“Someday” (Sugar Ray Cover)

By Chris Moore:

Hello and welcome to your Columbus Day offering from the best acoustic cover song blog in the universe!  For all you loyal Laptop Sessions surfers, I’m taking you back to the late nineties, a time of great musical awakening for me.  As I’ve mentioned before, I went through an oftentimes embarrassing phase of musical exploration that took me from sixties rock to then-contemporary nineties alternative rock, and everything in between.  Nearly a decade later, I’m still very interested in sixties rock and nineties rock band, but it’s the aforementioned “everything in between” that’s embarrassing.  I’m talking disco, eighties dance tracks, and some really cheesy soundtracks.

Oh, I tried it all…

But that’s not what I’m bringing you tonight.  Rather, I’m bringing you a new band to the music blog, a band that found mid-nineties success with their Billboard Hot 100 #1 “Fly” — Sugar Ray!  I remember buying their third album, 14:59, for the songs “Every Morning” and “Someday.”  And I never really understood the title of the album, but I just read the Wikipedia post about the band tonight and found out.  And now I’ll share… isn’t that the beauty of these posts?

Apparently, critics suggested that Sugar Ray would be a one-hit wonder after “Fly,” and that they would never have success again.  As a tongue-in-cheek response, Mark McGrath and the boys of Sugar Ray titled their album 14:59 to refer to the fact that their “fifteen minutes of fame” were not up quite yet.  And right they were!  “Every Morning” was a #3 hit and “Someday,” the song that I recorded for tonight’s Laptop Session, reached #7 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.  This song really took me back, and it is actually one of the reasons that I chose another turn-of-the-millennium track for my next music video, namely John Mellencamp’s “Your Life is Now.”

So, can you believe it?  I’m on track for three new bands in a row by Thursday.  And it’s a good thing that I have my John Mellencamp video recorded and ready to go, since I don’t want to miss a moment of the post-Bound for Glory TNA Impact!  They really “crossed the line” and “sacrificed” their safety and well-being to bring the fans a “respect”-able Pay-Per-View on Sunday…  (If you watch TNA, then I hope you enjoyed those quoted keywords…)

Well, that’s all for me for now.  I look forward to possibly seeing you again on Thursday, after you’ve browsed Jeff’s Tuesday session and the musical stylings of Jim Fusco on Wednesday (and NO I am NOT trying to suck up to Jim because he spent a half hour talking about my upcoming album tonight, which he will be producing and maybe even writing for!!).

(Okay, maybe it is…)

See you next session!

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“High Water” (Bob Dylan Cover)

By Chris Moore:

Trivia: Yes, the title is actually “High Water (For Charley Patton)” — but, that’s just too long for YouTube’s liking. Isn’t that just like Bob Dylan? Always breaking the rules…

Hello and welcome to Monday’s installment of the Laptop Sessions! Today, I bring you a song off of Dylan’s 2001 Love and Theft album. At first, it was one of my least favorite on the album, but the more I listened to it, the more I really got into its dark sound and interesting lyrics. I actually decided to record this one today because my voice is almost entirely shot (and I figured, hey, what better time to play a contemporary Dylan tune?). I recorded about five takes of this song, and four of the outtakes were due to coughing. Because I couldn’t really sing all that loud, I dropped the pick and moved closer to the microphone — I’m glad I did, since it seems to work for this song.

I’d like to say again how much fun it was to play some of MoU’s new songs live at the SCSU Talent Show at the Lyman Center last Wednesday. I really encourage you to do one of the following:

1 ) Watch the live videos on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/jimfusco.com/albums.html ,

2) Hear the recorded versions in full off the brand-new Homestead’s Revenge album at http://jimfusco.com/albums.html ,
or, if you like the songs,

3) Buy the album!

Okay, that’s enough shameless plugging for today… 🙂 Thanks again to all who have been watching my videos — it’s really exciting to keep seeing my total view count rising. It makes this project all the more fun!

See you next session!



More Laptop Sessions covers

“Fake Plastic Trees” (Radiohead Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to your thumpin’ thursday edition of the Laptop Sessions (been waiting 3 weeks to use that again). Today I bring you another Radiohead song from their album “The Bends”, and another song i’ve known how to play for quite some time.

The song is “Fake Plastic Trees”, and is one of the singles from the album. I love the dynamic change in this song, and the vocal changes throughout the song.

Naturally, like most Radiohead songs, I don’t know what it’s about either. Apparently, however, one site says it’s about Canary Wharf, a large shopping area in London.

This video goes down as a “I recorded it despite being sick” video. We can’t skip a day here at guitarbucketlist.com! Can’t use sickness as an excuse. Gotta keep the streak alive! I missed a note near the last verse, and the last line of the last verse my voice didn’t quite hit the falsetto I had been hitting in the previous verse lines. This is by no means my top vocal performance for sure. I’d have been better off recording this while my voice was 100%.

I’m hoping to hit 5k views by next Wednesday’s edition! I’m really racking up the views as of late. Hopefully I can start racking up the ratings and comments as well!

Until then, enjoy “Fake Plastic Trees”, another Radiohead hit!

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

“Atlanta” (Stone Temple Pilots – Cover)

By Jeff Copperthite:

Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Laptop Sessions. Since my first song from Stone Temple Pilots went over so well, I decided to do another one by them. There are a few songs on my list to do from them, and this was one of them.

The song is called “Atlanta” from their album No. 4. I learned to play this song 3 years ago and i’ve had a lot of time to practice it. This has been a favorite of all those I play it for.

You’ll notice a few weird things in this video, including a cameo by my wife, and my unscripted reaction to it.

More Laptop Sessions editions live in the archives.

Oh, and a side note – broke 2,000 views yesterday. Perhaps 3k is coming soon?

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