Tag: william shatner

[Audio] The Difficult Listening Moment: Doing Dylan worse than Dylan II

I have heard comments that hearing Dylan’s voice is “worse than cancer”. I believe such comments are un-necessarily harsh. Remember “Lay Lady Lay”? Didn’t that border on melodic? OK, I rest my case. He was terrible most of the time, not all of the time.

On the other hand, Willliam Shatner has no business deviating from his acting day job. If God hands us only one great talent in our lives, be it singing, song writing, playing an instrument, acting, writing, and so on, we ought to make the most of it and count our blessings, since it is these limited talents alone that place us already above the crowd. It is rare that people are successful in more than one talent, and when it is usually attempted, the result is often, uh, humbling for the performer. And unintentionally amusing for the audience.

To illustrate the over-reaching kind of talent, here is William Shatner talking over “Hey Mr. Tambourine Man”.

Visits: 95

Crappy Album Covers #96 — More Unworkable Trekkie Ideas

album_cover_crap_124_-_nimoy_i You got to hand it to Leonard Nimoy. He had tried so hard to be something more than his public image of Spock, yet the public image of an unemotional, totally logical humanoid was larger than he was. 

But he keeps sticking it to himself. In all of these “image makeover” LPs, Nimoy can’t get out of depicting his Spock image somewhere on the jacket. There is Spock in the upper left. In the act of trying to make you forget Spock, he reminds you at every turn.

“The Way I Feel” is a title that strikes me as being a little over the top. Also, it’s great artwork; but if you ever want to make the public forget, at least for a short time, who you played, then riding on your own coattails will get you nowhere. He is here coverng songs such as “I’d Love Making Love To You”, “Both Sides Now”, and “Sunny”.
album_cover_crap_125_-_nimoy_ii This album is a more explicit breaking of the rule. It may have been acceptable as a first attempt. But it was not his first attempt. AMG lists this record as being released in the same year as “The Way I Feel”, 1968. 

This time, you see two sides, alright. And rather than being two parts of a whole, they clash. Imagine hearing songs with titles that could appear on a Kraftwerk album (or fill in your own industrial/synthpop group): Amphibious Assault, Spock Thoughts, Once I Smiled, and Highly Illogical; next to songs like: Gentle On My Mind, If I Were a Carpenter, and, The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, for which I presented a video over a month ago. You don’t have to watch it again, unless you haven’t seen it. I’ll understand.

Visits: 128

Search terms that did not quite make it, annotated.

On WordPress, we can see a list of search terms people used to find entries on our blogs. Here are some of the more amusing ones. These won’t lead to anything useful on my blog. While my blog has the odd bit of nudity, this is not the mainstay of the blog. All mis-spellings are from the search string used:

  • valerie bertinelli topless
    • I have only a bad drawing of VB’s face; and it appears with about 20 other celebs on the same crappy album cover (CAC).
  • naked klingon women
    • I have no klingons, klingon women, or naked klingon women. Just a fully-clothed CAC with William Shatner, and a fully-clothed g-rated vid with Leonard Nimoy.
  • topless lobsters
    • If you are looking for topless lobsters, the closest you’ll get is to go to New Brunswick. I have only the odd CAC depicting topless women (human ones). Sorry to disappoint.
  • scottish kilt organist
    • I have nothing with kilts, few to no Scots that I can think of, and maybe a few organists, but they are wearing pants.
  • beautiful naked women with their legs sp
    • This search string was cut off just as shown, but I get the point. Most of the women here are on album covers; and if they are nude, they are not spread-eagled. Frankly, if you are looking for porn, my site is the most boring place in the world to look for it. By Internet standards, what I have in terms of nudity is campy, perhaps “naughty”, but I would stop short of calling it porn. By Internet standards, far short.
  • seventies boobs
    • Seventies boobs. Not the same as eighties boobs I suppose. There is an empty-headed blog article in this one somewhere, I know it.
  • lady wrestler leg photos
    • No lady wrestlers on this blog, so no lady wrestlers legs. The only wrestler I can think of, Sweet Daddy Siki, is male, as implied by the word “Daddy”
  • guy jumping guitar album cover
    • No CACs of guys with jumping guitars, no guys jumping a guitar (WTF?), and no CACs of guitars jumping. Sorry once again.
  • topless seductive nipples
    • … As opposed to “topped” seductive nipples? or topless “ugly” nipples?
  • topless flautist
    • The only topless flautist I have is a CAC of Herbie Mann. No topless women playing flutes (musical or otherwise) on this blog.
  • topless chocolate wrestle
    • Topless women wrestling in chocolate will only make it here if it is a CAC. None have been found, so as of yet we have no chocolate wrestlers, and no topless wrestlers.
  • swedish women football women beach tople
    • No football, no beach football, and no women’s beach football, no women’s football, and certainly none with topless women, topless Swedish women, or topless Swedes.
  • artistic hair dye raccoon
    • ?

Visits: 118

[Video] Giving Leonard Nimoy equal time

I don’t know why I need to pick on Shatner, when Nimoy was far worse.

Bloggers Joe and Darlene Lacy, who have a Leonard Nimoy shrine page, assert, with visual proof, that Nimoy has recorded more albums than Shatner. Actually, with his other recordings (not on the DOT label), he is said to have more than The Beatles. Nimoy also didn’t help his career along with singing anymore than Shatner did. The one track that tells you everything you need to know about songs from Spock is his tribute to Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”, with the song “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.

Visits: 112

Time to plug your ears

William Shatner (who played Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise on Star Trek) recites “Lucy in the Sky”. The animator wins big for visual accompaniment. It is kitschy in exactly the right way. Guest starring Lucille Ball and Lucy Van Pelt. Cameo appearance by Ricky Ricardo and The Flying Nun (with Shatner’s face pasted on).

Visits: 153

I Can’t Get Behind “I Can’t Get Behind That”

I Can’t Get Behind That — William Shatner and Henry Rollins
Never charted anywhere

From the album “Has Been” (2004)

See/Hear it here, if you dare. You hear it, but you only can view muppets lip-syncing to the song. You can also get the mp3 and the rest of the album from EMusic. My understanding is that no muppets were hurt in the making of the video or the song. I don’t believe it, though.

What do you get when you place the former Captain of the Starship Enterprise in the same studio with a former frontman for the punk rock group Black Flag?

I don’t know, but whatever it is, I can’t get behind that!

We expect an embarrassing level of tackiness from the likes of Bill Shatner (anyone remember “Transformed Man”?), but no matter how much Henry Rollins and producer Ben Folds try to make this sound cool with manic music arrangements, the result is, well, a tax write-off for them both, because I am not sure of any other uses for it. Adrian Belew is on Guitar, Henry Rollins says in an interview. If anyone recalls, Belew made his name touring with Frank Zappa, then David Bowie, and afterward became a band member in the 1980s re-formation of King Crimson with Robert Fripp at the helm. But mostly you hear the manic percussion instruments, not much guitar. The percussion is something along the style of the Hawaii 5-0 theme.

I heartily agree with certain observations. For example, I believe also that there truly is no modern invention more futile than a leaf blower. And “futile” is an excellent word to describe leaf blowers.

As for some kind of overall rating, Shatner’s work must be rated with stars of a different galaxy, for I have none to offer.

Continue reading “I Can’t Get Behind “I Can’t Get Behind That””

Visits: 104