Tag Archives: jeff

“You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” (The Beatles Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening and I hope your weekend is off to a good start.  It’s Where-the-heck-is-Jeff Copperthite here today to bring you the latest installment of the Laptop Sessions, another in our series of Beatles cover songs, and session cover song music video #90 overall.

I am continuing to delve into the libraries of previously covered bands, and I have always enjoyed todays song a lot.  It really is amazing just how many Beatles’ songs I know and am familiar with.  Of that huge library, this is probably my favorite.

“You’ve got to hide your love away” is from the Beatles’ album “Help!” and it’s extremely incorrect Semaphore album cover.  You may also be familiar with the cover version of this song by Eddie Vedder.  And while that is a good version, it’s hard to beat the original.

You will notice a singing style that i’m not used too, and I feel it is quite effective.  Lately I have been hearing great things about my most recent video, and that my ability to sing on video has taken a lot of leaps.  i’m glad you think so!  Thank you for all your support.

Also, i’m nearing 39K views, and while I fell about 2K short of my 40K goal by the end of August, I still did quite well and I am very proud of how we are doing.  No reason we can’t continue to increase our views per day.1

I hope you enjoy today’s session, and return tomorrow for another great song cover by Jim Fusco!

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!

“And She Was” (Talking Heads Cover)

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By Jeff:

Site Curator notice: Amazing look back at the description and video here.  Still fun to read back at these things over 4 years later.  I actually use this album as “detention music” when students are silly enough to receive detention from me.

And now after yet another possible power outage (just some flickering lights today, despite the 30 minute long tornado warning), I get to bring you my “originally intended for Thumpin’ Thursday video”, which we’ll call “It sucks when the *#%@in power goes out Friday”.

And for ISWTFPGOF (which I will NOT be typing again – either in abbreviated or standard form), I bring you a new band for the site.  It’s amazing that we haven’t thought to do a song by this awesome band – The Talking Heads.  One of my favorite bands from the 80s (aka my childhood of watching MTV videos), I bring you a song from their album “Little Creatures” called “And She Was”.

I think David Byrne is another person that I can sing similar too.  This is an awesome song that goes along with some of their other more well-known hits (which I am considering doing for next week as well).  While a bit on the short side (for one of my videos), it is a fun song to play and sing.

The summer time has afforded me a bit of free time, but that will still be hard to find all summer.  I have two weeks of training in July, a week vacation in mid-August, and in general a summer of preparation.  For many things.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s video – even if it’s a day late.  Seeya in 6 days!

WCJM Free Internet Radio Station: “The That Was Then, This Is Now Show” – 2007

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By WCJM Free Internet Radio:

The show’s theme had been thought-up many years ago, and the ninth anniversary of WCJM free Internet radio would be a memorable one. Songs were chosen as a “then” and “now” from each band, for instance, a Beach Boys song from the 60s and one from the last couple years.

The skits would follow the same format. Before each skit or appearance by such standards as Dr K., Ben Case, the Food Critic, Traffic, News, and Weather, and others, a clip of some great lines from past shows would play. That would be our “then” before the guys busted out with their material from “now”!

As you listen to this show, you can hear how each of the cast members just loves being there. Being around old friends that you see maybe once or twice a year is special enough, but when you add comedy and creativity, it just ups the excitement. Matt was on, as usual, with his comedy routines and Celebrity Jeopardy. Chris had the cast rolling with his “Lightsaber Accidents” skit. Jim wrote more material than ever. Mike and Alb cracked about whatever they found funny. Jeff provided his usual hilarious segments, plus a Top Ten list.

For this show, there was an eighth member. Cliff Huizenga, a college friend of Jim’s, fit right in to the WCJM cast. Let’s just say that he can dish the insults right along with the usual cast. Cliff was invited as a special guest for this show because of his tireless (okay, maybe he was tired) efforts on the WCJM website. His knowledge and skill helped put this site together and the entire cast is very grateful.

The show was recorded differently this time. Two condenser microphones were used back-to-back in the center of the room. This allowed the cast to sit in an on-obscured circle, plus the microphones picked everyone’s voice up perfectly! If you listen to this show on headphones, note the great stereo effect. It really sounds like you’re in the room with them!

This is clearly the longest WCJM show to date- about four hours! But, there’s over 20 segments and skits combined with great music to make that time just fly by. Well, there’s one thing about WCJM- the funny radio shows are great- both then and now!

