For Wilco (the album) chords and lyrics, CLICK HERE!
By Chris Moore:
Hello and welcome to another all-new edition of “Chris Moore Monday” here at the best acoustic rock cover song blog on the web today! For the first time in almost three months, it is my pleasure to bring you a song that has yet to be released.
“Solitaire” is a track from Wilco’s new album, which will be released tomorrow and is titled Wilco (the album). A few weeks ago, Wilco streamed the entire album on their website for fans to listen to. This is a tradition stretching back to when they streamed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot online after being dropped from their label at the turn of the millennium. This time around, I even broke my general rule of waiting to hear an album until it is released in full. While I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to listen, I also felt like I was breaking a sacred rule, as well as building myself up for disappointment when they stopped streaming it and I had to wait for the album to come out on June 30th.
My solution?
I decided to listen to it only once straight through, and I ended up talking on the phone and doing other work, so I got only a taste of what is to come tomorrow on New Music Tuesday.
From what I heard, I am very much looking forward to hearing the album in full through my car stereo and without distractions. To help prepare and build up anticipation for tomorrow, I found a YouTube recording of the eighth track, “Solitaire,” and I actually found a good set of chords online already to help me learn the song. Go figure: accurate chords online…
Anyway, I’m off to watch a replay of last week’s episode of TNA Impact! with Jim, Mike, and their father. Apparently, their dad was also out of town and missed what has been said to be one of the best Impact!‘s of the year. I’m excited, and thus I’m cutting my post a bit shorter than usual tonight so I don’t miss any.
I’ll be back soon with more writing and posting than usual if I have my way, as I am officially on summer break and beginning to plan out the next two months so that they are relaxing, and yet productive.
D… D F C G
The selfish, they’re all standing in line
Faithing and hoping to buy themselves time.
Me, I figure as each breath goes by,
F G D
I only own my mind.
The north is to south what the clock is to time.
There’s east and there’s west and there’s everywhere life.
I know I was born, and I know that I’ll die,
The in between is mine.
F G D
I am mine…
D G Am D
And the feeling, it gets left behind.
All the innocence lost at one time.
Significant, behind the eyes,
D Cadd9
There’s no need to hide…
Cadd9 D
We’re safe tonight.
[D – F – C – G (x2)]
The ocean is full cause everyone’s crying.
The full moon is looking for friends at hightide.
The sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow’s denied.
I only know my mind.
I am mine…
And the feeling, it gets left behind.
All the innocence lost at one time.
Significant, behind the eyes,
There’s no need to hide…
We’re safe tonight.
SOLO:
D – F – C – G (repeat)
D…
And the meaning, it gets left behind.
All the innocence broken with lies.
Significance, between the lines.
(We may need to hide)…
And the meanings that get left behind.
All the innocents lost at one time.
We’re all different behind the eyes…
There’s no need to hide.
Outro:
G – Am – D (x3)
G – Am
** These chords and lyrics are interpretations and transcriptions, respectively, and are the sole property of the copyright holder(s). They are posted on this website free of charge for no profit for the purpose of study and commentary, as allowed for under the “fair use” provision of U.S. copyright law, and should only be used for such personal and/or academic work. **
Hello and welcome to another week and another all-new Monday edition of the Laptop Sessions. It’s been quite a weekend, and it’s going to be quite a week!
On Friday night, I stayed late at school for as long as I could, but I just couldn’t resist going to see the newly released Star Trek movie. For once, a movie lived up to the hype! I picked up Nicole for the trip to the theater, and although we’ve seen a lot of good movies together (not to mention a decent number of flops), this has to top them all. Although I’m more of a Trek geek than she is, I think it’s fair to say we were equally excited during and after the movie. If you love the classic series and films, then you’ll appreciate the respect paid to these characters. If you know nothing about the franchise, then this is the perfect film to watch first. I can’t wait to find an excuse to watch it again very soon…
Saturday was a crazy day for me, as my sister Jaime graduated from Nyack college at 2 pm in New York. I got up early (for a Saturday, at least!) and drove to New York for my least favorite of all activities: ceremonies like a graduation. That being said, it was worth it to see my sister graduate. We met as a family later on for dinner and that was great, too. It was great to have Nicole join us, too, and she made what could have been a long, boring drive with lots of downtime an enjoyable little day trip. Sunday was more of the same, as it was Mother’s Day, and my sister is only home for a week before returning to New York to work. We got to hang out, talk music, and watch an episode of The Twilight Zone that gave her nightmares as a young child. We didn’t get to play The Office board game, but there will always be time for another round in the future. (And I’ll be ready this time! 😉 )
Tonight finds me watching the Mets. After a seven game winning streak, it appears that they’re going to lose one. I’m loving this iPhone “MLB.com – At Bat 2009” application. It makes listening to games and staying in touch with the stats and standings soooo easy. It’s been a great week for watching Mets baseball, and I don’t want to complain. But I don’t quite get why they seem unable to score runs when Johan Santana is pitching. Maybe they get subconsciously complacent, since he’s such a great pitcher. Even tonight, although he got into a couple sticky situations, he worked his way out of each one — until they pulled him out 1/3 into the seventh inning. What truly amazes me is his ERA; as of tonight, it is .78! Games with Santana on the mound would have to get busted open wider than Abyss during a Pay-Per-View for weeks straight for him to reach the ERA’s of the other Mets starters…
But, enough of blogging for blogging’s sake — I should probably introduce the song I’ve recorded for tonight’s acoustic cover song music video. “Off He Goes” is a track from Pearl Jam’s 1996 album No Code. This album was the first to break from their previous sound a bit and some fans disapproved. I’ll admit that it’s not my favorite album in the Pearl Jam catalog by any stretch, but there are some great tracks on it. “Hail, Hail” is one of the most rocking and catchy songs in their catalog. “Present Tense” is one of my favorite Pearl Jam tracks, if only for the combination of lyrics and gradual instrumental buildup. “I’m Open” is a cool spoken-word track — yes, those do exist!
