Welcome to your Original Wednesday edition of The Laptop Sessions. Today I bring you another great original song from “Homestead’s Revenge” by Masters of the Universe.
I am bringing you the song “These Streets”, a live favorite. I have noticed lots of heads bobbing when we play this song live, and this became one of the songs we played live at George’s II restaurant. I really love the riff of this song, and I was very happy to receive permission to record it for the sessions.
I really tried to belt this one out on an acoustic. It really is meant to be an electric guitar song, but I think this version does kick it quite well. It also runs perfectly in the album, and the harmonies work perfectly in the recording. If you have not checked out “Homestead’s Revenge”, you really do need too.
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!
Hello and welcome to my first Original Wednesday since Christmas Eve! This is an exciting week for me, as I’m off from work. There have been plenty of things to keep me busy — really, too many to list — but I woke up this morning and, despite the work I should be doing, I decided to work out this song and record it for tonight’s session.
The song is called “Transitions” and this is a Laptop Sessions world premiere. It may make it to my next album, it may not… Only time will tell! I hope you like it. This is the first fully recorded version of it, so it’s a demo of sorts. It’s not perfectly arranged yet, to be sure, but I’m pretty happy with the overall structure of it. Some of the words may change, some of the rough edges will be smoothed out, but this is your sneak peak at the first complete version of it. I messed around with the harmonica even after I finished recording this video, and I have to say that this song has (and/or will have) one of my favorite harmonica parts that I’ve written in a very long time. It’s a very deliberate aspect, but not so note-for-note that it sounds scripted.
Outside of writing and recording this song, I’ve been busy during my February break with some grading for my classes, jury duty yesterday (I was released after “a day’s service”), preparing logs for my BEST portfolio, reading three things (Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pro Wrestling, and the 40-page booklet to the Sam Jones film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart), and listening to several albums, including MoU’s Homestead’s Revenge (I think “Worlds Apart” is my favorite song we’ve ever done!), Pearl Jam’s Binaural, and Dan Auerbach’s Keep It Hid. Oh, and I can’t forget to mention my favorite playlist that I referred to in Monday’s post — the “Albums of 2008” iTunes playlist. Good stuff all around…
We’ve gotten a decent number of views to the blog for the chords and cover video of Dan Auerbach’s “My Last Mistake.” That’s exciting because I wasn’t sure what to expect with this fairly obscure song choice. It’s all the more incentive for me to keep on top of new rock music, bringing whatever I can to the blog as my contribution to this, the best acoustic cover song blog in the universe! No kidding!
Okay, that’s it for me for this week. But, even as I write that, I’ll be back to choose and post a Guest Session for Friday. We’re accepting submissions every day, so don’t wait — record a video on YouTube and send the link to us today with an interesting description.
Welcome to my first Original Wednesday original acoustic song music video for the year 2009! It’s Jim Fusco here with a great song that we chose to kick-off our (and by “our”, I mean the band Masters of the Universe, or MoU) second album, “Homestead’s Revenge”. The song is “Only A Dream” and it’s a chorus I wrote the tune to, but never did anything else with.
I remember the day very vividly. It was one of our band songwriting sessions and I remember finally fleshing-out the chorus with the help of Chris, Mike, Becky, and Cliff. Then, I ran over to the piano and started to work out chord progressions for the verses. I came up with the very interesting Em7 to Bm chord progression and I really love the tune that goes along with it. I remember sitting there working and hearing Becky and Chris deciding on words to go into the chorus of the song.
I took my ideas over to the rest of the band and we worked out the words. We came up with this image of a man in a jail cell. The conversation went something like this: “How about a man locked in a jail cell that’s dreaming about getting out?” “Oh yeah- like he’s locked in there!” “Okay, let’s see- ‘Locked in solitary confinement…’” “No, that doesn’t work with the tune…” “Locked in solidarity…” “That doesn’t make sense, though.” “Oh, but it does! The guy is locked up AND he’s all alone!” “Perfect!”
And that’s how the writing session went- we scrutinized everything but were able to paint a very realistic image of the idea we were getting across. Why don’t you just listen and find out what that message is?
I also remember Mike returning from the back room, playing his middle-8. I love that part of the song and it leads right back into the chorus very well. He did that on “These Streets” from the same album. The lyrics are great on the middle-8 to “These Streets”- we were thinking about that kind of great fast-paced life you think you have in high school and threw in, “Live like it’s 1999,” because I was a freshman/sophomore in 1999.
Also, I was very excited when we all did the vocals. On the original (which you can hear by going to MoU’s Official Website), you’ll hear double-tracked vocals from each of the five members of the band on the choruses and backgrounds, PLUS the lead vocals.
Some fun facts: Chris, Cliff, Mike, and I recorded our vocals together and we dubbed Becky’s much softer voice later on two other tracks so I could handle it better in the mix. It isn’t easy blending a female voice into four other male voices. But, my voice must not be too far off from a female’s voice, which made it easier to mix. Why do I say that? Well, on the middle-8, you’ll hear the backing vocals come in. I love that part. Well, on that section, Becky doesn’t sing- it’s just Mike’s lead, then Mike, Chris, Cliff, and I on backing vocals. I sang the high part (doing my best Becky impression) because we seamlessly wove the backing vocals around Mike’s lead, allowing us to use only four other backing vocal harmony parts. I remember doing those backing vocals that night with the boys and we were all so incredibly excited. After we finished each good take, we’d get so stoked about it. The greatest backing vocals I think I’ve ever heard are during the second half of the second verse. The way that some of the vocals move around and some stay the same…it’s really a stroke of genius on my part! 🙂 Want to hear just the vocals-only section? Click HERE and you’ll go to the Albums page on the MoU website. The clip of only the vocals from that section will play in the background. Click around to the other pages on the site and you’ll hear more rare vocals-only clips from the album!
Well, I hope you enjoy this great original song. It was truly a collaborative effort- a great, catchy song- that was the perfect album-starter. Until next Tuesday, I hope you have a great week. Make sure to come back tomorrow for your Jeff Copperthite Thumpin’ Thursday acoustic cover song music video!
Welcome to this week’s edition of Original Wednesday! Today, I bring you “Gonna Be There,” a song from MoU’s latest release, Homestead’s Revenge, that Jim and I cowrote. As a special treat, Jim is also playing here and does a great rendition of his guitar solo. But, you really have to listen to the real version to fully appreciate it… and you can do that by going to http://jimfusco.com/albums.html !
