Welcome to your Super Bowl Sunday edition of The Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs music video blog! As a quick note on the Super Bowl, I’m a Jets “fan”, so even though this concerns two northeast teams, I really don’t care who wins. On top of that, I’m a baseball fan, so hearing that the Mets signed Johan Santana, it already feels like a win.
On to today’s acoustic cover song:
I’ve said it before, but Gene Clark is in the running for best songwriter of all time. Those know know Gene’s music share my admiration of it, and even though finding someone who’s even HEARD of him is few and far between, I know this acoustic cover version of “Dark of My Moon” will make a lot of fans very happy.
“Dark of My Moon” and is an “unreleased” song that was formally released only as an acoustic demo a few years ago (long after Gene passed away). This has been a favorite of everyone in my family since we first heard it and I’m proud to bring it to the Laptop Sessions music blog.
This literally took me 30 takes to do. This is a very powerful song and I needed to do it right. I found that the more I played it, the harder it became to sing. But, after plenty of loud obscenities, I finally got the perfect take, which I present to you today.
Listen to the words of this song and listen to how the music rises and falls with the emotions. Not all of Gene Clark’s songs were this slow and sad-sounding, but most of them had this hint of melancholy to them. Even in a fast-paced song like “Feel A Whole Lot Better”, Gene would put this sad tinge on the lyrics. But, what’s interesting about “Feel A Whole Lot Better” is how he says, “I’ll probably feel a whole lot better when you’re gone.” He doesn’t even know for sure! I think that extra dimension to Gene Clark’s lyrics is what made him so great. He had a way with words and you could tell he looked up to guys like Bob Dylan. For “Dark of My Moon”, you can tell it’s a very personal song. Lines like, “That’s the tenth time that you went and then came back,” make the listener realize that he’s talking about something (and someone) very specific. On songs like that, I usually choose not to do a cover version. But, “Dark of My Moon” is such a great song, I just couldn’t help it. The way Gene Clark sings in the rough demo version is just perfectly suited to the content of the song. This is only the first of many solo Gene Clark cover songs to come here on the video blog (not to mention those he did with the Byrds), so I hope everyone enjoys it!