Well, my voice is still pretty much shot, so I did what I thought was logical… record another Dylan tune!
This is one that I’ve been saving for some time, as it’s one of my favorites — Bob Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” off his half-acoustic, half-electric album Bringing It All Back Home. I’ll be recording more off of this album in the future, but even a Dylan fan as devoted as myself hasn’t completely memorized “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream”…
There’s some big news brewing for some live shows in the not-too-distant future, and as soon as dates are solidified, we’ll post them on the blog. For now, I really hope to see you for dinner at Testa’s in Southington this Saturday evening between 8:30 and 12:30. We’re prepared to play about 80 songs (which I don’t think we’ll get to, but we’re ready all the same!).
A final bit of good news — I hope to break 10,000 views on YouTube by my next post! Thanks again to all who have been watching my videos, both new and old, and I really hope you’ll come see them all — Jim’s, Jeff’s, and mine — at https://guitarbucketlist.com !!
You can look forward to an all-new session from Jeff tomorrow, and I’ll see you next session!
Christmastime will have to wait another year to come around again. But, things went very well over the past couple of days. Christmas Eve started with breakfast at McDonald’s before work with Chris and Dana. Then, we got out of work at 2:00 and I came home to clean up and take a nap before my family arrived for dinner. We all ate and ate and ate until Mike and I went over to Hubbard Park in Meriden where they have the whole park decked-out in Christmas lights. There’s always so many interesting animals made out of wire and lights- turtles, a beaver, moose, and even frogs. After that, Mike and I watched an episode of the show Freaks and Geeks before bed.
We woke up to our usual bounty of Christmas presents. I was happy because this year, I actually got everyone a TON of stuff, too, and was pretty excited to see if they liked it all. I got what I was hoping for- a Playstation 3! I’m so excited because I have a great Samsung HD television, but I haven’t gotten to use it to its full potential yet. With the PS3, I’ll be able to play games and movies in high-def.
I also got some other great stuff, including a TON of accessories for PS3 (and also the game MLB 08) from Mike. I got some very useful stuff for my condo, as well, as I tend to neglect buying things I truly need for everyday life and just focus on saving up for large purchases.
After we ate dinner, we took our annual trip to my Aunt’s house. We opened presents and I played a Nintendo DS game with my little cousin Gerry where the object of the game was to make Daffy Duck angry. How fun!
I then came back home for, as Chris said, a great episode of TNA iMPACT! Oh, I also got that video game, too!
After that, I finally got to come home and open presents I got from Becky. She got me a train set (I was right!) for around the tree, some “hot packs” of baseball cards (when you’re guaranteed to get a jersey card inside), and six (yes, 6!) Blu-Ray movies for my new player! I got one from every category, including scenic, action, music, etc.
I got up this morning and went to the train station with Becky to catch the train to New York City. We had an appointment at the NV Perricone Cosmeceuticals boutique on Madison Avenue, where I scheduled a spa treatment for Becky. Thankfully, I work for NV Perricone’s headquarters in Meriden, CT, so it was a lot easier (and less money) to get an appointment. I couldn’t believe how upscale that area was. I ate lunch at a nice European cafe…that is, if you consider lunch to be a piece of pie and a cup of coffee for 14 dollars!!! I sat down and looked at the menu first. I was so surprised at the prices for lunch that I forced myself to just get the pie and coffee. I would’ve been out forty bucks easy if I got lunch…for just me! So, to ease my hunger, I got a $1.50 hot dog from a street vendor, then went back to find a glowing Becky after her treatment.
We then saw the Rockafeller Center Christmas tree, then won a lottery where we got FRONT ROW seats to see Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein” on Broadway for only $27 each! Those tickets were going for $120 at the box office! We were pretty pumped. We ate a nice meal at Bubba Gump shrimp (I knew the answer to the trivia question about how many Dr. Peppers Forrest drank at the White House) and then saw the show. It was a long train ride home, especially because I knew I had to record a video!
Tonight’s video, after 640 words of writing, is one of the most covered songs of all time. Just about every folk singer has done this, but the reason I know it is probably the reason why you know it, too- The Animals. Their version of this traditional song is just so cool. The ripping vocals, the wailing organ solo, and of course, those four to five chords that just give you instant recognition of this tune. The strumming pattern is cool, but not the easiest thing to do while singing. At least they’re easy chords.
