Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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216 of 223 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Where No Manure Has Gone Before, April 25, 2003
I used to think the funniest unintentionally funny thing I'd ever heard was Lorne Green, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon butchering the theme from "Bonanza." Then I got this album. The tone-deaf stars of "Bonanza" have nothing on "Star Trek's" William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, whose insatiable TV-star egos pushed them to record music and monologues that transcend mere mediocrity and ineptitude, constituting an alien art form that defies earthly description. Whatever it is, it's the best of it, or the worst, depending upon your point of view. You'll love it passionately, like I do, or you'll despise it with every fiber of your being, like my wife does. There's no middle ground here.Shatner's contributions, dramatic monologues set to florid music and rock songs performed with straightjacket intensity, are all taken from his legendary album "The Transformed Man." No one is safe from the shame of Canada: The hallowed words of Shakespeare, Lennon-McCartney and Bob Dylan are trampled and tortured in Shatner's patented overripe acting style, turned up to eleven. Shatner's anguished cry of "Mr. Tambourine Man!!!!" at the end of that song is so unexpected and frightening, it would kill a strolling minstrel dead in his tracks. I must confess, I'm a sucker for Shatner's histrionics, and I admire the chutzpa it took to be a performance artist of such...uniqueness. "It Was a Very Good Year," with Shatner exercising restraint (for him), actually achieves a certain elegance. It's my favorite burst of Shatnerian flatulence. Nimoy was much more ambitious than Shatner, churning out a mind-boggling five albums of folk, country-western and soft rock covers. Saccharine ballads such as "Sunny" and "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" painfully expose the limitations of Nimoy's earnest baritone as he croons in keys that would make a stuffed dog howl. (Remember how Spock sounded in the throes of a Vulcan mind-meld with the Horta? Put that to music and you get the idea.) To be fair, some of his efforts are admirable. Nimoy's yearning vocal on "Where Is Love" is heart-rending, and he does a pretty fair imitation of Kenny Rogers on "Ruby Don't Take Your Love to Town." There's also a smattering of screamingly hokey spoken word pieces written by one Charles R. Grean, which Nimoy delivers in character as Spock amid clouds of celestial music reminiscent of the work of "Star Trek" composer Alexander Courage. The best of these is "Spock Thoughts," a litany of hilarious platitudes that includes this priceless advice: "Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant. They, too, have their story to tell!" The album's Masterpiece is surely "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins," Grean's musicalized Cliff Notes retelling of Tolkien's "The Hobbit." Demented, charming and impossible to dislike, it's a groovy tune straight out of Monty Python, and Nimoy sings it with gusto. While most of Nimoy's efforts are laugh-fests, it's hard to fault his commitment: He was clearly serious about his music. Luckily for his ardent fans, no one in Nimoy's orbit had the guts to tell Spock he had no clothes.
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68 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mister tambourine man... MISTER TAMBOURINE MAN!!!, September 23, 2000
I love so-bad-it's-good music, so obviously I had to have this CD. There's so much superlatively, deliciously, appallingly bad stuff on this CD it's hard to know where to begin. Most of the CD is taken up by Nimoy, but the few Shatner tracks scale heights of awfulness that few other artists have even approached (not even Bobby Goldsboro). "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Mr. Tambourine Man" prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that method acting and popular songs are not a marriage made in heaven. In fact, together they are possibly the worst songs ever recorded by anyone anywhere. I challenge you to listen to these two songs back-to-back and decide which is worse -- perhaps that's something man was never meant to know. The Nimoy tracks are not quite as spectacular, but there are many highlights there too: "Highly Illogical" is delightfully awful, and "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins" is completely demented (it's a favorite on the Dr. Demento show). The rest of the songs are mostly just evidence of Mr. Nimoy's incredibly mediocre singing voice; some of them, like "Both Sides Now" should be included on a future compilation entitled "Good Songs Sung by Bad Singers". This CD is a treasure that you'll enjoy for years, although not for the reasons the artists intended.
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33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nearly flawless oddity, March 1, 2004
Has any recorded moment surpassed the intense dementia of Shatner's final scream in "Mr. Tambourine Man"? Do we really want to know?This absurd CD opens the window to two cult favorites who found second careers as outlandishly kitsch performers. Much has been said of Nimoy's earnest, flat baritone; the reams of Shatner critiques could fill a large, easily combustible windmill -- but that would be too convenient, and a loss to people like me who occasionally need to be reminded why they (and others) actually listen to this stuff -- closely. These recordings are either dizzying, hardcore, lovable dreck, or, to some, aural manure. History won't decide: you will, if you dare. I have a complaint about this disk. Yes, just one, about two selections. One of the "Nimoy" tracks doesn't belong here for any reason, as it's nothing more than forgettable lounge muzak with zero artistic input from the Green One. "Music to Watch Space Girls By" sounds like a Herb Alpert outtake where he forgot his trumpet. Also, "Spock Thoughts" is just "Desiderata" recited blandly over third-rate background noise. I can do better, and so can you. Instead, the compilers should have included "You Are Not Alone," a hideously warbled message of solidarity in this vast, impersonal universe (certainly a theme dear to Spock), and "Alien," a superior spoken dissertation on, well, alienation. They're featured on some other CD that costs nearly $60 used. I'll stick with my cut-out bin cassette for now. The highlights of "Spaced Out" for me are the most famous offerings: the delirious Shatner takes on Dylan and the Beatles, plus the Nimoy novelty "Bilbo Baggins." The "Golden Throats" CD includes a quizzically-voiced, faded-in lead-in to Shatner's "Lucy in the Sky" edited off for this CD, but it seems we completists will always suffer a little. Also not to be missed are the bathyspherical depths of Nimoy's faulty tone and phrasing found on "Where is Love" and "Sunny"; the pure, howling turgidity of his deconstruction of "Proud Mary"; and a horror actually released as a single (according to the entertaining sleeve notes), and possibly written just for the Vulcan maestro -- "I'd Love Making Love to You," which exudes as much sultry seduction as a frozen duck on an antenna. I try to imagine how the backing musicians made it through these sessions without screaming themselves, and wetting the floor with laughter. P.S. I don't know how to create the "voting buttons."
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