This track, “Off He Goes,” is perfect material for an acoustic cover song. Initially, after having this song come up on my iPod this weekend, I thought it would be an easy song to record. Ironically, I almost decided not to learn it and record it for fear of being criticized for recording too many simple songs.
Well, that’s simply not the case…
As Jim can attest to, I spent over an hour and fifteen minutes and about 40-50 takes of this song to get it anywhere near where I wanted it to be. There are still a couple of discrepancies I hit while singing the tune, but I also nailed a few of my favorite subtleties in the song. What recording this song taught me was how truly difficult it is to make a slow, deceptively simple song like this really translate into a great performance. I have even more respect for Eddie Vedder than I did before, especially for the fact that he plays guitar and sings in concert on this one. The chords are so easy — really, just F, C, and Am — but the strumming pattern was difficult to hit in a few places. (**The best part about recording these sessions, undoubtedly, is spending all that time, posting on YouTube, and waking up to find that two people have viewed it, one of whom has one-starred it and left no comment. Thanks for that.**)
That’s enough for one Monday. I hope you enjoy the session (more than my first YouTube viewer did)
It was definitely one of those “clouds parting” kind of Chris Moore Mondays for me.
First of all, I should clarify that “Chris Moore Mondays” is the title we use around here to remind you all that it’s my job to post a great cover song music video for you each and every Monday evening. Next, I should explain the “clouds parting” aspect. Well, I woke up around 5:30 this morning and was having serious difficulty getting myself out of bed. Then, I noticed I had an email from bobdylan.com.
Long story short, I had woken up to find the link to a free download of the new, unreleased Bob Dylan track “Beyond Here Lies Nothin.’” It will be track one on his upcoming album, Together Through Life, to be released on Tuesday, April 28th. Sorry, Jim — this means that your birthday the following day is going to be something of an anti-climax. 😉
In all seriousness, this is an exciting bit of New Music Tuesday news. After all, there were five years of separation between 2001’s Love and Theft and 2006’s Modern Times. Now, it’s been less than three years and there’s a new release. Based on the first track alone, I couldn’t be more excited. It’s a pretty simple song — only three chords and a basic verse, chorus, repeat structure with a few instrumental breaks thrown in and a classic Dylan chorus style in which the lines in each chorus are slightly different. I wasn’t sure what to think of the lyrics at first, but they’ve really grown on me today as I’ve listened to the song repeatedly and learned to play it. I’m still not sure what to think of lines like “The whole world is my throne” or “And every window’s made of glass.”
The conclusion I’ve come to is that this is a deceptively simple song. In the beginning of the song, Dylan sings of a lover in terms that express fairly standard love-song mentalities. Still, by the end of the track, he compares himself to a ship in harbor with the sails up. This implies that the ship is about to leave harbor, or perhaps that he is ready to move on to something — or someone — new. And yet he goes on to tell his lover that she should lay her hand upon his head. In typical Dylan fashion, even a love song has darker overtones, as played out in the chorus lines. The choral sections really are my favorite lines. “Beyond here lies nothin,’” he sings, “But the mountains of the past” or “Nothin’ done and nothin’ said.” There is simply nowhere else he would rather be than where he is, as he acknowledges that there is nothing “beyond here.” The questions, of course, are 1) where is “here”? and 2) does he really want to be “here” or are there simply no better options?
As I mentioned, it’s a fairly simple song. Even I was able to figure it out in short order. It’s three chords — Am, Dm, and E — easily within my register with an uptempo beat. It’s actually caused a bit of a debate among Dylan fans who have disagreed over the use of accordion in the song and the state of Dylan’s vocal abilities. As far as I’m concerned, the instrumentation is excellent, raw and loose but very intentional and fitting, accordion or no accordion. As for Dylan’s voice, I read one user’s take on the fansite expectingrain.com. He essentially said that Dylan’s vocals have deteriorated even more than they had on Modern Times. My reaction is simple:
Really?
I mean, if you’ve followed Dylan over the past decade and enjoyed Time Out of Mind or the aforementioned two albums, then you know that his gritty vocals are fitting. He may not stand a chance on American Idol, but I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing! Another post that I read made a great deal of sense. This user basically argued that Dylan’s vocals on studio recordings and during live performances should be weighed separately. I agree with this — while his vocals may be a bit difficult to understand and follow in concerts at times, his studio recordings haven’t failed to impress me — including vocals, instruments, etc.
Needless to say, I hope you enjoy my take on this brand new Dylan song. If you’re a guitarist, you should check out my chords and lyrics (see the link above) and have fun playing it yourself. And, without further ado, I wish you a good night and a great week…