I’m glad to add another “new” band to the best video blog ever created- it’s like “going to bed at 4 am knowing that this was the night you were supposed to catch up on your sleep, but who cares because it’s the weekend of Christmas” good! I only have ONE MORE video to do to complete our entire year’s worth of Laptop Sessions acoustic cover and original songs videos and I feel very accomplished right now. Enjoy tonight’s video and I’ll see you for my year’s swan song on Monday!
Welcome to the Laptop Sessions’ Original Wednesday. I’m guessing some people will be new to the Laptop Sessions because of this original song video, and we welcome you aboard!
This song, a pun on the “Red, White, and Blue”, is my first and only “protest” type of song.
The song was written in early 2002 after 9/11 about the hypocritical actions of Americans automatically becoming “patriotic” as soon as a disaster hit. This original song is just me wondering why people weren’t just ALWAYS patriotic!
This song is still as relevant today, six years later, as it was when I wrote it. I even talk about Easter in the song (it was that time of year), and I thought this would be the perfect week to bust it out again.
Basically, I’m giving the point of view of an 18 year old kid (at the time) from Connecticut because all the hardship and fear seemed so distant from my everyday life at the time.
To say this song is still relevant today shows how stagnant the country’s been lately. We still are fighting a never-ending war on terror and the patriotism of the country is waning once again.
Oh, and the verse about California: it’s in reference to when they didn’t have the Red-Carpet festivities for a big award show that year. I didn’t think that was helping anyone. Letting the terrorists know we’re scared? That’ll really help…
“The Red, White, and Blues” is from my double-album set, “That’s All…” that I released in 2003. I say “double album” in a different way than you would normally think of it. For instance, the Beatles came out with a double album with their “White Album” (simply titled, “The Beatles”) in 1968. That album consisted of over 20 original songs and couldn’t fit on just one vinyl record. For “That’s All…”, it’s a bit different. You see, I had just gotten a guitar- my first real acoustic guitar, an Ibanez Artcore. I instantly wanted to play everything on the acoustic guitar and quickly went to playing folk songs. I even came up with a bunch of my own. I thought a blues song like “The Red, White, and Blues” would be a perfect way to start off an album of folk songs.
But, I also had a bunch of original songs that I’d written in my normal rock’n’roll style, too. So, I decided to record everything at once and split up the whole project into two original albums: “That’s All Folks”, which featured all of the folk songs I’d written, and “That’s All Jim” that featured all of my songwriting efforts in my normal style. I put both albums on one CD, but each album had it’s own cover. Plus, the combo-pack of both albums called “That’s All…” had it’s unique album cover!
I hope you all enjoy this original song music video. If you want to hear the original recorded version and buy the double-album online, you can go to my website: http://jimfusco.com/albums/thats_all.html
Welcome to your Sunday edition of the Laptop Sessions!
Today, I bring you a tune that I covered on my album “That’s All Folks” called “Great Day” by Paul McCartney. It closes out his 1997 album “Flaming Pie”, one of my all-time favorites. That album, “That’s All Folks”, came about because I had purchased my first good acoustic guitar. That guitar meant everything to me- it sounded great, played great, and made me feel like a real musician. I didn’t even really know how to play too well when I bought it. So, I learned how to play a bunch of songs I was listening to at the time. That taught me more chords, which turned me into a better player. And, at the time, I was going through a HUGE Paul McCartney phase. They had just released “Wingspan” with all of Wings’ greatest hits. I know those songs probably grate on people after all this time, but they were all new to me- and I fell for it pretty hard. We were also listening, as a family, to Paul’s albums from the 90s quite a bit. The first real song I learned how to play (and played it for my parents) was, of all things, “Hope of Deliverance” by Paul McCartney off of the “Off the Ground” album from the early 90s. I guess you could say that Paul McCartney’s songs really taught me how to play. And when it comes to rock musicians, you can’t get a much better tutor than him.
This is the perfect acoustic song and gives quite a vocal workout, which you wouldn’t expect in such a simple song. I decided to do this acoustic cover song on my nylon-string classical acoustic guitar, as it gave me the opportunity to be more expressive in my performance. This song is very soulful, which you wouldn’t really expect from the lyrics. I kind of dumbed-down the guitar picking riff throughout because that’s not really my thing. I’m a strummer and a soloist, but can’t do the flat-picking thing too well. Paul McCartney, the phenom that he is, is proficient at almost anything, musically. The man is one of the best bass players of all time, he can play the drums, sing (obviously), write songs, and play any guitar part you throw in front of him. Oh, and he’s written some of the most famous rock songs of all time on the piano, as well. That’s a pretty impressive life, for sure!
I hope you all enjoy today’s Session, as I’ll be back on Wednesday with a “political” original song- don’t miss it!
