William Shatner - The Transformed Man

While working on Star Trek, William Shatner (Cpt. Kirk) met Cliff Ralke and from that, this album was born. Some might say it should have been drowned at birth, but this is one of the most unique and divisive recordings in modern music. I would call it Magnificent! but I wouldn’t call it good.

On casual listening it could be described as appalling, with Shatner, raving in a maniacal voice, murdering versions of well known songs and speeches. But if you can get past the strangeness of it and the hilarity of Lucy In The Sky or Mr. Tambourine Man, which most won’t, it is a bit like trying to get past the Grand Canyon, you may find this a very entertaining, enjoyable piece of Avant-garde work.

It is actually a concept album with speeches from the theatre and poetry performed to music, and songs rendered as the spoken word. The tracks are also grouped as pairs, each pair dealing with “multiple perspectives of the same subject, like the two sides of a coin, tension and resolution.” according to the Producer’s Note.

It is ludicrous, terrible and magnificent. Looked at as a normal record it is bad, very bad, but like Ed Wood or Victor Mature it is so bad it is transcendent. The only thing you could compare it to is Ivor Cutler, not that it’s like Cutler but they are both unique, unlike what has gone before or after.

Anyone who collects records should own this, and everyone should try to hear it. It is probable that 99 out of a hundred people will utterly dislike it or at best find it mildly humorous (laughing at it, not with it). But every now and then someone will think it a gem, a rare guilty pleasure, to be taken out and enjoyed when alone, a form of audio porn. Personally I love it.