By Chris Moore:
I recorded this one “last night”!
Okay, too cheesy?
Seriously, this is a simple but fun one from the Traveling Wilburys. A little Tom Petty-esque lead and a special guest tribute to Roy Orbison…
By Jim Fusco:
Oh yeah- welcome to the new and improved Laptop Sessions website! What, you don’t notice a visual difference? Well, great!
The only thing you should notice is how much faster the site is running and will continue to run. Our sitemapt program is chugging away and our site will be running at tip-top shape so we won’t have to turn those short-attention-span visitors away. You know on the Internet crowd only gives you like ten seconds before they get bored and leave. This morning, while we were still on our other server, I waited 26 seconds for the front page to load. Now, at least on my machine, it’s almost instant. And if I want to speed it up even more, I can fully transfer the domain to the new HostGator servers.
On to today’s video!
Chris and I wanted to do this song for so long, but never got a chance until recently. I love this tune, as I do with all the songs off of “Full Moon Fever”, and thought it would be great with that cool chorus riff and the harmonies on the bridge. So, of course, this has quickly become one of my favorite Laptop Sessions acoustic rock cover songs and I hope it’s one of yours, too!
I expect to do most of the songs off of “Full Moon Fever” in the future (except for maybe “Zombie Zoo”) because whenever I hear it, it just sounds like “growing up”. The album came out when I was very little, but we always listened to it in the car alongside the Traveling Wilburys. No “Wheels on the Bus” for us!
And how about Jeff’s video yesterday? Impressive, I must say. His voice was so sweet and it was a really good song, too. I think what I loved about the video the most was the easy-going flow of the song and Jeff’s performance.
You should really check it out! Enjoy the newer, faster Laptop Sessions website, as we continue to bring you an acoustic cover song or original song every single day in 2008 in the quest to solidify our spot as the greatest music video blog of all time!
By Jim Fusco: Well, it’s my day again already, huh? 🙂
Seems we’ve bee doing so much promotion between the friend requests, SEO work, and such that it really is getting harder and harder to keep on the “every third day” schedule. And now, we have a Members-Only section on the blog, which will have exclusive, not-on-YouTube, videos. So, that’s even more to do!
I’m hoping with the long weekend that I can record a bunch of Sessions and then focus on promoting what we already have for awhile.
Now, getting on to today’s Laptop Session:
“Congratulations” is a Traveling Wilburys song that my brother Mike and I would always kinda make fun of when we were younger. I mean, the album came out when I was four and my family loved it, so we always listened to it. Plus, when you’re a little kid, Bob Dylan’s incredibly raspy voice is pretty funny.
But, years later, after my 1000th listen, I began to realize that this really is a good song. I think the whole band contributed and the actual tune of the song (stripped of Dylan’s raspiness or not) is great.
The song is sad and emotional, which is probably why they chose Dylan to sing it in the first place, but I thought I would give it a more “pure” treatment.
This was done in one take, so you know I was dead-on. Jeff, Chris, and I are doing a lot more of that lately- partially because of time constraints, but partially because we’re just getting so good at doing this. My skills have been increasing steadily with my view count and subscriber numbers, which are nearing 200 now!
I will meet my goal of 55,000 views by the end of the month and now the only question is: how many more will I get? The Laptop Sessions site is poised for a BOOM in popularity, so stay tuned, as you may have already stumbled upon the Next Big Thing in music!
Well, “New Bands Week” is over, but I have a hard time letting go…so I bring you yet another new band to the Laptop Sessions acoustic cover songs music video blog!
Tonight I give you a band fronted by a great producer, songwriter, and singer: Jeff Lynne. The band is Electric Light Orchestra (E.L.O.) and the song is “Evil Woman”, a favorite of mine for a long time.
This song is originally done on piano, but I’ve adapted it for acoustic guitar. It’s got great vocals and a great chord progression. I love the way the drums come in- it’s what I miss the most when I play it solo. Many say that Jeff Lynne, as a producer, kind of “over-produces” his music. I actually kind of like it. I love a large chorus of vocals, plus Lynne always throws in some interesting instruments (like a violin) into his songs. And, sure, when he was with the Traveling Wilburys, he had all five members play acoustic guitar. But, to me, that just showed how everyone was participating.
Jeff Lynne not only had a ton of hits with E.L.O., he produced many hit albums. Roy Orbison’s “Mystery Girl” is a stand-out and brought the Lynne co-written song “You Got It” to the world. He even produced the mega-smash album “Full Moon Fever” for Tom Petty, which had classic songs like “Running Down A Dream”, “Free Fallin'”, and “Won’t Back Down”. I think I like Jeff Lynne’s producing style because it’s the style of music I grew up with. I mean, both of the albums I mentioned were from the late 80s. And one of my other favorite albums, “Cloud 9” by George Harrion, is also produced by Jeff Lynne…and also from the late 80s! You can’t go wrong with any of these albums and I have to give a little credit to Jeff Lynne on that.
I hope tonight’s Electric Light Orchestra cover song will be the start of many other E.L.O. songs for the Laptop Sessions music blog. I can’t wait to do “Sweet Talkin’ Woman”, too. That’s another one that’s a bit over-produced, but when it was recorded in the 70s, people were pushing the envelope with the sounds they could create. In the 60s, you only had four or eight tracks to work with. And in the 70s, the technology leaped forward, allowing many more tracks to be used without a reduction in sound quality. Jeff Lynne has always struck me as a technical musician of sorts- he knows the craft of recording a song and applies it to the music he makes and the music he produces for other bands.
“Evil Woman” is also a fun song to do a cover of because of the cool falsetto parts in the chorus. It’s that kind of range that made E.L.O. stand out to me and I’m happy to present my stripped-down version here on the music video blog!
Enjoy tonight’s acoustic cover song music video, and make sure to come back on Wednesday to see my Original Wednesday cover song tribute to Jeff Copperthite’s great new album, “Greenlight”. Aw, heck, why don’t you just come back on Monday and Tuesday, too?