Has Been

My friend, Mark W. sent me a hard drive full of music early in my tour (strictly a backup of selections of his music collection to be stored with me in case of a catastrophic earthquake in California, you understand). It's larger than the hard drive on my laptop and way more than my iPod could ever store so I've been perusing it for new music.

Just before leaving on this trip, I loaded William Shatner's 2004 album, "Has Been." Everyone knows about his kitschy spoken word album from the 1970s, "The Transformed Man," which has such hits as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Tambourine Man."

"Has Been" was produced by Ben Folds who I believe wrote a majority of the songs. There are guest appearances from Aimee Mann, Lemon Jelly, and even Henry Rollins. I am here to tell you it is sheer, unadulterated genius. I love it.

The title track's music is set to a spaghetti western soundtrack riff, complete with mariachi-style trumpets and percussion that sounds like a horse's hoofs. Shatner's narration confronts three strangers who he thinks he heard call him a has been:

You talkin’ to me?
You talkin’ to me?
You callin’ me ... ‘Has Been’?

I've heard of you, the ready-made connecting with the ever ready
Yeah, 'Never Was' talkin’ about 'Still Trying'
I got it, 'Forever Bitter' gossiping about 'Never Say Die'

What are you afraid of? Failure? So am I
Has been implies failure, not so
Has been’s history
Has been ... was
Has been ... might again

I ended up listening to most of the album while making my daily walk between the billeting building and the conference building. Great stuff.