Shatner: The Final Frontier
THE CD: “Has Been”
THE PERFORMER: William Shatner
It would be easy to dismiss William Shatner’s music as either a strange exercise in a television icon’s ego or some bizarre novelty.
The thing is… ‘Has Been’ is pretty good. It’s a lot less inadvertantly silly as say his 1960’s classic ‘The transformed man’, which included a memorable takes on “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” and “Mr. Tambourine Man” that could be described as the kind of entertainment provided by watching a train crash into a carload of mimes.
It’s sort of tragic… sort of funny…
Trippy club beats, snarling guitars and solid backing vocals elevate Shatner’s one-of-a-kind delivery from pop culture pap to something incredibly fun. It doesn’t hurt that Shatner doesn’t take the whole thing entirely seriously or that ‘friends’ like Ben Folds, Aimee Mann and Henry Rollins put in appearances.
Track 10, “I Can’t Get Behind That,” featuring Rollins, is an absolute riot.
— By Bill Lynch
