“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (Beach Boys Cover)

Welcome to another edition of The Laptop Sessions here on “Track 1 Week”!  That’s where the singers, songwriters, and musicians of the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs music video blog pick a song that started off an album (thus “Track One”) and covered it for the best music blog on the internet!

Today, I give you one of the best album-opening songs to one of the best albums of all time: Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys!  And, if you know me, you know that doing Beach Boys cover songs is one of my favorite things to do!

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is also a favorite song of Chris Moore and Becky Daly, two fellow MoU members.  We never attempted to do this song in concert, though I think we should’ve given it a shot.  I think with all of the production that the original version had, it’s daunting to try and recreate it live.  The members of Brian Wilson’s incredible touring band do that on each and every tour, but they have about 12 people on stage at one time.  When it’s just five people, that task gets a little harder for sure.  But, knowing the chords and the changes (and frankly, how well my cover video came out), I think we could’ve pulled it off as a band.

Tomorrow night, The Laptop Sessions Live plays a three-hour set at George’s II Restaurant in Wallingford, CT. We’re very excited and it oughta be an amazing event. I hope to record the audio for future release.  There’s sure to be mostly original songs, but some of our favorite covers.  You’ll hear plenty from the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, the Wallflowers, and I’m sure we’ll sprinkle some Beatles cover songs in there, too!

I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for another album-starter from Chris Moore and check out Jeff’s last two videos, as well- they were great!

“Sober” (Original Song by Indie Music Songwriter Jim Fusco)

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to Original Wednesday here on the Laptop Sessions! Tonight, I bring you the first ever video starring Jim, Chris, and Becky for my original song from the new MoU album, “Homestead’s Revenge”.

“Sober” is a song I wrote a couple years ago and has become a live favorite whenever we play it. I wrote it during the recording of the first MoU album, but didn’t get to record it until recently, so it remains a “new” song.

I had Chris and Becky help me out for two reasons- first, the harmonies. Second, the fact that my voice kinda gave out tonight right before I went to record another original song called “The Game”. And, for anyone that’s heard that song before, you know it’s not one to sing with a bad vocal range! I guess that will have to wait three weeks.

I hope you enjoy this edition of Original Wednesday and I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for the continuation of “#1 Week” here at guitarbucketlist.com!

“If You Leave Me Now” (Chicago Cover)

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to the start of “#1 Week”, where Chris Moore, Jeff Copperthite, and I are playing only songs that topped the Billboard Hot 100 charts, except for Original Wednesday, of course. But, I hope that the song I play on Original Wednesday will be a contender for a #1 week in the future! 🙂

Tonight, I bring you a song that I just can’t get enough of. It’s Chicago’s first #1 hit and was written by the great Peter Cetera.

It’s a slow song, but has a great tune and some great chords. The only problem with the song is that it marked the beginning of Chicago’s “power ballad” phase. It was fruitful for them, yes, but it was also the end of their highly creative rock-n-roll style.

This is one of my favorite performances and I hope it ends up being even more popular than my first Chicago video, “Wishing You Were Here” ( Wishing You Were Here cover ).

NOTE: In 2020, I remastered the original video (which was very dark- almost couldn’t see anything at all!) and re-uploaded it to YouTube, as you’ll see below.  I hope it breathes new life into the video!

How Songwriter Jim Fusco Writes a Song – Part 3

By Jim Fusco:

A few years ago, I did a video documentary for my MySpace blog showing how I go through the songwriting process.

This particular video shows how I develop a chord progression, a tune, and lyrics for a song from scratch.

Of course, I don’t write many of my songs this way- this was a long and tedious process. But, it’s interesting to see how I began the writing process in Part 1, completed the writing in Part 2, and played live for the first time ever (a few days later) in Part 3.

I hope you enjoy my mini-documentary and will check out my other “How I” videos, like “How I Record A Song” and “How I Develop A Song”!

For all of my original music, check out my website at http://jimfusco.com .

Also, check out the Laptop Sessions YouTube video series, where we at Fusco-Moore Productions cover your favorite artists unlike any other YouTube covers—good! 🙂 Our complete video site is at https://guitarbucketlist.com .