Tag Archives: new music tuesday

“When Love Comes to Town” (U2 & B.B. King Cover)

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For U2 chords and lyrics, CLICK HERE!   /   For B.B. King chords and lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to a brand new week.  Thanks for spending a little bit of it here on the Laptop Sessions music video blog with the latest edition of “Chris Moore Monday.”  No one understands the pressure I’m under!  I mean, there’s a lot riding on this video — if I’m good, I’m helping your week get off on the right foot.  If I’m not so good, then…  Well, let’s not even consider that option.

For tonight’s selection, I’m doing something that I’ve only done once before…

…make an enjoyable recording!  No, I’m just kidding.  (Not about the “enjoyable” part, I hope…)

This is only the second time that I’ve recorded a song by not only one but two artists whose work I’ve never played before.  Tonight’s subjects?  U2 and B.B. King.  (Jeff has already recorded U2, but B.B. King is a new addition to the blog.)  Why, you may ask?  Well, the big “New Music Tuesday” release of tomorrow, March 3rd, is No Line on the Horizon, U2’s first new studio album in five years.  It’s already making waves, having received a five-star rating from Rolling Stone magazine.  Now, I’m not often one to agree with Rolling Stone, but I am very curious about this album.  After all, Rolling Stone has never given U2 the five star salute.  Bono and company have come close, earning 4.5 stars for 1991’s Achtung, Baby, but this is the first time they’ve received 5 stars for an original studio release.

To be fair, this isn’t their first 5 out of 5 star experience — the band’s re-release of The Joshua Tree was granted 5 stars.  I just listened to that album last night for the first time, and although I wouldn’t give it five stars, I very much enjoyed it.  The first three tracks are a veritable U2 greatest hits, and there are several deep cuts that are great songs.

So, tomorrow is a new music Tuesday to look forward to.  To hold you over, I’ve gone back into the U2 catalog and hauled out an oldie but goodie.  “When Love Comes to Town” was originally released in 1988 on Rattle and Hum (a title that is taken from lyrics in the song “Bullet the Blue Sky,” from The Joshua Tree).  This is a song I have always loved — there’s such an energy between Bono and King’s vocals and the addition of King’s guitar to the instrumental mix.  I have always felt that the song had a timeless feel, and I would have loved to hear someone like Johnny Cash record a version of it.  So, for my cover song music video version tonight, I’ve slowed it down a bit and taken it down an octave (which is convenient, since my vocal chords are no match for Bono’s typical soaring range!).

The result?

Just like I thought, this song has such a classic feel to it that it lends itself to a stripped-down acoustic arrangement.  Still, my version is no match for the energy, emotion, and rocking presence of the studio version!  (And I can’t quite figure out what “catch that flame” means…  I sing “catch that plane,” which is what I’ve always thought he said, but the official U2 lyrics page says “flame.”  Oh, well…)

I hope you enjoy this U2 cover, and I hope it tides you over until tomorrow’s release of No Line on the Horizon.  Until then and until an all-new Jim Fusco Tuesday…

See you next session!

“Wishlist” (Pearl Jam Cover)

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For Pearl Jam chords & lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

You know what I wish?  I wish that I would wake up tomorrow and there would no longer be anyone on the entire planet who smoked cigarettes.  Never mind the health risk — which, by the way, there are few ingestible products that come with a “may cause cancer” label.  The concept of breathing tar into your lungs aside, let’s consider the ramifications to non-smokers on the road. For instance, I sat in a McDonald’s drive-through tonight for ten minutes and was delighted by not only the automobile emissions but two smokers puffing away.  The breeze was such that my car was filled with noxious fumes.

In a sense, this was great, because the fish filet and large fries actually seemed healthy by comparison!  🙂

Seriously, though, what really gets me is the disposal of the butts.  It’s happened so many times recently that I’ll be driving down the road and someone in the car ahead of me will flick a lit cigarette out of their window.  I don’t know if it’s due to me being older, a generally law-abiding dork, a teacher of transcendental texts like Emerson’s “Nature,” or a combination of the three, but this is enough to drive me crazy recently.  To paraphrase our friend Matt Griffiths from the WCJM morning show, it’s just enough to tweak my hypothalamus and send me into an uncontrollable rage!

I suppose I simply can’t imagine driving in my car, holding a lit piece of paper in my hand, and saying to myself, “I’m done with this.  Why not chuck it out the window?”  Since when did that become the acceptable form of cigarette disposal?! Think twice ye smokers, lest you piss off the drivers behind you (such as myself tonight when a highly tossed butt bounced off my car, lit ashes flying everywhere)…

For those of you wondering what this has to do with my post tonight, prepare to be dazzled.  Well, maybe not dazzled…

Just as I have ranted about something that has bothered me and later wondered if it was too negative, so did Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam decide that he should try writing something positive.  Out of a lengthier “stream-of-consciousness exercise,” we have the “better wishes” presented in this little gem of a song.  It was an instant favorite of mine upon first listening to Pearl Jam’s 1998 album Yield.  As with Binaural, I wasn’t sure what to expect with this album, as it sold less and seemed generally regarded as at least somewhat inferior to previous releases such as Ten and Vitalogy.  But I love this album, and I love this song.  For once, the song I love most is actually in my vocal range!

