3 posts tagged “leonard nimoy”
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Maude Maggart is the sister of Fiona Apple. |
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If you've ever seen my DVD collection, you'll know that I am a pretty big fan of Star Trek. I have previously mentioned how much I love Data from Star Trek and was glad to see that the actor, Brent Spiner, had recorded Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back. The 1940's pop and showtunes standard album have been out of print for a while, and fans and collectors have paid a lot of money to own an original copy. I would recommend getting a copy of his new, just-released, album, Dreamland before it goes out of print or you'll regret it later.
Dreamland is an old fashion radio musical with already established jazz singer, Maude Maggart. We've previously used her cover of Cole Porter's "Night and Day". It is important that I mention the Porter tune, because Brent Spiner heard her Porter cover of "Looking at You" and fell in love with her voice.
The other star appearing on this CD is Mark Hamill (Star Wars). He plays the villainous boyfriend and the Spanish waiter, and I believe other character voices too. I'm not familiar with the other voice actor Pat Richardson, but I think she is a pretty famous TV actress.
This album was meant to be listened to from start to finish, like an hour radio program. I was surprise to see that you can download it as per song ($1.50), but to me, this doesn't make much sense because you're only getting 1/16th of the story.
I didn't realize that the story is actually a dream (if you think I'm spoiling the story, I'm not, the explanation is written on the liner notes), so at one point in the story I was pretty confused when Spiner woke up with (what I imagined based on the voice acting) a horrific and older lady. The story is a great idea and it keeps you listening to find out what will happen next.
As for the songs, if you love old big band/swing Frank Sinatra tunes ("In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning", "Nice 'n' Easy"), you'll love these new recording from Spiner and Maggart. The songs that are excellent are the duets, especially on the last track "To Know You is to Love You".
For some reason, when I was listening to this album, the one song that I kept going back to was "Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone". There's a sense of humor in the song ("What do you call a singer who breaks up with his girlfriend?" answer: "Homeless!") and some improvisation and it made me think of a live 1930 setting.
Check out this video "behind the scene" of Dreamland, it really shows off what a great fun time they all had while recording this album (and it translate to the album too).
Dreamland is available on amazon and iTunes, but I would recommend getting it directly from therealbrentspiner.com because you can get it personalized and autographed.
What's in store for Brent in the future? It looks like he's going to be filming a documentary? From reading his blog, it would seem that he's going to be traveling around and will personally make stops to people's homes.
Bonus: Let's not forget other Star Trek actors have recordings. Here are some songs that we've previously used:
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Links:
therealbrentspiner.com
myspace.com/realbrentspiner
maudemaggart.com
myspace.com/maude...
If you were one of the three people that watched my Sony 400 Disc Changer Review, you'd probably noticed that I like Star Trek. Particularly The Next Generation.
Well, last week (Sep 28th), marked the 20th Anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which came on the television screen in 1987.
I was born too late for the original Star Trek, but I was lucky enough to have caught TNG from the beginning. My favorite character, easily, was Data, the android played by Brent Spiner.
It's good news (depending on who you ask), is that Spiner released an album, Ol' Yellow Eyes Is Back in 1991. The album is mostly 1930-40 pop standards. From what I've heard of Spiner's songs, he actually does a pretty good job. However since he called it Yellow Eyes and had The Sunspots (back-up vocals, including LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, and Patrick Stewart), it just seems like a tongue-in-cheek joke, and I'm not sure if I can take it seriously.
Since we're on the topic of Star Trek actors releasing music, no one can ignore the awesomeness of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.
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Shatner's approach to music, isn't really singing, but acting his songs out. Although The Transformed Man is pretty much spoken words, his second effort, Has Been is more of a music album. This is partly because of his collaborator, Ben Folds and Joe Jackson. We're not exactly sure why a Canadian like Shatner would cover a Britpop song by Pulp ("Common People"), but I did quite like his version.
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Leonard Nimoy had a bunch of covers on his The New World of Leonard Nimoy, including "Proud Mary", "Abraham, Martin and John", "Put A Little Love In Your Heart", and "I Walk the Line".
Perhaps the most bizarre song from Nimoy is "The Ballad Of Bilbo Baggins" about Bilbo Baggins from "The Hobbit" by J.R.R. Tolkien.
My favorite Nimoy album, which is the only one I own, is A Touch of Leonard Nimoy, which was a "serious" album. Most of the songs sounds very folk, which common for this time.
Half of Shatner's Transformed Man and Nimoy's pre-1970's releases were collected on Spaced Out.
Finally, did you know that Nichelle Nichols (the actress that plays Lieutenant Uhura) have released not one, but two albums ? I actually didn't know she was a recording artist until I started doing research for this article.
Nichols's 1995 song, "Rock the World", feels a little funky and has that 80s vibe to it. I couldn't help but imagined her in her Star Trek uniform singing "Rock the World" to an alien planet. This could really make a great episode.
Post Script: Check out even more Nimoy goodness on 6BaM and WB Mook. Also, there are a few spoken word albums that you may want to check out, such as Spock vs. Q.
Discography
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10/06/2007 16:16:49
vu
my♥posts
vu@weheartmusic.com
www.startrek.com
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| Sixbucksamonkey wrote: Oct 6, 2007 9:01 PM |
[das ist gut] Thanks! Delightful post as usual. I see a few things here I need to seek out. Nichelle Nichols is the QUEEN of awesomeness. She's like Shirley Bassey multiplied times T'Pau.
But, frankly the Spiner stuff creeps me out a bit.
I've just figured out that people who weren't on Star Trek sing about it. Yet another reason to live!
I had a few cassingles for Information Society, so I'm going to put them on the playlist for this week! I love them so much !!
You may remember them back in the 80s with their big hit "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)", which had a big problem with the sampling of Leonard Nimoy from Star Trek.
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