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jsheard 1 days ago [-]
If I had a nickel for each actor who recorded a heavy metal album after their 90th birthday then I'd have two nickels, which isn't much but it's weird that it's happened twice.
The great Orsen Welles spring chickened out by only recording heavy metal tracks when he was 70. His excuse for not repeating that at 90 was dying not long after.
Manowar are such a guilty pleasure of mine. They have a lot of very silly material, but hard to deny that Dark Avenger is anything but absolute art.
stavros 1 days ago [-]
I knew about this, though I'd never listened to it. I gave it a shot now, and I wanted to like it, but... it's terrible, unfortunately.
bebebop 1 days ago [-]
He also did work with Rhapsody of Fire from 2004 to 2010, where his contributions were of much higher quality.
stavros 1 days ago [-]
It doesn't bother me, it's fantastic that he did this, it was just objectively not very good. I'm glad his other contributions were better, and he's obviously had an illustrious career in general.
cess11 22 hours ago [-]
If you want to give it a listen, I'd recommend this album:
That’s unfair to Sir Christopher. He was only 82 when he started working with Rhapsody.
russellbeattie 1 days ago [-]
Phineas and Ferb had some of the best scripts ever written for TV, and I'll die on that hill.
ziofill 1 days ago [-]
Oh wow he looks incredible for being 94
jimberlage 1 days ago [-]
William Shatner has the most experimental, wild Spotify I've ever seen. If you haven't ever seen it, look at his discography. He does a lot of almost spoken-word poetry over soft rock, punk, etc. You get the sense that he views acting as his side hustle and is waiting for his musical career to take off.
vunderba 1 days ago [-]
He's also (to my knowledge) one of the only major Hollywood actors to ever star in a movie filmed entirely in esperanto. I've heard that the pronunciation is rather rough around the edges though I have no way of corroborating that.
> Native Esperanto speakers (Esperanto: denaskuloj [denasˈkuloi̯] or denaskaj esperantistoj [deˈnaskai̯ esperanˈtistoi̯]) are people who have acquired Esperanto as one of their native languages. As of 1996, there were 350 or so attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers.[1][2] Estimates from associations indicate that there were around 1,000 Esperanto-speaking families, involving perhaps 2,000 children in 2004. ...
> some families have passed Esperanto on to their children over several generations.
eucyclos 17 hours ago [-]
My Esperanto teacher told me 'there are always a lot of marriages after Esperanto conventions '. It makes sense it would be the primary shared language of some couples
eesmith 16 hours ago [-]
The Wikipedia article points out 'native speakers have limited opportunity to meet one another except where meetings are specially arranged. For that reason, many parents consider it important to bring their children regularly to Esperanto conventions'.
eucyclos 23 hours ago [-]
I'd heard of this movie before and had to check it out - the scene I watched where he was speaking to who I assume is the female lead sounded like an American and an Italian both speaking perfectly passable Esperanto. If I were to nitpick his i's were a little soft - Esperanto i's are canonically pronounced ee - but Esperanto was made to accommodate lots of different accents without losing comprehensibility and it did that here. I actually found his Esperanto easier to follow than the girl's, but that's probably because I learned Esperanto from people speaking it with Canadian accents.
peatmoss 1 days ago [-]
When I watched Incubus I remember him sounding very much like he was trying to speak Italian. My only basis for comparison are some podcasts in Esperanto I've listened to, and completion of the duolingo course (I've forgotten everything).
wodenokoto 1 days ago [-]
His rendition of “Common People” is my favorite cover and I honestly prefer it to Pulps original.
beAbU 21 hours ago [-]
Hand to heart honest, I had a listen to this, and this is the only version I know. This was a very popular song when I was in university in 15 years ago.
I did not realize it was shatner!
croon 18 hours ago [-]
Ben Folds co-composing the album and songs featuring Henry Rollins, Lemon Jelly, etc, as well as having Nick Hornby (and I believe Aimee Mann?) on That's Me Trying is incredible, and also probably my favorite song on it.
daveac 1 days ago [-]
Thank you. 100% agree. I would love to hear Shatner work with John Cooper Clarke
theshrike79 22 hours ago [-]
An interesting choice of words: "has the most experimental, wild Spotify" when referring to someone's discography :)
Is Spotify becoming the new Kleenex or Hoover when referring to music?
throw0101c 5 hours ago [-]
> You get the sense that he views acting as his side hustle and is waiting for his musical career to take off.
