Tag Archives: laptop sessions

“Please Come Home For Christmas” (Eagles Acoustic & Electric Rock Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Well, my first Eagles cover tonight, aided by one Chris Moore!

This is a landmark Laptop Session, as it’s the first one EVER to feature an electric guitar!  I’m using one of my prized Ibanez guitars for this video.  I can’t believe how great it came out.  I’m not talking about our performance- I’m talking about the fact that we used my one microphone and just sorta placed it there and let it roll.  The amp was on the other side of the room, too.

I got the solo perfect in this take, but Chris wanted to do another one to perfect his part.  After a couple of extra takes, I decided that the solo was more important than a couple of botched chords, so we kept this take.  You may notice a different font used in this video, as that’s a clear sign we used Chris’ computer, as mine was busy burning DVDs.

I like this song, but didn’t really love it until I learned how to play it last year.  It’s got some great chords, including one of my favorites- A major 7th.  It’s my first Eagles song, too, and I’m happy I had Chris to back me up and allow me to play a non-kazoo solo tonight.

It’s really late now, as Mike came over to talk and chill with Dana, Chris, and me.  We had a good time laughing about Dana’s various botched pickup lines and Chris’ general hilarity.

I’m getting ramped-up for Christmas, as the tree (which is perfect) is up, the lights are on, and the presents are ready for wrapping.  Of course, I’m still busy with video jobs and the like, but we’ll make it.

Okay, have a great week

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“Runaway” (Del Shannon Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Okay, picture this- a website with nothing but great songs that feature…the kazoo!  Now picture the name of the site: KazooTube!  It’s perfect- I’ll go trademark it.

Tonight, I bring you yet another song with a kazoo solo (featuring the hand of one Chris Moore).  This tune is none other than Del Shannon’s classic hit, “Runaway”.  Even if you’ve been living under a rock for the past 50 years and don’t know this song, you may yet have heard of it.  Remember the Tom Petty classic song “Runnin’ Down A Dream”?  Well, a line in that song is, “Me and Del were singin’ Little Runaway, I was drivin’.”  I guess Del and Petty were friends during the last few years of Shannon’s life.

I was just reading about Del Shannon- what a sad story!  His biggest hit song was “Runaway” and that went all the way to Number One in 1961.  It was his first single!  Then, he had a few more years of mediocrity before falling off the charts completely.  After that, he produced, etc.  Then, in 1990, after a long battle with alcoholism and prescription drugs, he shot himself.  I couldn’t believe it when I saw it!  I mean, I knew he died relatively young (age 55), but I thought it was from an illness.

So, this video turns into a tribute of sorts.  Even though he died 18 years ago, I just found out about it now, so it feels like a loss.

I don’t know what made me think of doing this song- I haven’t heard it in ages.  But, it’s really a great one for me to do.  It’s from an artist we haven’t done yet, it’s a great song, it allowed me to play a fairly dead-on solo, it’s got a great beat, and it’s got that oh-so catchy falsetto part that I love so dear.  Any chance I get to sing in that register without being embarassed is a chance I want to take!

I hope you enjoy tonight’s video as I pinch-hit for an under-the-weather Jeff. 

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“Last Christmas” (Wham! cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to your Tuesday edition of the Laptop Sessions!  I love feeling productive, and even though I have a TON of work to do over the next few days (that is, AFTER a full day of work, in addition) I’ve been getting a lot done, so I’m in a good mood.  I hope to completely clear my “after-work” schedule after this week so I can focus on having some Christmas fun!

Tonight, I kick off my Christmas song selection for this year with “Last Christmas” by the band Wham!  No, I wasn’t excited there at the end of that sentence- the band’s name actually has an exclamation point in it!  (For the record, in that last sentence, I really DID want to use an exclaimation point! 🙂 )

I heard this song on XM Radio a couple years ago and remembered this tune.  Of course, you’ll hear the terrible 80s sound that goes along with it, but I kinda like that sound…probably because it’s the sounds that were popular when I was very young.

Keeping with my success of the Beach Boys’ “I’m So Lonely” video, I think this video may become pretty popular.  Why?  Because the Laptop Sessions has three goals: to do songs in the RIGHT KEY, to put an end to bad YouTube videos forever, and to strip down songs to their core and turn them into acoustic performances.  In cases like this and “I’m So Lonely”, I took out the cheesy, dated production and performed the song in its purest form.  I think people that have previously written this song off will come to like it after my performance!

This is the first in a series of Christmas songs to come this year, mixed in with my normal acoustic covers.  I can’t believe we’re in the last month of our “session a day” project.  I sincerely hope that Chris can contact some sort of news outlet (or the Guinness book) to report on this amazing accomplishment.  I’m certain that it’s unprecedented!

Enjoy tonight’s video, as Christmas time is in full swing.  Again, I hope I can start enjoying it more in a few days, and I’m sure my post length will reflect that when things slow down and I have more time to myself.  Okay, off to bed now. 

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“Forever Young” (Bob Dylan Cover)

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By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to my second to last Laptop Session of 2008!  For my selection tonight, I’ve gone back to the formidable catalog of Bob Dylan.  Specifically, I’ve chosen a song that I think everyone should hear — around this time of the year, especially.

“Forever Young” is a fairly simple and straightforward song, one about wishing someone health, happiness, self-confidence, and an overall high quality of life.  I think it’s really interesting that Dylan recorded two versions of this song.  Now, you may be wondering why this is out of the ordinary, as Dylan is well-known for recording multiple versions of the same song, often with various arrangements and different lyrics.  However, in this case, both versions (each very unique) were included on the same album, 1974’s Planet Waves…  Back to back!

I hope you enjoy my cover of this great song, and I hope you’ll accept it as a blessing extended from me to each one of you, each of you that has taken and continues to take the time to listen to my cover songs.  It’s been quite a year with some great videos, some mediocre videos, and a few that stretched the range of what I’m able to do.  And, at the end of this noble experiment we like to call “session-a-day,” I find myself being able to sing a song — this one, “Forever Young,” — that I wasn’t able to sing and play comfortably as recently as a year ago.

Before I leave you to watch the music video I’ve posted on YouTube for today, I’d like to thank Jim’s cousin Sarah for having us over tonight.  Jim, Becky, Sarah, and I went to see Jim Carrey in Yes Man (and it was excellent fun!), eat at Luigi’s (where I had delicious scallops over ziti), and even got to play Wii tennis, dodgeball, and volleyball.  Sarah and I were an unstoppable team, but Jim did beat me mercilessly in the gladiator event.  It was good to get out.

And, as a final note, I just finished reading Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which was a Christmas present from my sister Jaime.  It was an excellent book, and as I mentioned to her, I wish I had read it in high school, as I was trying to figure out some essential things about myself.  That was in large part what the novel was all about — learning to understand and be confident about yourself before you can properly fit other people into your life.  Now, I’m 25 pages into Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and really enjoying it.  Vonnegut is great; his final novel, Timequake, really impressed me, and I have no doubts that I’ll be equally amazed with this one by the time I’ve finished reading it.

Okay, but this is enough for now.  You should go watch my video, and I’m going to go back to watching episodes from the eighth season of ER, one of my favorite shows of all time.  I forgot how much I cared about these characters — Greene, Carter, Lewis, and others.

See you next and last (for 2008) session!

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