A review: IPod Classic 6th Generation

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By Jeff Copperthite:

A great MP3 player for an average price.  If you run out of room on this thing just storing music, then you have too much music.

One thing that people that know me can tell is this.  I love music.  I love playing it.  I love listening to it.  I love reading about it.  It’s no surprise that, even in my other hobbies, there is a tie-in to my love of music.  So it’s no surprise that, like so many people around the world, I had to have a portable MP3 player.

In 2003, I drove to Greenwich, CT for work, which was a near-30 mile drive for me in one direction.  Thankfully, my car stereo had an auxiliary input (this is a 1/8″ stereo connection that basically allows you to connect any music device to your car stereo), which fit my (at the time) brand new Creative Zen Sleek MP3 player.  Combine that with my Sirius Satellite radio, and I was good to go for those long trips when I was stuck in traffic.

Just over 5 years later, I am inserting the paper clip I have bent specially for the act of resetting the Creative player.  I knew it was on its last legs.  The player would no longer show the title of the song being played, and every time it booted up it had to rebuild the music library.  Furthermore, it was only storing 8 GB of its original 20 GB capacity.

Time to upgrade!

After a long 3 days of deliberation, review reviewing (sounds weird), and asking all kinds of people – including my students – I decided to buy the IPod Classic 6th Generation 120 GB in Black.

I ordered this and a carrying case, and received it from amazon.com (which is really the only store I buy online from) about 4 days later.  Out of the box, I could tell how well it was constructed with the stainless steel backing.  The whole unit felt smooth and sturdy.

Loading songs onto it was a cinch.  I already had all my MP3 files sorted out in Itunes on my laptop.  All I had to do was connect the Ipod, and sync the library to the Ipod.  It did take a while considering I have over 5,000 songs in my collection.  When I was finished, the capacity indicator wasn’t even 20% full.

Now that’s what I call storage!

Listening to the music you’re looking for is just like any other MP3 player.  You can create playlists in Itunes and put them on your Ipod, or you can select by artist, genre, or album.  You can also tell it to shuffle the whole Ipod and play all your tracks in random order.  Remember, this was my first Ipod, but I quickly got used to the controls on the unit.  Center button selects, rotate your thumb around the touch wheel to scan songs, or lower the volume, or scan a track.  It’s very easy to get used too.

One thing I didn’t do immediately was use the included ear buds.  I’ve heard various things about them but I can tell you the sound quality of those ear buds is minimal.  Once I put on my Sony studio headphones, the Ipod sounded fantastic.  It even sounds great hooked up to my surround system.  But please, if you’re an audiophile like me, pick up a better pair of headphones.

This particular Ipod has other features previous Ipod classics didn’t have until recently.  For instance, you can store photographs and view them as a slideshow, or just browse through them with the touch wheel.  You can also store video (although you will need all 120 GB of storage space if you’re looking to put a lot of video on this thing) and watch it.  I myself have not used this feature.  Perhaps if I ever go on a long train ride in the future i’d consider it.  But after all, I did buy this Ipod because it was the best one for music.  I figured if I wanted video and some other games, i’d have gotten an Itouch or even an Iphone.

This Ipod also comes with a few neat games that I discovered sort of by accident.  One game is called Vortex, which is a breakout game viewed like it’s through a pipe-like tunnel.  The paddle rotates around the outer edge of the screen, and you control it with the touch wheel.  There’s standard solitaire, but I wasn’t impressed with the touch wheel controls of this game.  It takes a while to get to different piles and to select specific cards you want to move.

The really cool and innovative game that is included is called iQuiz, and what it does is it makes a quiz show out of your song library.  This was further motivation for me to input as much information about the songs as I could in the ID3 tags.  It’s really need how the iQuiz game does this.  For instance, one question could be “Which album was this song off of?”, and it’ll play the song in the background.  You’ll have to pick from four choices (and for the most part, the choices are albums that are in your library).  It’s a really cool game to play, and will help you remember some of the songs you haven’t really listened too in a while.

I think if you’re looking for a great but straightforward music player, I highly recommend the IPod Classic 6th Generation.  The storage space is more than enough for any music lover, although you will be strapped for space if you plan on storing a lot of video files.  I think this unit will last me a long time, and possibly longer than my previous Creative MP3 player.  It is a greatly priced ($224.95 on Amazon.com, as of 3/5/09) unit as well for the storage space and features it provides.