Tag Archives: music reviews

“Counting Blue Cars” (Dishwalla Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening and welcome to your Sunday Sunday Sunday edition of the Laptop Sessions (the preceding quote stolen from Jim Fusco – i’m sure he’s ecstatic I took it away from him). Today I continue a little binge of mine and bring you another song from my teenage years, and I go back to a band and album I have covered before.

However, this time it’s probably a song you’ve heard.

While this song is considered by many to be a “One hit wonder”, I think the album itself is one of my personal favorites, and is quite strong. Now, that could be a bit biased because of nostalgia, but it’s how I feel at least. The band is Dishwalla, and today I bring you their song “Counting Blue Cars” from their album “Pet Your Friends”. I have always enjoyed this song and it is always the song I refer to when i’m trying to explain to someone who Dishwalla is. “Hey, remember that song with the line ‘tell me all your thoughts on God’?”. Invariably, they’d remember.

On this performance I did alter the way I sing a little bit. Please let me know if you like this a little better. I’m experimenting with some singing styles other than my own “standard” voice. This song is a good one to try since I can emulate the lead singers voice quite well. Also, the chorus is the tough area in this song. I played around with singing the first line an octave down, but it sounds way out of place for me. Therefore, this is certainly a WYSIWYG video. I think the only shaky time for me was the very first chorus – the other four times I had to sing the line in question I think I did just fine.

Thank you for checking us out this evening!

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!

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“Hungry Heart” (Bruce Springsteen cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

How is it even possible that we can keep rolling out quality new music artists like Bruce Springsteen here on the Laptop Sessions acoustic song music video blog? I mean, we have over 80 categories now on the site, and we STILL have not done a song from such heavy-hitters as the Rolling Stones & Crosby, Stills, and Nash. But, with time, we’ll be adding these great bands and musicians to our catalog of acoustic cover songs.

Tonight, I bring you our first-ever Bruce Springsteen song, dedicated to my good friend, and fellow Mets fan, John Grabar, a huge Springsteen fan. Honestly, there are many songs from Springsteen that I’d like to do for future Laptop Sessions, but this one always struck me as catchy and meaningful. But, I will admit, it was only a few years ago that I learned this was actually Bruce singing the lead to this tune! I mean, it barely sounds like him, especially like he sounds in such hits as “My Hometown”.

“Hungry Heart” is one of those special songs that honestly has four chords (save for the ten second interlude in the middle) and the same chords repeat for the verse and the chorus. I mean, if you can get away with it, make a good song, and sell a ton of copies, then why not?

Well, that’s all for me tonight. You’ll remember it was three weeks ago that I gave the reigns over to Chris and Jeff for the weekend and the website went down for three days. Of course, it wasn’t their fault AT ALL, but it’s still fun to tease them about it. I’m planning on meeting my good friends Dave and Dana tomorrow night for a beer, and I’m really looking forward to it. Now that things are (finally) stable here on the blog, I can start to prioritize my life again…without making “fix the blog” come in at #1.

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“You and I” (Dennis Wilson Cover)

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As the biggest Beach Boys fan (I mean, a true lover of their music- not just a big collector) under the age of 30, I pride myself on being a complete Beach Boys fan. Some people on Brian Wilson’s message board are JUST Brian Wilson fans- they only consider the golden years of the Beach Boys to be when Brian was writing the songs and calling the shots.

For me, that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Yes, of course, I love the early Beach Boys music. I also love Pet Sounds. And, I’m even “okay” with “Love You” and “15 Big Ones”.

But, my favorite Beach Boys albums are the ones where everyone contributes. Nothing gets me excited than to find a new Bruce Johnston song, a Carl Wilson song, or especially a Dennis Wilson song. In fact, my brother Mike considers Dennis Wilson to be the best songwriter of all time. Okay, so maybe he doesn’t have an extensive enough catalog to prove that claim, but just one listen to songs like “Forever”, “Thoughts of You”, and “Cuddle Up” make the claim all the more believable.

I can sit here all night and rant about how much I love Dennis Wilson’s music. When I found out about the “Pacific Ocean Blue” album re-release for June of 2008, I was ecstatic, even though my family is one of the lucky few with both a CD and vinyl original version that we’ve had for many years. I’m always a fan of remastering old songs and I was especially excited about hearing a true release of his unreleased “Bambu” album. Of course, I even had a bootleg- I’ll admit- that I bought for Mike one year at Christmas. I considered it one of my greatest presents for him and he was so excited.

One thing I can say about Denny during his late 1970s period is that I get really sad listening to how much his voice deteriorated. He had a very nice, yet not perfect, voice in the late 60s and very early 70s. I just couldn’t believe that he had let life ruin his voice like that. Although, his scratchy voice really did lend itself to some powerful and emotional renditions of his solo work.

Tonight, I bring you the first of MANY Dennis Wilson solo songs to grace the Laptop Sessions. I’m very proud of this one, not only because it’s one my favorites off of “Pacific Ocean Blue”, but because I’m doing an acoustic guitar version of this otherwise keyboard-based song. It has an interesting new sound and the lyrics really stand out. Plus, isn’t that tune just infectious? This song, as simple as it is, seems to transcend time- it sounds new now, as I’m sure it sounded innovative then.

I hope you enjoy my first Dennis Wilson solo acoustic cover song here on the Laptop Sessions music video blog. My only hope is that this version can start to give Dennis’ songs the attention they’ve always deserved.

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“Everybody Out of the Water” (Wallflowers Cover)

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By Jeff Copperthite:

Good evening, and welcome to The Laptop Sessions for Monday, July 7th. Today’s song is dedicated to the youtube user who sent me a message simply asking “Why haven’t you done a Wallflowers song lately?”. Well, I aim to please, so here you go!

Today’s song is from The Wallflowers, from their album “Red Letter Days” (my personal favorite of thiers). We have covered songs from this album before, but given that each song is awesome, there’s no reason we can’t cover another! And the song is “Everybody Out of the Water”, which is unlike any other song on the album. It’s the 4th track, and the song before it is the soft piano medley “Closer to You”. That song and this song are the two extremes on the album. This is meant to be an angry song, and even though this song sounds best with the electric distorted guitar, I think the acoustic cover that I present to you is just as effective.

I hope you enjoyed today’s session and continue to enjoy the sessions overall!

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 original 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!

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!

More Laptop Sessions covers