Tag Archives: indie music

Ranking every Beach Boys album and song: “Surfin’ USA” LP (by Songwriter Jim Fusco)

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By Jim Fusco:

ALBUM – SURFIN’ USA

Farmer’s Daughter – 6 (early promising song)
Surfin’ USA – 6 (catchy, but also a stolen melody, so it loses some points)
Lana – 5
Lonely Sea – 7
Shut Down – 7 (this is a great bluesy song)
Finders Keepers – 6 (endearing)
Let’s Go Trippin’ – 4 (filler)
Stoked – 3 (see last song)
Misirlou – 2 (because at this point in the album, I am sick of instrumentals!)
Noble Surfer – 6
Honky Tonk – 1 (why all the instrumentals!!)
*The Baker Man – 1 (probably the most ridiculous song they did next to Ding Dang)
Surf Jam – 1 (we get the idea)

** Here’s another album I like, but I think it’s a step back from their first. I know they were trying to make music people could dance to at parties, but the instrumentals don’t stand up now. They come across as a lack of effort. They have so much vocal talent- it’s a shame there’s not more songs with vocals! **

Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.

“Love Stinks” (J. Geils Band Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

I get to kick off a specialty week here on guitarbucketlist.com.  If Jim & Chris haven’t hyped it up enough, it’s New Bands Week version 2.0 starting tonight!

Our first new band is, to be honest, a band I don’t know all that much about.  Matter of fact, I didn’t even know this song was by this band until it was played on The Complaining Show on WCJM way back when.  It was also featured prominently in the movie “The Wedding Singer” before Adam Sandler had his lights punched out.

I think I don’t match the voice of John (not Jerome) Geils that well, but the acoustic cover is an interesting one for sure.

Hey, it was either this or “Freeze Frame”.

This is probably among the more interesting songs I have covered.  Hopefully the rest of the year my song selection will start to make sense much more often.

Tomorrow Jim will be here to bring another new band to the table.  I can’t wait to see who it 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!

Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.

“Good” (Better Than Ezra Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening, and welcome toThumpin’ Thursday!  I’ve got a brand new band to bring to the blog tonight!

The band is somewhat well-known, called “Better Than Ezra”.  They released an album that I have somewhere in my library called “Deluxe”.  On it was a song called “Good”, which is tonight’s cover.  It’s a very cool song that I actually never really understood the meaning of.

You know how there are songs that you really don’t “listen” to the lyrics?  This is one of them.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I’ve long knew the words, but I never really bothered to figure out what the song means.  It wasn’t until I was reviewing the lyrics for the session that I realized it’s a “damn she left and wrote a note about it”.

This song is still a solid one from what I call “My Alternative Library”.  It’s going to be drawn from throughout the year, so you get to look forward to that.

I’m watching a really cool special right now on TV.  Apparently George Carlin has been posthumously awarded the “Mark Twain” award.  It’s a commercial free 90 minute special where multiple comedians are paying tribute and they are showing various clips from his television career – all the way from his very early Tonight Show appearances, Smothers Brothers set, HBO specials, and other things I haven’t seen.  It was on a channel called WLIW21, so if you get it (or have heard of it before), you will have to watch it.

George has always been a favorite of mine.  Sorry for the diversion from tonight’s session.  I hope you enjoy it, and come back next Thursday for what I hope is the first cover video of a great song!

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!

Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.

“I Threw It All Away” (Bob Dylan Cover)

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It’s back-to-back Bob Dylan songs for me. This one comes from his 1969 country-rock album, complete with “Lay, Lady, Lay” voice! For those of you WCJM.com Free Internet Radio fans out there, try not to confuse this with John Daley’s trademark tones…

I’ll be tapping into some new artists in the next few posts, and I’d like to really kick off the Christmas season with some holiday tunes (coming soon!). As always, thanks for “tuning in”!!

(Looking for a different song? Use the SEARCH bar to the upper right of the screen!)

Editor’s note: this post was originally published before December 2015; the exact original date is uncertain.