“Words” (Acoustic Original Song by Songwriter Chris Moore)

By Chris Moore:

Welcome to my all-new edition of Original Wednesday here at the Laptop Sessions. This week, I have chosen “Words,” a song I’ve recorded twice over the years — once for my album Looking For You (I recorded the title track for my last Original Wednesday video blog) and again on the Chris, Jim, & Becky debut album Live in the Studio. After recording a new cover song music video every three days, it’s always a lot of fun to turn to my own catalog of songs and revisit songs I haven’t played in years or ones I play all the time on my own. That’s the concept behind the Original Wednesday tradition — allow the members of Fusco-Moore Productions to showcase our pride and joy, our own music.

“Words” inspired the early sketches for a script and some unscripted scenes filmed while Jim and I were on vacation in Massachusetts. The basic premise of the movie was two characters on a journey who disagree on the essential question, what is a more important/effective form of communication — music and sound or words and written forms? For those who know me, it won’t come as a surprise that my character (the Eli mentioned in this song) believes in the power of words to express that which we as humans are simply unable to communicate to each other. Jim’s character (named Brian, if my memory serves me well…) believed less in the ability of mere words to convey the complex emotions we have. Nothing ever or probably ever will come of it, but it was great fun to revisit the song and the concepts.

I’ve written very little about Eli as a character — really only these lyrics — but I’ve always liked him. I hope you do too! As a songwriter, I always wished I could have written more into the song or additional songs, but I think this says enough on its own.

Well, I hope you enjoy this one. If it doesn’t whet your appetite, then don’t forget to rush back tomorrow for Jeff’s all-new Laptop Session as session-a-day rolls on for all 366 days of the year 2008…

See you next session!

 



“Oh, Sister” (Bob Dylan Cover)

By Chris Moore:

If you enjoyed Jim’s rendition of “To Be Alone With You” from yesterday’s Laptop Session, then I hope you’ll love this Bob Dylan tune, too! Going right along in chronological order, “Oh, Sister” is from his 1975 album Desire. Better known for the song “Hurricane,” Desire really is one of my favorite Dylan albums. It doesn’t hurt that I have fond memories of this one — I’ve been listening to it since Jim bought it (before me!) and brought it to our drivers’ education classes. In contrast, I suppose anything would be more exciting!

I have some good news — by the end of the day, I’ll be joining Jim and Jeff in the 5,000+ YouTube views club!
I’m really excited, so thank you to all who have been watching and supporting these videos.

I hope you’ll keep coming back as “One-A-Day” rolls on in 2008 at guitarbucketlist.com!


“Black” (Pearl Jam Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening! Welcome to your Friday installment of The Laptop Sessions. I hope you are ready to celebrate a three-day weekend, and plan on seeing family, friends, and perhaps enjoy a nice cookout or two in the process.

Meanwhile, I get to bring to you one of my favorite songs. It’s Pearl Jam tonight with a song from their first album Ten. Track #5 is Black from that album and that is the song I bring to you tonight.

It has a great background electric guitar and Eddie Vedder sings a wonderful vocal melody in the entire song. Vedder is known to go in between styles back and forth and this song showcases that talent of his. From the soft verses to the emotional outro of the song, I attempt to emulate what Eddie can do. I think I do a good job, but then again i’m no Eddie Vedder. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Also, this song translates wonderfully to acoustic guitar, and I substitute a minor change in the guitar part at the end of the song instead of the vocal “do do doo doo do do dooo” that the recording has. And as with all songs that fade out, I picked the chord that sounded best to end on and went with that.

I want to thank all of you for visiting, commenting, rating, and subscribing. This is among the sessions I am most proud of.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Jim’s latest session, then come Sunday we bring another special week of songs to you. You’ll have to check out Chris’s session on Sunday to find out just what that is!

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!

“Some Flowers Bloom Dead” (Wallflowers Cover)

 By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to your Monday Night Football….er, edition of The Laptop Sessions!  It’s the man, myth, and legend Jeff Copperthite tonight with your latest acoustic cover video for the series.  I hope this song is familiar to you, because it is a good one.

The song is another one from The Wallflowers called “Some Flowers Bloom Dead” from their album “(Breach)”.  I think the album as a whole is one of the most underrated of their albums.  It has some really awesome tunes on it and I know that my friend Rory would belt out the tracklisting in order.  I’d put down $40 that he could do it.  Before session-a-day ends in a mere 4 months and 13 days (almost 2/3 done), I will do another song from this album called “Murder 101” because I think the tune is that good.

You may notice I enjoy covering this band a lot.  It has something to do with the fact I haven’t had to filter many (if any) negative comments about ANY of their covers here or on Youtube.  Maybe my singing style is similar to Jakob Dylan, or you can tell that I’m a huge fan when you watch me play their tunes.  Regardless, I love bringing you more videos of their songs.  However, I had to include a little text after my title in the video.  I must admit that I was getting a little tired in this recording session.  I’m have to sit down and record some videos this week so this doesn’t happen in the future.  My guitar playing isn’t as clean as usual, but I was trying my hardest to not ruin another take.  I don’t think I’m a perfectionist, but when it comes to recording these videos, sometimes I just have to relax and just play the song.

Terrific Tuesday is next, and Jim Fusco is on deck for that.  I hope you checked out his video from Saturday.  What a great, great video and great song.  You’re really missing out if you haven’t seen it.  Here, I’ll even give you the direct link: Ben Folds “Time”.

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 origianal 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!