Before he was hobnobbing with Ben Folds and trading rants with Henry Rollins, William Shatner the “singer” was famous for the close-encounter inspired album Transformed Man, and a drolly soliloquised version of Rocket Man that he performed at a sci-fi convention in 1978. An mp3 of this take on the Elton John classic has been bouncing around the Web for quite some time, and now, thanks to the good folk at iFilm, you can watch a video of this truly unforgettable performance.
No, that's not a reference to some planned Baywatch movie with action-hero Seagal in the role that made Hasselhof famous, but to the fact that he, like the Hof, has serious musical aspirations... and has unleashed them on Europe!
In May this year, he released his first album, the ponderously-titled Songs From The Crystal Cave, exclusively in France. The album was recorded with Stevie Wonder and former members of The Wailers, and supposedly highlights Seagal's "emotional and delicate side"...
The web-site of the label that brought it out has mp3 snippets from two of the tracks, Girl It's Alright and My God. As you might expect, they're both fairly bland and MOR, but they're certainly nowhere near as clunky as his acting... And the French, it seems, have taken quite a shying to Steve the Crooner. (The first single off the album went straight to No. 1 on the "CLUBS SLOWS CHART"... whatever that is.) With any luck this success will continue and Seagal will be convinced to give up his day job for good...
If you’re yet to experience the histrionic un-singing style of Star Trek's Captain Kirk, then this amusing Quicktime animation of his version of Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds is a great place to start. (If you’re already familiar with Shatner’s oeuvre then, it will add another “dimension” to your enjoyment of it.) The song was originally part of his 1968 album Transformed Man, which was apparently inspired by a life-saving encounter with a UFO in the Mojave Desert.
About a year or so before recording the disc, Shatner crashed while motorcycling in the desert. After being unconscious for a while, he awoke and sensed the presence of a “shadowy phantom” that gave him the energy to right his bike and drag it through the wilderness. Following the directions of a “mysterious dark figure” on the horizon, he eventually found his way to a petrol station were he saw a flying saucer…
The album (which also includes butcherings of "Tambourine Man" and "Rocket Man") can be downloaded in its entirety from Star Trek geek site, Farpoint Station… Those aliens have a lot to answer for…