Tag Archives: pet sounds

“That’s Not Me” (The Beach Boys Cover)

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By Jim Fusco:

“That’s Not Me” is track three of the pivotal album, “Pet Sounds” from 1966. My family got into the Beach Boys back in 1990 or 1991 because of this album. Of course, we listened to the greatest hits, but we were more interested in this well-crafted, deeper music that “Pet Sounds” brought to the table. Seventeen years later, “Pet Sounds” doesn’t stand as my favorite Beach Boys album- that title goes to a couple of others, including “Holland”, “Sunflower”, and “The Beach Boys (1985)”. But, I still love every single track off of “Pet Sounds”. One of the reasons I like those other albums better is because of the contributions from the other band members. On “Pet Sounds”, it’s really a Brian Wilson solo album, featuring Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, Carl Wilson, and Dennis Wilson on backing vocals.

But, then you get songs like “God Only Knows” that clearly benefited from Carl’s lead vocals and “That’s Not Me”, which benefited from Mike Love’s great lyrics and singing. This song is a great one to play on acoustic guitar and do a cover of because I didn’t have that feeling of stripping too much away from the song. This is a very personal-sounding song and I think it works great as an intimate cover music video. Of course, I plan on doing pretty much every song from “Pet Sounds”, but I arrived at this choice now because it’s the track that still hung on to that Brian Wilson/Mike Love writing tandem that put them on top in the early 60s.

I hope you enjoy tonight’s Laptop Session acoustic cover song and I hope you’ll come back to see another great cover music video from Chris Moore tomorrow!

NOTE: This video was remastered in 2020 for improved video and sound.

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” (Beach Boys Cover)

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Welcome to another edition of The Laptop Sessions here on “Track 1 Week”!  That’s where the singers, songwriters, and musicians of the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs music video blog pick a song that started off an album (thus “Track One”) and covered it for the best music blog on the internet!

Today, I give you one of the best album-opening songs to one of the best albums of all time: Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys!  And, if you know me, you know that doing Beach Boys cover songs is one of my favorite things to do!

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” is also a favorite song of Chris Moore and Becky Daly, two fellow MoU members.  We never attempted to do this song in concert, though I think we should’ve given it a shot.  I think with all of the production that the original version had, it’s daunting to try and recreate it live.  The members of Brian Wilson’s incredible touring band do that on each and every tour, but they have about 12 people on stage at one time.  When it’s just five people, that task gets a little harder for sure.  But, knowing the chords and the changes (and frankly, how well my cover video came out), I think we could’ve pulled it off as a band.

Tomorrow night, The Laptop Sessions Live plays a three-hour set at George’s II Restaurant in Wallingford, CT. We’re very excited and it oughta be an amazing event. I hope to record the audio for future release.  There’s sure to be mostly original songs, but some of our favorite covers.  You’ll hear plenty from the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, the Wallflowers, and I’m sure we’ll sprinkle some Beatles cover songs in there, too!

I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for another album-starter from Chris Moore and check out Jeff’s last two videos, as well- they were great!