When I received two Guest Sessions videos from two different performers — within two weeks of each other(!) — I simply couldn’t resist putting together a great two-fer Friday for you. For once, I’ll leave it entirely to Jeremy and Federico’s posts and videos below.
Happy Friday to one and all, and enjoy!
By Jeremy Hammond:
My cover of “Pigs on the Wing” Part I from Pink Floyd’s Animals album. A great acoustic song, I played it on my electric, just to mix it up a bit (and just to have an excuse to play my new Strat). Peace! Hope you like it.
By Federico Borluzzi:
Cover of the opening and the final song of Animals (Pink Floyd, 1977). I play the second part right after the first one. This was the first cover I uploaded on YouTube, so didn’t know the right places where I could put the camera… That’s why my face is almost hidden!
I’ve had this song recorded for awhile now, it was actually the first song I ever wrote on guitar (and it was completely by accident!) I was waiting for Mr. Jim Fusco (who’s great new album “Halfway There” is available now for purchase!…you’re welcome, Fusc!) to get off the phone my sophomore year of high school so I can Dial up (for those of you who don’t know what that is, we used to have to dial up to go online and connect to a blazing 24.4 kbs on an old modem) and go on Instant Messenger. AOL was the place to be at night in high school, and my brother took up our only phone line.
Impatiently waiting, I picked up my unplugged electric guitar I had received two years earlier (on Jim’s 16th birthday, actually). My father can’t turn down a good deal, so he excitedly asked me if I wanted a guitar, too, and drove us to the JCPenny outlet store that morning before the party so I could have one as well =) I never learned how to play it in those two years, but Jim had started to get the basics and knew all the chords.
I recall seeing him play a G (which, to a non-guitar player, looks like this cool, difficult chord). So I pick it up, throw my fingers on it, get it completely wrong, but as soon as I strummed it, I LOVED the chord. It sounded like a harp. And an entire melody and lyrics hit me all at once, as I struggled the better part of the night to figure out how the strings worked and BS some chords to fit this new tune.
Needless to say, I never made it on instant messenger that night. I became a guitar player =) And it still goes down as one of my favorite songs, and I thank Jim for three things- 1. Vocals on the original recording 2. driving me home in the camaro everyday so I’d stare at the passenger-side side-view mirror that said “Objects are Closer Than They Appear” (listen for a variation in the song!) and 3. Talking on the phone too long. =) enjoy!
You know what I wish? I wish that I would wake up tomorrow and there would no longer be anyone on the entire planet who smoked cigarettes. Never mind the health risk — which, by the way, there are few ingestible products that come with a “may cause cancer” label. The concept of breathing tar into your lungs aside, let’s consider the ramifications to non-smokers on the road. For instance, I sat in a McDonald’s drive-through tonight for ten minutes and was delighted by not only the automobile emissions but two smokers puffing away. The breeze was such that my car was filled with noxious fumes.
In a sense, this was great, because the fish filet and large fries actually seemed healthy by comparison! 🙂
Seriously, though, what really gets me is the disposal of the butts. It’s happened so many times recently that I’ll be driving down the road and someone in the car ahead of me will flick a lit cigarette out of their window. I don’t know if it’s due to me being older, a generally law-abiding dork, a teacher of transcendental texts like Emerson’s “Nature,” or a combination of the three, but this is enough to drive me crazy recently. To paraphrase our friend Matt Griffiths from the WCJM morning show, it’s just enough to tweak my hypothalamus and send me into an uncontrollable rage!
I suppose I simply can’t imagine driving in my car, holding a lit piece of paper in my hand, and saying to myself, “I’m done with this. Why not chuck it out the window?” Since when did that become the acceptable form of cigarette disposal?! Think twice ye smokers, lest you piss off the drivers behind you (such as myself tonight when a highly tossed butt bounced off my car, lit ashes flying everywhere)…
For those of you wondering what this has to do with my post tonight, prepare to be dazzled. Well, maybe not dazzled…
Just as I have ranted about something that has bothered me and later wondered if it was too negative, so did Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam decide that he should try writing something positive. Out of a lengthier “stream-of-consciousness exercise,” we have the “better wishes” presented in this little gem of a song. It was an instant favorite of mine upon first listening to Pearl Jam’s 1998 album Yield. As with Binaural, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this album, as it sold less and seemed generally regarded as at least somewhat inferior to previous releases such as Ten and Vitalogy. But I love this album, and I love this song. For once, the song I love most is actually in my vocal range!
Okay, so that’s not entirely true. My first pick for a song to learn and play would have been “Do The Evolution.” For any of you familiar with that song, you should be sitting at your computer laughing at simply the notion of my attempting to sing a song like that! I understand my own limitations! 🙂 That being said, you should take the time to search on YouTube for “Pearl Jam Evolution” and watch the official music video; it’s simply amazing — a very cool use of animation to visualize the lyrics to a song.
Along with my acoustic cover song music video tonight, I also send a shout out to my girlfriend Nicole who is a big fan of this song. (I hope you like it!) As she is currently in possession of my CD copy of the album and my iPod is tied up with my Bob Dylan playlist (518 out of 622 tracks!), I had to rely on my iPhone to listen to “Wishlist” tonight as I wrote out the lyrics and chords. What a Mac nerd I am… but I love it. Speaking of Macs, if I don’t end up writing a full review of U2’s No Line on the Horizon, please allow me to go on record saying that “Unknown Caller” has to be the worst track on the album for a number of reasons. It’s only redeeming quality is that Bono makes lyrical references (“force quit and move to trash”) that bely his computer loyalties…
Although I have so much more I could say — about Pearl Jam’s re-release of Ten tomorrow, this song, other music, the fact that my dad and I just bought tickets to see Bruce Hornsby at the MGM Grand on Friday(!), life in general — I think this is enough for one night! As a final note, please allow me to point out that this is officially the tenth post in the Pearl Jam category here at the Laptop Sessions, rounding us off to an even ten just in time for the re-release of Ten for tomorrow’s New Music Tuesday, March 24th, 2009!
For all you new music fans, don’t forget to stop by the blog tomorrow night for an all-new high-quality Jim Fusco Tuesday. I have it on good authority that he’ll be taking it to a WHOLE… NOTHA…. LEH-VAL….
D… D F C G
The selfish, they’re all standing in line
Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time.
Me, I figure as each breath goes by,
F G D
I only own my mind.
The north is to south what the clock is to time.
There’s east and there’s west and there’s everywhere life.
I know I was born, and I know that I’ll die,
The in between is mine.
F G D
I am mine…
D G Am D
And the feeling, it gets left behind.
All the innocence lost at one time.
Significant, behind the eyes,
D Cadd9
There’s no need to hide…
Cadd9 D
We’re safe tonight.
[D – F – C – G (x2)]
The ocean is full cause everyone’s crying.
The full moon is looking for friends at hightide.
The sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied.
I only know my mind.
I am mine…
And the feeling, it gets left behind.
All the innocence lost at one time.
Significant, behind the eyes,
There’s no need to hide…
We’re safe tonight.
SOLO:
D – F – C – G (repeat)
D…
And the meaning, it gets left behind.
All the innocence broken with lies.
Significance, between the lines.
(We may need to hide)…
And the meanings that get left behind.
All the innocents lost at one time.
We’re all different behind the eyes…
There’s no need to hide.
Outro:
G – Am – D (x3)
G – Am
** These chords and lyrics are interpretations and transcriptions, respectively, and are the sole property of the copyright holder(s). They are posted on this website free of charge for no profit for the purpose of study and commentary, as allowed for under the “fair use” provision of U.S. copyright law, and should only be used for such personal and/or academic work. **
