By Chris Moore:
This is another all-new cover video here at your source for the best cover songs on the web or anywhere: the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover song music blog! Since I haven’t introduced a brand-new band to the video blog in a while, I decided to record a song that I had considered recording back in the specialty “Number Ones Week.” I never recorded this song, which was a number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the eighties, for that week, and I put it aside — out of sight, out of mind — in my bookmarks menu. Then, I came across it tonight and decided to make it official.
This is “Down Under,” originally performed by the Men at Work. This is an eighties band that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see here on this acoustic cover song blog. But, my father and I had always laughed and enjoyed this song whenever it came on the radio, so I thought it deserved its fair shake as an unplugged performance. It is an extremely easy song to play — the verse and chorus sections are different only by one chord — and it’s right in my comfortable vocal range.
Truth be told, it did take me quite a few takes. Unlike my last post, which I happily reported on Saturday was a one-take (my first ever!) recording, this took me about ten takes, false starts and all. It wasn’t so much that it’s a difficult song because, as I said before, it’s not. However, I haven’t really listened to the song in full for years, so I needed to find it on the YouTube videos search and watch it a couple times. Well, I really only had to listen to it, but it was so funny to watch that I simply couldn’t resist. I love the flute player in the tree and, of course, the man behind the counter “from Brussels” with “muscles” who gives the singer a “Vegemite sandwich.”
To this day, I’m really not even sure what a Vegemite sandwich is…
I actually just looked it up on Wikipedia now, and I found that it’s a “dark brown savoury food paste made from yeast extract, used mainly as a spread on sandwiches, toast and cracker biscuit.” It’s no surprise that I didn’t know what it was because, even though it is distributed by food manufacturing giant Kraft Foods, it has simply not caught on in Western nations such as the United States of America.
Vegemite knowledge notwithstanding, it really took me a long time because I needed to relearn the song. But, as my fellow FMP songwriters Jim and Jeff probably know all too well, I was very tired and had my mind on other things when I realized that tonight was my night to post another quality cover video. So, wiping the mid-summer sweat from my forehead and ignoring the headache that was creeping in, I did what any responsible video blog poster — or at least one who has committed himself to the session-a-day promise — would do… I recorded a Laptop Session.
I hope you enjoy it, as it really is a fun song, and I only wish that I had been able to record this acoustic cover song with some flute accompaniment… If this doesn’t quench your thirst for quality cover videos, you’ll find plenty more of Jeff’s sessions here on the Laptop Sessions Music Blog.
See you next session!
Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.
