Thursday, October 26, 2006

LINK-O-RAMA: Star Trek Edition

- MaidenWine: amazingly comprehensive and handsomely designed site dedicated to the musical stylings of Leonard Nimoy. Apart from a detailed history of his musical career, it also has a fascinating newspaper & magazine clippings archive (Nimoy performed at Hollywood Bowl on the same bill as Edward G. Robinson and Richard Pryor? OH for a time-machine.)

- Record Robot, meanwhile, has been posting a lot of Nimoy's old tuneage lately, from the albums "The Way I Feel," "The Touch Of Leonard Nimoy," "The New World Of Leonard Nimoy," so you've got plenty to listen to as you read MaidenWine's archived Nimoy interviews from teeny-bopper mags like "Co-Ed."

- William Shatner rarities unearthed! The almighty YouTube is featuring Shatner performances of songs not on his legendary "Transformed Man" album - songs not heard since their original performance in the '70s. A remake of Harry Chapin's "Taxi," in particular, is a major addition to the Shatner canon - five spellbinding minutes describing an encounter between a cabbie picking up a fare, who just happens to be an old flame. He starts off fairly relaxed, by 2:37 pulls out the crazy facial expressions, and the "stoned" finale is simple can't-miss classic. I recorded the audio for your mp3-ing pleasure:

"Taxi" - live on Dinah Shore's daytime variety show.
"Taxi" mp3

"Keep It Gay" video - Actually singing for 23 inexplicable seconds; with Mike Douglas
"Keep It Gay" mp3

"How To Handle A Woman" video - A
n all-too-brief 1:22 Barry White-style love rap; don't know what show this is from, but dig Shat's puka shell necklace
"How To Handle A Woman" mp3

"It Was A Very Good Year" video - You may know Bill's recording of the Sinatra hit, but this performance on "The Mike Douglas Show" adds a welcome visual dimension, from the psychedelic intro to an amazing array of facial expression close-ups.

"Incubus (excerpt)" - Esparanto was a failed attempt to create an international language, but at least one film was shot in it. Not a music clip, but you gotta see Shatner in this b&w 1965 supernatural creeper. It's as strange as it gets - imagine if Bergman directed for AIP.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good schtuff!

FYI, "Taxi" was a Harry Chapin song.

Mr Fab said...

Ah! Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Esperanto hasn't quite actually failed - I believe it's one of the EU's official languages, actually. but thanks for the absolutely awesome movie clip! Just one more reason William Shatner rocks.

Mr Fab said...

Wow, I thought Esperanto was as dead as Latin, spoken only by language enthusiasts.

But the internet has kinda made English the international language.

BK said...

thanks for these,

still laughing....

earlybird

Anonymous said...

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!

Anonymous said...

Esperanto is not one of the EU's official languages at all.

Although in EU there are several Esperanto supporters, EU has rejected esperanto as official language.

Esperanto rejected in EU