For Eddie Vedder chords & lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to the first installment in a fresh new week of brand new material at the Laptop Sessions, the best cover song music video website in the universe!

I was FINALLY able to find the Into Thin Air soundtrack on sale — thank you, Best Buy — so I’ve been listening to it all week.  Although I have discovered several other songs that I like very much, Eddie Vedder’s cover version of Jerry Hannan’s “Society” is still my favorite track on the album.  It was very disappointing for me to discover that it is a cover, but it’s such a great track that I have to stifle my desire for original material, at least temporarily.

I first heard this track from my friends and colleagues Dan and Larry over the summer as we played some music of our own.  At the time, I had not yet immersed myself in Pearl Jam, but I was immediately drawn to Vedder’s simple but powerful vocals on this track.  Apparently, as they told me, Vedder had contributed eleven songs (9 originals and 2 covers) to the soundtrack of the film Into Thin Air, based on Jon Krakauer’s book of the same name.  Although some of the songs are very short and there are two tracks without lyrics, the Into Thin Air soundtrack is essentially an Eddie Vedder solo album — his first full length solo project since he began singing with the other members of Pearl Jam.

Whether you’re a Pearl Jam fan or not, I think everyone here at the Laptop Sessions will be able to appreciate this great acoustic tune.  It was a pleasure to record, from beginning to end.  In fact, I ended up with several early takes that I could have settled for, but kept playing and playing until I arrived at this version, which I felt was most loyal to the original version.  (Well, maybe not the original version — rather, the Eddie Vedder version of the Jerry Hannan original.  Although, Hannan provided background vocals and guitars for this track, so it’s closer to an original than your average cover.)  When I finished recording, I had the sort of sadness I always get when I’ve figured out a song and yet, the recording being finished, don’t have any real reason to keep playing it.

The bright side here is that I’ll get to play it a little bit today during school, as I’m bringing my guitar in to practice for our big Writing Club / Creative Writing open mic night.  This is the first time (at least since I’ve been at the school) that the Writing Club has teamed with the Creative Writing classes to put on the open mic.  The result?  To begin with, we’re in the theater instead of the cafeteria and it promises to draw a more significant crowd.  The only downside — and it’s a significant downside, if only for me — is that the show runs from 6 to 10pm…  This Thursday.  And Thursdays mean baseball, fast food, and wrestling with my friends.  We had originally scheduled the show for a Friday — which I was excited about — but there was a scheduling conflict and the best available day for everyone else was Thursday.

Either way, it’s only one week and it’s for a good cause.  With some luck, I’ll be able to catch the second half of wrestling.  If not, there’s always the iTunes download if I hear I’ve missed a great episode (as last week’s was!).  Until next Monday, I hope you have a great week.  Don’t forget that you’ve got at least two things to look forward to: Jim Fusco Tuesday and Jeff Copperthite’s “Thumpin’ Thursday.”

See you next session!