Dylan, being as careful about his wording and his songwriting as he says he is, would have picked up on such a detail.  It would honestly be one of the questions I would ask him if I ever met him…

That being said about the background information regarding the actual song, I have to say a bit about my night surrounding this music video.  What a night!  First, I’ve been hit with allergies pretty bad the past couple days, and even though I started taking allergy medication again, it hasn’t quite kicked in.  Thus, my voice wasn’t exactly angelic to begin with tonight.  Then, I kept recording takes of the song that I wasn’t really thrilled with, so by my tenth take or so (including brief false starts) I was dragging.  My throat was pretty sore.  After taking a break to watch the Mets a bit, I went back downstairs and ten or so minutes later, I had a take that I was pretty happy with.  So, I went upstairs from the studio to render my video and post it…

…only to find that the last ten seconds of the recording were all audio static!!

This was devastating to me at the time and some words and phrases slipped out that I shouldn’t repeat on a family-friendly blog.  (Well, as a quick tangent, a family friendly blog directory actually removed us from their listing a few months ago, so maybe we’ve crossed the line already…)  But, anyway, Jim swooped in and, being the computer deity that he is, spliced and salvaged my take by using footage from previous takes.  Amazing.  Even though I now owe him lunch or dinner or a drink or really any sort of food/beverage outing that he chooses, it was well worth it!  I didn’t mentally or physically have it in me to either record yet another take or to settle for a previous one.

And this brings us to the actual video.  I hope you enjoy “Letters From the Wasteland” and I hope you hurry back tomorrow for a new acoustic rock cover from our resident Wallflowers expert, Jeff Copperthite.  You’ll never know what song is up his sleeve unless you check back tomorrow…

See you next session!

“Peggy Sue” (Buddy Holly Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

I had such fun going back in time with “Dock of the Bay” that I decided to go even farther back… to Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”! This is a 1950’s hit that is one of those songs everyone just seems to know. It only made it to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1957, but this song has been in so many movies and played on the radio so much since then…

I actually learned a lot by recording it today. I realized, for one thing, that the song is deceptively simple, in the sense that Holly’s voice is so distinctive and really makes it the hit that it was. Also, there’s no question that it was simple to play, seeing as how it uses only A and D chords, with the occasional E and maybe an F thrown in. This might seem like a good thing, but it only puts the pressure on to make a simple song sound interesting and fun to listen to!

I hope you enjoy this and would love you to leave a comment! Then, of course, don’t forget to come back to https://guitarbucketlist.com tomorrow for an all-new session from the library of Jeff Copperthite!

See you next session!



“Round Here” (Counting Crows Cover)

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Happy Saturday to you! Welcome to your Saturday installment of The Laptop Sessions. We’re doing a sort of “twin spin” as WCJM.com Free Internet Radio likes to call it, as I bring you another tune by The Counting Crows, which were featured yesterday by Chris as well (and quite awesomely at that).

One of their most popular songs is today’s performance – “Round Here” from their album August and Everything After. While being one of their best, it is also one of the most difficult to sing and play. My voice still feels it a bit from singing the song.

Lead singer Adam Duritz always has an affinity for improvising a lot of lyrics, and changing singing styles frequently, so I wasn’t too worried about singing on time. I also wanted to combine the electric guitar riff, with the background chords, so I used a capo (although the song by no means requires one) and melded the two riffs so the bass note was hit on each chord, as well as the main riff. While the idea works in this performance, you can see it is quite difficult to sing the song and play this riff simultaneously. However, you’ll see this is quite effective, and I feel you will enjoy this quite a bit.

Just like Chris mentioned, I have also been listening to their new album Saturday Nights & Sunday Mornings and I LOVE the new single. Hopefully later this year we’ll do some songs from that album.

Also, be sure to check out the Youtube channel jimfusco.com/albums.html at http://www.youtube.com/user/jimfusco.com/albums.html, as videos from our performance at SCSU have been posted. You can see Masters of the Universe plus myself rocking the house!

I hope you check back tomorrow for another wonderful session from Jim, and I hope you enjoy today’s installment!

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!