Steve Martin paid the bills with stand-up comedy and acting until his banjo career finally took off.
etrautmann 1 days ago [-]
At one point he was huge into the paintball scene as well. Beyond hobby level
squigz 1 days ago [-]
There's also the time he did spoken word Slim Shady for Futurama
Zarelli took Leonard Nimoy's 1975 audio recording of the disturbing short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” (The Martian Chronicles, 1950) and turned it into a song. I think you'll like it:
William Shatner is someone I really wish I could dislike. I mean, he is certainly not a conventionally talented singer or actor. He's laughably, painfully bad sometimes.
But the man keeps going! He's one of the hardest working people in show business. He clearly takes his craft very seriously, even if he defines it a bit differently from the rest of world.
The Wrath of Khan has no business being as great a movie as it is, and his version of Common People is fantastic.
I'm sure this collaboration will be .... something else.
== Edit
I'm sure I am over-analyzing this - I do that with everything - but Common People is actually "perfect" Shatner.
When you start listening, you feel "OK, this is lame." After a bit it clicks and it becomes "Oh! I see what they are trying to do here." and by the end it becomes "Damn! This is awesome."
Shatner doesn't change throughout the performance, but everything just falls into place around him.
throw0101c 5 hours ago [-]
> But the man keeps going! He's one of the hardest working people in show business. He clearly takes his craft very seriously, even if he defines it a bit differently from the rest of world.
I still think him (of Star Trek) opening AFI's tribute to George Lucas (of Star Wars) was genius:
His acting is laughably, painfully bad and then suddenly incredibly poignant and for some reason for the whole time it's bad I'm subconsciously like "oh this part doesn't count". It's so easy to root for him
tim333 12 hours ago [-]
His style seems quite Shakespearean which was done in a slightly over the top way to entertain the live crowds at the time, rather than the realistic style popular nowadays with close up filming.
nosioptar 14 hours ago [-]
Shatner singlehanded made American Psycho 2 better than the original. It's so awful it's great.
(I know no one else in the world feels this way.)
BLKNSLVR 6 hours ago [-]
I didn't know there was even a sequel.
Alien 3 is my favourite in the Alien franchise, so I'm a chance to see it your way. But then I love American Psycho and the portrayal by Christian Bale, so maybe I'm already out of the running.
GolfPopper 1 days ago [-]
Denny Crane!
ryandrake 1 days ago [-]
No mention of Shatner's music career is complete without listing Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner[1]. And, yes, it's exactly as -unique- as you'd imagine it might be.
If Will Shat would do a cover of Styx's “Come Sail Away” using AI SpaceX Starship imagery in the music video
https://youtu.be/sm-Vh3j8sys
WalterBright 1 days ago [-]
Shatner ... knows ... how to ... have fun ... in his 90s!
johngossman 1 days ago [-]
As I age, I look on these happy, productive seniors, people like Dick Van Dyke (100), David Attenborough (99), and Mel Brooks (99) and keep my fingers crossed.
phasetransition 1 days ago [-]
Brooks was a combat engineer at the Battle of the Bulge! That always blows me away. What a life's journey.
jimbokun 1 days ago [-]
Like a stray bullet and his journey ends there but instead he’s still going strong at 99.
esafak 1 days ago [-]
100 is the new 80... I hope!
ThrowawayR2 1 days ago [-]
And more power to him; he's enjoying himself and that's all that matters. We should all be so fortunate.
WalterBright 13 hours ago [-]
Exactly!
Tade0 22 hours ago [-]
Whenever someone overuses ellipsis I imagine they talk like William Shatner.
HN: Flags anything politics adjacent because it's "not tech-related".
Also HN: Remember Star Trek?!?
ThrowawayR2 10 hours ago [-]
From the HN guidelines: "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting." Star Trek was wildly popular among the OG hackers before most of the people reading this were even born.
ShadyTrail 7 hours ago [-]
A lot of non-hackers also like Star Trek, and a lot of hackers don't like it. Liking Star Trek isn't indicative of or relevant to being a "good hacker".
By this logic being old and probably white and male is also what it takes to be a good hacker.
krapp 13 hours ago [-]
Yeah, this is literally the sort of mainstream celebrity news that HN should flag without question, but pop culture nostalgia always means the rules don't count. Pretending you flew in a spaceship in the 1960s shouldn't count for "technical merit."
Meanwhile the story about an Israeli massacre of Gaza aid workers with actual technical content didn't last an hour before being flooded with complaints about being "off topic" then getting flagged.
C'est la vie, Hacker News will never change.
afavour 1 days ago [-]
Sometimes I’m absolutely mystified by the items that appear at the top of HN.
johngossman 1 days ago [-]
That's not a bug, that's a feature
ThrowawayR2 15 hours ago [-]
There are a lot of Trekkies here. Star Trek was popular among hackers and nerds all the way back to when it first aired in the late 1960s.
bgdkbtv 1 days ago [-]
I am also confused as to how this is relevant to HN.
defrost 1 days ago [-]
Apparently more than 100 registerd users with voting rights thought it interesting and few to none felt it flag worthy.
