William Shatner – The Transformed Man

When I first heard about William Shatner's albums I was warned that they were really, really bad. I gave them a try and immediately liked it enough to buy them. I didn't find it to be "ludicrous", "terrible", "horrendous" or even "a train wreck". (These are all words I have seen in reviews of his work.) Sure, they aren't your stereotypical performances of these pieces, but therein lies the charm!

William Shatner is primarily an actor. Let's contemplate that for a moment. David Hasselhoff? Patrick Swayze? Sylvester Stallone? Steven Segal? Don Johnson? Come on! He has outshone the whole lot of them. Like Leonard Cohen, William Shatner doesn't have a singing voice (something he himself pokes fun at on the album "Has Been"), but he overcame this obstacle and still gave a highly captivating and entertaining performance.

I have tried hard to understand his critics. My only guesses are that they must have very rigid, preconceived ideas of music, or perhaps they have strong attachments to the original versions of the songs, but any piece of music so offensively bad that I would feel the need to label it a train wreck, I would simply avoid hearing again. Problem solved. No, that's too simple. These people are compelled to troll any medium that affords them the opportunity to make the same old tired remarks over and over again. Why? I can't get behind that.

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.