Good evening and welcome to Sunday’s edition of The Laptop Sessions. Tonight is my first cover from this band, but 5th for the site.
The Travelling Wilburys were advertised to me as an “all star band” by Jim, and boy they sure are. There aren’t many songs by them (two albums worth) but the ones that I have heard are just awesome. This one included, and I had no idea this song was by them until I heard it again.
The song is “End of the Line” from their first album. Every member except Bob Dylan is featured on lead vocals at some point in the song.
You’ll notice some voice inflection at the seperate parts where each singer is singing the original song.
I hope you stay tuned for even more from guitarbucketlist.com! Come back tomorrow for Jim’s next cover.
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!
It has been a great week here at guitarbucketlist.com’s Track 1 week. I had the privilege of opening it up with a U2 video that many have not found due to uploading difficulties. Thankfully, Chris & Jim have posted four awesome album openers during the week, and my U2 video is finally getting some more views.
Now I get to close out Track 1 week with what is probably going to be one of my favorite performances. I am going into the library of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and performing “Saving Grace” from their most recent album “Highway Companion”. I love the bluesy guitar riff and Tom Petty’s lyrical style. We also have this in the live library for The Laptop Sessions Live tour. We did play it at Testa’s back on April 12.
Speaking of the tour, we were on fire last night with our most recent live show at George’s II. There will be audio and pictures to come from that in the near future. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, though, you can see 5 images from the show right now.
I want to point out that I used to think/was taught that the instrumental riff went E-B-A-G, but upon closer listening to the song (oh, about 22 times), I figured out it actually is E-Bb-A-G, but the B chord going into the last verse is the correct chord.
This concludes track 1 week. We hope you enjoy it and in 2 weeks we get to break out another special week for you. Thank you again for being a regular visitor of guitarbucketlist.com!
Come on back tomorrow for another great session by Jim Fusco himself!
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!
The 2010-2011 season of the Laptop Sessions with Jim Fusco has now begun! Back here again after taking the summer off and that’s the way it looks like the schedule will go: September to June. That way, I can take time off while my wife is off from work. I’m excited to bring you a whole new crop of Laptop Sessions acoustic cover song music videos- once every two weeks! In between, I’ll be posting articles, reviews, and more. There’s a lot going on in this noggin’ of mine, so let me update you on a couple of things I’m up to:
I had a nice summer, taking a cruise to Bermuda and doing many activities (mostly that my wife wanted to accomplish during her time off)
BIG changes are coming to my suite of websites, including the simplification of everything. This starts with the removal of fusco-moore.com and the FMP Music Store. They’re just not necessary anymore. I’ll keep the MoU site online just for old time’s sake (and, it looks cool), but everything else will be taken down (except for WCJM, of course). I’m conceptualizing a new JimFusco.com and we’ve been doing some photo shoots to give me some new content.
I also have a new Twitter account for my music: jimfuscomusic. Easy enough, huh? Please follow me so you can get up to the minute updates on all of my musical ventures!
I’m working on a new vocals-only project, but this is more for my own usage. I always put so much work into my vocals that I wanted to showcase them on a special collector’s album. More to follow.
Finally, and most importantly, I’m working on new songs! I have nine so far and will probably go to 15 so I can, for the first time, record everything and pick out only the best. I think this will be important to make the best album I can. But, I’m not giving up on “Halfway There” just yet, so I’ll be promoting that in the meantime. We’re still probably a year out before I release anything new.
So, that’s what’s happening. Now, onto tonight’s video!
I’m back with “Sweet Talkin’ Woman” by Electric Light Orchestra. This is a great classic rock tune that I’ve known for as long as I can remember. The song, written and sung by Jeff Lynne, is one of my favorite ELO (or E.L.O., whichever the search engines prefer) songs.
I knew the song started on the “C” chord- you can just hear it in the original recording. What I didn’t know, however, was that this song is really easy to play. I mean, when you hear an Electric Light Orchestra song, there’s so much going on that the songs sound like they’re really complicated. But, even after taking three months off, this still only took me one take to get right! No, I’m not perfect- I did practice quite a bit off-camera.
I think I got the song down really well and made it my own. Again, this is definitely a pared-down version from the original, stripping-away the multiple instruments and backing vocals. The backing vocals presented a bit of a challenge, so I had to pick what I believed to be the “lead” backing vocal note and sing that where necessary.
I hope you don’t notice that I’m getting over a cold. I’ve been practicing guitar like mad lately, but I’ve been giving my voice a rest after a really bad cold. You know how the cough lingers with you for weeks afterward? Well, it’s only been a few days and I’m really holding back in the video. I can’t even laugh without going into a coughing fit!
I hope you enjoy tonight’s video and that you’ll follow me on Twitter (@jimfuscomusic) so you’ll be the first to know when all my new acoustic cover song music videos and blog posts come out. So, until next time, here’s “Sweet Talkin’ Woman”!
The Guest Sessions tonight comes at you with a great ELO tune written by the one and only Jeff Lynne. “Turn To Stone” is an ambitious tune and definitely one that’s hard to capture just using an acoustic guitar. But, my friends, Mr. Les Groby has done it here with this acoustic cover song music video. His sweet singing voice and solid playing have made this just the second ever Guest Session here on the Laptop Sessions music video blog!
Here’s what Les had to say about his submission:
“I love finding good songs hiding under complex arrangement and production. Solo performers rarely cover ELO, but under their lavish recordings are some good, simple songs that work well solo.”
And isn’t that the the essence of the Laptop Sessions right there? I tell you, Jim’s videos with the most views are the ones where he took a very lavish song and turned it into an acoustic solo performance. And that’s what Les has done here with this fine cover song. We hope that you’ll continue sending in your submissions, as a new video will be featured once a week here on the best music video blog ever created- the Laptop Sessions! Congratulations Les!
