Well, it’s that time again… for another Original Wednesday Laptop Session! For today’s installment, I decided to break out a slower song that’s never been released before. I wrote it this summer when my girlfriend and two best friends were out of the country (her in England and them in Italy). They were off on adventures in other countries, and I was still at home, going through everyday life as usual.
Except I was alone most of the time.
For the most part, it was relaxing, as I had just finished my student teaching. But, it was also lonely, and I thought about them often, especially Nicole. Thus, this song kind of came to me as I was practicing another song. It really expresses the feeling of figuring something out about a relationship, but being too distant to share it. Yet.
On a side note, I just found out that Jim, Jeff, and I will be playing two live shows in the coming weeks, so be sure to check http://LaptopSessions for all the details! (Just search “Live Events”)
I hope you enjoy this video and please comment or rate it!
I would like to wish all of you a Happy Mother’s Day out there, and I would like to thank you for taking time out of your day to visit www.guitarbucketlist.com. I am proud to introduce another specialty week, and it is “Album Starter Week”. All this week (except Wednesday of course) we will be playing songs that are album openers. A good album knows how to draw a listener in, so you know bands always want the first song to be a real good one.
We will kick off album starter week with another song by U2. One of their most famous albums is “The Joshua Tree” and the song “Where the Streets Have No Name” is the perfect opener. It has a long fade-in with a nifty lead guitar by Edge. It does exactly what it is supposed to do.
I really enjoyed playing this session and I really feel this is a great solid cover. Again, I comment about Bono’s vocal range and how I have to strain my voice a bit to hit some of the notes Bono can hit regularly. Still, it is a “live” cover and I think with all things considered, I sing my heart out on this one.
I chose to close the song with the chords rather than the lead guitar because I thought that it sounded “empty” without the bass backing that the album version has. It works quite well though so I have no complaints.
I also did this song in one take, and it is the 4th Laptop Session in a row that I have completed in a single take.
Well anyway, Happy Mother’s Day to everyone out there. Make sure you check back EVERY DAY to see the songs we have selected for Album Starter Week. Jim will bring you his first song tomorrow, so make sure you visit https://guitarbucketlist.com/ to see it!
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!
It may have only been two days since I posted my last session, but it’s been far too long since I’ve recorded a video for Original Wednesday!
I’m here to break that streak!
This is a song I began writing a long time ago to play with a couple colleagues from work. I was inspired by my friend Larry’s “My Mistress’ Eyes,” a bluesy take on the Shakespearean sonnet. My friend Dan had shared an excellent acoustic number of his own, an original called “Wasting Time.” Thus, I set to work on translating T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” one of my favorite poems, to music.
The result is “Overwhelming Question.”
Of course, in what has become typical fashion for me, I wrote the first two verses, the chorus, and the middle, stopping short of finishing off the song with a third verse. Then, I left the song stranded until I began playing regularly again. This weekend, we pulled out all three of these songs and tried to scrape the rust off our performances. It was a lot of fun, but I was a bit embarrassed that I had never just finished this one off. So, Sunday morning I finally wrote the verse, effectively completing “Overwhelming Question.”
I clearly remember recording my first demo of this song with the birds chirping behind me for all three minutes of my video. However, I don’t remember exactly when I wrote it. I went back and watched the demo, but the date information is missing.
Wow! I just remembered to check my Word file with the lyrics and chords, and the “Created” date is listed as July 25, 2008. It’s quickly approaching two years old! While I’m surprised that it’s that old, the date does make a lot of sense. The last time I played regularly with these friends was the summer of 2008.
So, with that, I leave you to this week’s Original Wednesday music video. I hope to post many more this summer as I work on some new music, and perhaps Mike will share some new material as well as he records his first long play album this summer! (Don’t forget to check out his all new iPhone-ready site at MikeFusco.com.)
Hello and welcome to your Saturday session of the best acoustic rock cover song blog on the web today! This is actually a combination of my favorite type of post (a brand-new song) and Jim’s favorite type of post (a new artist to the music blog)… The Pretenders’ “The Last Ride.” This is a brand-new song from their 2008 album Break Up The Concrete.
I’m not really a big Pretenders fan, but I’m on this big new albums kick for 2008, so I figured I would try out their new album this year. It’s called Break Up The Concrete and it’s actually pretty good — I especially liked the “First Edition” packaging, which included a piece of paper with the title of the album and name of the band on it. But it wasn’t just a piece of paper to highlight the specifics; it has instructions on it to dampen it with water, plant it in the ground, and wait for it to grow a plant. I like this as a piece of the theme of the album — to break up the concrete could include planting new and natural things that, when they grow, break through the man-made pavement. In fact, the back of the album is a picture of a flower. Most artists include bonus tracks or music videos, but a seed patch… that’s original!
I’ve only heard this song about three or four times, but I decided that this was the one for me to record from this new Pretenders album. To be honest, I don’t really know any Pretenders songs, but I’ve definitely heard of them. I think I have a song of theirs on one of my “80s greatest hits” albums. Let me go check…
And I’m back — I knew I’d heard of them. The Pretenders had a hit with “Back on the Chain Gang” in the early 1980s. I first heard this song when I was a senior in high school, trying to learn all the big periods of American pop music. There was always something about Chrissie Hynde’s voice that I really liked.
Now, is Break Up The Concrete the best album of the year? No. But I’ve found it really interesting adding them to my collection this year. They’ve got an upbeat sound and, if that wasn’t enough, they’ve got my favorite drummer of all time… also known as the fifth Traveling Wilbury… Jim Keltner! I’m on my way now to do some research on the Pretenders, but their drummer on the new album is indeed Keltner, a drummer who’s not only played with the Wilburys, but has also been a session drummer for such rock acts as Bob Dylan.
As you’re watching the video, you might notice that there’s a blue flash every so often. That’s the menu of “Mission Impossible III,” which I rented tonight, thanks to the Jimmy Fund promotion at Burger King. I donated money to the fund and got a scratch off ticket that ended up being a free rental at Blockbuster video. So a special thanks goes out to Blockbuster — whose ever-increasing rental fees have discouraged me from renting recently — for participating in this worthy cause. I absolutely loved the first “Mission Impossible” and found the second to be pedestrian at best. Now, I’m half way through the third installment and loving it. I had to stop it at 1:03:51, as it’s good enough to be very distracting to me as I type this most recent post on the best acoustic cover song music blog in the universe… the Laptop Sessions! It was a really cool feeling, coming home tonight and knowing I had to record a session. I translated and posted the chords to “The Last Ride” earlier this afternoon, and I was really excited to be one of the first people in the world to record a cover of a song from the new album.
What a cool project this session-a-day is… I realize it’s really annoying and tedious at times. But, at the end of 2008, Jim, Jeff, and I will have posted 366 (leap year!) videos this year. What other musicians are as ambitious? If you haven’t already, you need to check out Jeff’s album at the Fusco-Moore Store (one of the best of the year — and, trust me, I can judge this, as I’ve bought something like 20 new albums this year) and stay tuned for Jim’s best album yet, to be released some time soon; probably early 2009…
Well, that’s it for now. The last thing I want to mention is how much I’ve been into Wilco and the Counting Crows recently. They’re both great 90s bands, and I’ll certainly be posting acoustic cover songs from them soon. But, for now, the focus is on new additions to the blog — I hope you enjoy the first Pretenders song on this music blog — come back tomorrow and the next day for Jeff and Jim. I’ll see you again on Tuesday…