So, much the same bar was cleared as every other article that makes the "interesting to HN community" grade.
Rack that up to more Trekkie-adjacent and metal-heads than you might have expected.
Razengan 1 days ago [-]
Mystified by the fact that people on HN have interests outside of computers and shit?
afavour 1 days ago [-]
A lot of those non-tech get flagged from the homepage. It’s interesting to see what is allowed to stay and what is not.
JasonADrury 14 hours ago [-]
Do star trek and boston legal really fall outside of stereotypical HN interests?
15 hours and 95 comments later and nobody mentions that he's holding the Les Paul backwards?
mft_ 10 hours ago [-]
It’s possible for a standard right-handed player to throw a guitar over to that position while playing.
Anyway, see the pain on his face; he’s (obvs) just in the middle of an especially aggressive and passionate metal solo.
DoneWithAllThat 1 days ago [-]
His 2004 album “Has Been” is surprisingly good.
pdpi 1 days ago [-]
I would never have expected that "Shatner and Henry Rollins ranting while Adrian Belew and Matt Chamberlain go absolutely wild on guitar and drums respectively" would be anywhere close to as good as it is.
Incidentally, Rollins talking about the recording[0] of it is freaking hilarious.
Well, thanks for cutting another one and a half hours from my already too short period of sleep at night and making me waste more time tomorrow at looking up more stand up shows from Henry if available.
vlachen 23 hours ago [-]
I highly recommend watching his live show if he's ever in your area. Great experience. Henry is the epitome of intensity for 2 hours. He doesn't stop. He doesn't sit. He doesn't drink. I'm not even sure he breathes.
havblue 15 hours ago [-]
You wouldn't think someone just orating without singing is entertaining, but it worked. I'm sure Ben Folds did a lot of the heavy lifting to make it great though.
While most people cite Common People as their favorite song on the album, I also like "You'll Have Time" as one of the more philosophically important songs that I've ever heard.
aquir 21 hours ago [-]
Hell yeah! HM on HN!
I would like to do metal projects in my nineties!
After the Iron Maiden performance we need an album from Ralph Fiennes. How'z'dat?
antonyh 20 hours ago [-]
I do hope Gibson/Chibson make that guitar with the inlays at the 11th/13th positions.
block_dagger 1 days ago [-]
The album he made with Ben Folds was worth a couple of listens. Only a couple.
TiredOfLife 19 hours ago [-]
A day.
protocolture 1 days ago [-]
Still waiting for his spoken word, rnb, julius caesar.
jrootabega 1 days ago [-]
Guess the Beastie Boys were never in the running.
Avicebron 1 days ago [-]
It's Shatner, he can score anything.
SilentM68 1 days ago [-]
Don't know if true or not but I saw somewhere on the web that he is also in talks to return to Star Trek.
ThrowawayR2 1 days ago [-]
I recall that he consulted for an unofficial (semi-official?) concept video by the Roddenberry Archive that was a finale/sendoff for Captain Kirk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgOZFny7F50 . If you're a fan of TOS, it's worth a watch.
SilentM68 1 days ago [-]
Yup, I am a fan and watched that concept video when it came out.
I'm hoping he makes some sort of return, perhaps involving the
Star Trek Picard Season 3 reveal that Kirk's body is being kept
on ice at Section 31, on Daystrom Station. I would imagine that
there are many ways that Kirk could be brought back, perhaps
Kirk's body could have ended up being stored in a transporter's
buffer similar to how the episode "Relics" from Star Trek: The
Next Generation, Captain Montgomery Scott (Scotty) is discovered
alive in a transporter buffer after being trapped for 75 years
on a Dyson sphere. The transporter has been rigged to sustain
two life signals, allowing Scott to survive by maintaining a
diagnostic cycle. His pattern remains intact, allowing him to
be rematerialized after being rescued by the USS Enterprise.
Another possibility is being back due to meddling from the Q
or an evolved V'Ger. There's been published a comic where some
of the old crew from multiple TV projects have been brought
back to help solve the killings of some of Star Trek's Gods
by an unknown figure. Emperor Kahless is eventually revealed
to be Star Trek’s god-killer. Among the many cameos in the
series are Benjamin Sisko, Jake Sisko, Kira Nerys, Odo, Worf,
Alexander Rozhenko, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, B'Elanna Torres,
Tom Paris, Ro Laren, and others like Q, Kahless (clone/Emperor),
and crossovers with Picard-era or TOS characters. It does not
have to be a TV series but could be a limited TV mini-series.
The Star Trek financial gods wasted big money on a badly done
Section 31 movie. I don't see why they don't do something more
similar to Star Trek comic and Television canon.
