Welcome to your Saturday edition of The Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!
Today, I join the Wallflowers group with Chris and Jeff (who’ve done quite a few already) and do one of my favorite tunes, “How Good It Can Get”.
This song has one of the best hooks I’ve ever heard, plus it was my “anthem” song during my trip to Italy last year. I remember one night, after an amazing Tuscan dinner, walking through the streets back to the hotel. I was singing this song at the top of my lungs. Clearly less-than-level-headed, I kept also yelling out that I was still on key!
Well, this was recorded long after that night and I was STILL on key! I hope you enjoy today’s Session and make sure to keep checking the blog at guitarbucketlist.com for exclusive videos from our first ever LIVE concert tonight!
Welcome to your Friday edition of the Laptop Sessions with me, Jim Fusco!
Today, I’m doing a great tune written by Neil Diamond, but performed by the Monkees, “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You”. Not only does this song have a great message (like “it’s not all my fault, but SOME of it is”), but has a catchy tune and chord progression.
Actually, it’s that classic 3-chord Neil Diamond style, just shifted up a few frets on a capo.
I hope you like my whistling solo in the middle there! 🙂
BIG things are happening at Fusco-Moore Productions and I hope you’ll visit the blog (and our newly completed other suite of websites) today!
Welcome to your Sunday edition of the Laptop Sessions!
Today, I bring you a tune that I covered on my album “That’s All Folks” called “Great Day” by Paul McCartney. It closes out his 1997 album “Flaming Pie”, one of my all-time favorites. That album, “That’s All Folks”, came about because I had purchased my first good acoustic guitar. That guitar meant everything to me- it sounded great, played great, and made me feel like a real musician. I didn’t even really know how to play too well when I bought it. So, I learned how to play a bunch of songs I was listening to at the time. That taught me more chords, which turned me into a better player. And, at the time, I was going through a HUGE Paul McCartney phase. They had just released “Wingspan” with all of Wings’ greatest hits. I know those songs probably grate on people after all this time, but they were all new to me- and I fell for it pretty hard. We were also listening, as a family, to Paul’s albums from the 90s quite a bit. The first real song I learned how to play (and played it for my parents) was, of all things, “Hope of Deliverance” by Paul McCartney off of the “Off the Ground” album from the early 90s. I guess you could say that Paul McCartney’s songs really taught me how to play. And when it comes to rock musicians, you can’t get a much better tutor than him.
This is the perfect acoustic song and gives quite a vocal workout, which you wouldn’t expect in such a simple song. I decided to do this acoustic cover song on my nylon-string classical acoustic guitar, as it gave me the opportunity to be more expressive in my performance. This song is very soulful, which you wouldn’t really expect from the lyrics. I kind of dumbed-down the guitar picking riff throughout because that’s not really my thing. I’m a strummer and a soloist, but can’t do the flat-picking thing too well. Paul McCartney, the phenom that he is, is proficient at almost anything, musically. The man is one of the best bass players of all time, he can play the drums, sing (obviously), write songs, and play any guitar part you throw in front of him. Oh, and he’s written some of the most famous rock songs of all time on the piano, as well. That’s a pretty impressive life, for sure!
I hope you all enjoy today’s Session, as I’ll be back on Wednesday with a “political” original song- don’t miss it!
Welcome everyone to another edition of the Laptop Sessions! Glad to be here today, as I’m happy to present a great song from Rick Nelson, “Garden Party”.
I’ve been a fan of this song for a long time and I love the beat it has. It was a lot of fun to play on acoustic and it just has that “down-home” type of feel to it.
I’ll be going back to Rick’s more classic numbers in the future, but this song really makes me want to learn more about his work as a country-rock songwriter in the mid-70s.
I hope you enjoy today’s Session and make sure to come back tomorrow for another Session by Chris!