Okay, so that’s not entirely true.  My first pick for a song to learn and play would have been “Do The Evolution.”  For any of you familiar with that song, you should be sitting at your computer laughing at simply the notion of my attempting to sing a song like that!  I understand my own limitations!  🙂   That being said, you should take the time to search on YouTube for “Pearl Jam Evolution” and watch the official music video; it’s simply amazing — a very cool use of animation to visualize the lyrics to a song.

Along with my acoustic cover song music video tonight, I also send a shout out to my girlfriend Nicole who is a big fan of this song.  (I hope you like it!)  As she is currently in possession of my CD copy of the album and my iPod is tied up with my Bob Dylan playlist (518 out of 622 tracks!), I had to rely on my iPhone to listen to “Wishlist” tonight as I wrote out the lyrics and chords.  What a Mac nerd I am… but I love it.  Speaking of Macs, if I don’t end up writing a full review of U2’s No Line on the Horizon, please allow me to go on record saying that “Unknown Caller” has to be the worst track on the album for a number of reasons.  It’s only redeeming quality is that Bono makes lyrical references (“force quit and move to trash”) that bely his computer loyalties…

Although I have so much more I could say — about Pearl Jam’s re-release of Ten tomorrow, this song, other music, the fact that my dad and I just bought tickets to see Bruce Hornsby at the MGM Grand on Friday(!), life in general — I think this is enough for one night!  As a final note, please allow me to point out that this is officially the tenth post in the Pearl Jam category here at the Laptop Sessions, rounding us off to an even ten just in time for the re-release of Ten for tomorrow’s New Music Tuesday, March 24th, 2009!

For all you new music fans, don’t forget to stop by the blog tomorrow night for an all-new high-quality Jim Fusco Tuesday.  I have it on good authority that he’ll be taking it to a WHOLE…  NOTHA….  LEH-VAL….

See you next session!

“After Midnight” (J.J. Cale, Eric Clapton Cover)

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For J.J. Cale / Eric Clapton chords and lyrics, CLICK HERE!

By Chris Moore:

Okay, so before I explain my song choice tonight, I have to briefly address the music video I just watched.  I really do love music videos, and it seems a lost art.  Interestingly enough, it seems that the MTV show “Total Request Live,” or TRL for short, both furthered the popularity of music videos… and led to their demise.  I mean, what’s better than a show devoted to showing music videos?  Oh, wait — TRL, not unlike commercial radio, ended up circulating only about ten popular videos on any given day.  Oh yeah, and the show only aired clips of those ten music videos!  What?!  Who decided on this format?  No wonder they finally took it off the air!

To be fair, I heard that the show had recently adopted a more progressive format, utilizing online resources to poll viewers, etc.  But I stopped watching the show loooong before that.

Anyway, back to the music video I just watched.  I was on Yahoo and saw a link to Coldplay’s new music video for “Life in Technicolor II” — it’s a great one!  I was impressed with the overall progression of the video, as it documents a children’s puppet show that turns into an all-out rock’n roll concert that includes the puppet versions of Chris Martin and company playing their instruments, and Martin not only jumping around (hanging as though suspended in the air as he sings “Now my feet won’t touch the ground”) and crowd surfing.  It ends with them being picked up, in true rock star style, by a helicopter that exits the room by smashing through a window.  Which begs the question… how did it get in in the first place?

And this is wonderful…

…except for the fact that the Barenaked Ladies already did this!  Certainly, Coldplay’s video is not a plagiarism of BnL’s music video for “Pollywog in a Bog” last year (I wonder if they even saw it), but it seems odd that they did a puppet show so soon after BnL.  I guess that just goes to show how ahead of the curve they are.  If you haven’t seen these videos, you should definitely go watch them.  BOTH of them — it’ll be worth the six minutes of your life it will take!  (Just search on YouTube for “Barenaked Ladies Pollywog” and “Coldplay puppets”).  The BnL video is especially worthwhile, if only for the really cute animal puppets that look creepily similar to the respective band members.  Such a fun and funny video!!

Okay, so back to my video for tonight…

Those of you who regularly frequent the blog will already know that my goal this year is to tie every “Chris Moore Monday” in somehow with the following New Music Tuesday.  So, you may be wondering what a J.J. Cale song that is over four decades old has to do with new music…  Well, J.J. Cale is releasing a new album tomorrow entitled Roll On, his first solo album since 2004.  His most recent success was The Road to Escondido, an album recorded in 2006 in conjunction with Eric Clapton.  This was certainly not their first interaction, as Cale wrote the songs “After Midnight” and “Cocaine,” both of which Clapton popularized.  When I was growing up, my dad would often play his “Cream of Clapton” greatest hits, which included both of these songs.

Thus, it is my honor to bring you an old Cale track in honor of his new release, which (again) comes out tomorrow.  This song may have been written in 1966, but he’s still writing and recording in 2009 at the age of 70, and that is nothing short of amazing!

Don’t forget to rush back tomorrow for an all new Jim Fusco Tuesday…

See you next session!