Get the CD from Amazon (not an affiliate link).I ordered this CD on a whim, expecting nothing more than adequate comedy to show for the outlay. I don't know how many times I've gone through it since it arrived, but I am easily into double figures.
William Shatner was (and still is) a genius. Or his musical collaboraters were. Or it was a lucky coincidence.
The tracks mostly follow the same pattern; split roughly in half the first portion is Shakespeare/similar with some ambient music and the second is actual musical tracks with Shatner providing the lyrics. Each half deals with the same subject but in contrasting style.
The highlights for me are his Hamlet/A Very Good Year and Henry the 5th/Elegy for the Brave, though the final track "The Transformed Man" is quite exceptional too.
He gets power and emotion in. Melancholy fights with victory, love with war. Great stuff.
Two things to note:
- You need to listen in one sitting, uninterrupted, ideally with headphones - and actually pay attention. Without the focus, allowing distractions, it will lose it's impact. It benefits from repeat playing.
- Listen for the incidental music a second or so after he speaks the word "enterprise" in his Hamlet quotation...
In all, one of the best collections of music I have ever heard - when listened to properly.
0 comments:
Post a Comment