NetMageSCW 14 hours ago [-]
Kirk is in the Nexus still, even though he left and died. He could leave it again.
SilentM68 11 hours ago [-]
Hmm, that would be an interesting twist, but I'd be great if we could get some closure on V'Ger's fate as well. Heck even a BSG vs Star Trek multiversal crossover event would be good about now, considering the low-quality shows that are being put out ;)
"Please God, don't let him sing." is my immediate reaction after curiously hearing one of his previous works.
1 days ago [-]
excalibur 1 days ago [-]
If you haven't heard his Bohemian Rhapsody cover, it's something else. He flat out admitted that he had never heard the song before recording it. Which... Number one, how? And number two, who let him do that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne:_The_Omens_of_Deat...
The great Orsen Welles spring chickened out by only recording heavy metal tracks when he was 70. His excuse for not repeating that at 90 was dying not long after.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AMi-vCfAWw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arAgnVGFZbs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus_(1966_film)
Esperanto has native speakers. Shatner is not one of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Esperanto_speakers
> Native Esperanto speakers (Esperanto: denaskuloj [denasˈkuloi̯] or denaskaj esperantistoj [deˈnaskai̯ esperanˈtistoi̯]) are people who have acquired Esperanto as one of their native languages. As of 1996, there were 350 or so attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers.[1][2] Estimates from associations indicate that there were around 1,000 Esperanto-speaking families, involving perhaps 2,000 children in 2004. ...
> some families have passed Esperanto on to their children over several generations.
I did not realize it was shatner!
Is Spotify becoming the new Kleenex or Hoover when referring to music?
Steve Martin paid the bills with stand-up comedy and acting until his banjo career finally took off.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqf04PAeFnE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_ekjpJWSvY&list=RD7_ekjpJWS...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cMXhWf0vE7c
That cover was later remixed into this[3] piece of internet gold (IMHO).
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wI4jMxveyI
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_QZe8Z66x8
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IffZh3V8oQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZL4pNtI9nM
I also really enjoy _That's Me Trying_: https://youtu.be/vjGaqFrF5Fw?si=eq_VSQXnxqXQ_Kyg
and _Real_: https://youtu.be/hsKfZ3wvLkE?si=l7FdbGCX_u8ep0Ie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmCi_-9Shhg&list=RDXmCi_-9Sh...
Something all the covers of Behind Blue Eyes by The Who seem to miss is the slowly rising anger and frustration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXWEM4gZhg4
For 93 that's amazing.
But the man keeps going! He's one of the hardest working people in show business. He clearly takes his craft very seriously, even if he defines it a bit differently from the rest of world.
The Wrath of Khan has no business being as great a movie as it is, and his version of Common People is fantastic.
I'm sure this collaboration will be .... something else.
== Edit I'm sure I am over-analyzing this - I do that with everything - but Common People is actually "perfect" Shatner.
When you start listening, you feel "OK, this is lame." After a bit it clicks and it becomes "Oh! I see what they are trying to do here." and by the end it becomes "Damn! This is awesome."
Shatner doesn't change throughout the performance, but everything just falls into place around him.
I still think him (of Star Trek) opening AFI's tribute to George Lucas (of Star Wars) was genius:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEZVwQptvWw
(Also love Mike Myers' AFI for Sean Connery.)
(I know no one else in the world feels this way.)
Alien 3 is my favourite in the Alien franchise, so I'm a chance to see it your way. But then I love American Psycho and the portrayal by Christian Bale, so maybe I'm already out of the running.
1: https://www.amazon.com/Spaced-Out-Leonard-William-Shatner/dp...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU2ftCitvyQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAWP9Oxdn9Q
https://youtu.be/7GnoLJIIS4w?si=zP_mlOxV1tKMMkQx
Also HN: Remember Star Trek?!?
By this logic being old and probably white and male is also what it takes to be a good hacker.
Meanwhile the story about an Israeli massacre of Gaza aid workers with actual technical content didn't last an hour before being flooded with complaints about being "off topic" then getting flagged.
C'est la vie, Hacker News will never change.
So, much the same bar was cleared as every other article that makes the "interesting to HN community" grade.
Rack that up to more Trekkie-adjacent and metal-heads than you might have expected.
/s
Anyway, see the pain on his face; he’s (obvs) just in the middle of an especially aggressive and passionate metal solo.
Incidentally, Rollins talking about the recording[0] of it is freaking hilarious.
[0]: https://youtu.be/8zL3wtNrq00?t=4616
While most people cite Common People as their favorite song on the album, I also like "You'll Have Time" as one of the more philosophically important songs that I've ever heard.
https://youtu.be/9HXz2oOlN0A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul6S84qF_TU