Sunday Songbook: Send in The Clowns, Redux
More unhinged tunes, intended and otherwise, for your amusement
William Shatner, “Mr. Tambourine Man”
Captain Kirk sings! Not only is this song more deranged than Shatner’s serious-minded version of “Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds,” it may well have the greatest finale in all recorded music history. I believe this version of the Dylan classic from Shatner’s 1968 album A Transformed Man will outlast human civilization and go on to baffle beings wiser than us.
Sebastian Cabot, “Like A Rolling Stone”
Shatner was among a number of tone-deaf television stars seduced into recording studios in the sixties. Here’s Sebastian Cabot, the butler “Mr. French” from the TV series “Family Affair.” In this marvelous musical mishap from 1967, session players on oboe and xylophone witlessly wander around the rotund sitcom star’s sideways reading of another Bob Dylan classic.
Warren Zevon, “Werewolves of London”
Fast forward to 1978. The seed for this single from the album Excitable Boy was supplied three years earlier by Don Everly, who suggested Zevon get on the pop culture werewolf craze with a tune of his own. Zevon and his band knocked off off the song in 15 minutes, but he wasn’t impressed with the results. Singer-songwriter Jackson Browne took to playing it live, and T. Bone Burnette also borrowed it for the final leg of Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder tour, before Zevon took to the studio to make it the centerpiece of his album, Excitable Boy.
The werewolves in question sound rather a bit like prototypes of those scary eighties creatures, the ‘yuppies.’
After Zevon’s death, Jackson Browne described “Werewolves of London” as a novelty song, but “not a novelty the way, say, Steve Martin’s “King Tut” is a novelty.” And that brings us to…
Steve Martin, “King Tut”
Inspired by the King Tut exhibit travelling through the US in 1978, comic Steve Martin performed his legendary shout-out to the Egyptian boy-king on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”
Steve Martin, “Jubilation Day”
Decades later, the talented banjo player and comic teamed up with The Steep Canyon Rangers for this memorable break-up song.
Reverend Billy C. Wirtz, “Grandma’s At The Wheel”
I’m a big fan of the Reverend. From his 1992 album, Deep Fried and Sanctified. If this one works for you, you may be ready for Roberta.
Ray Jessel on America’s Got Talent
From 2014. It’s now unlikely that any ‘broadcast standards and practices’ department would green light a song with this comic premise. Not unless it was reworked as a humourless anthem of gender ideology.
Huh?
Late last year a trans deaf mute person ‘performed’ their version of Whitney Huston’s “I Will Always Love You” on a Brazilian television musical competion. Was this meant seriously or as a joke? Is it empowerment or exploitation? Amusing or disturbing? I couldn’t find out anything online on the circumstances surrounding this video, which you may find less funny ha-ha than funny peculiar.
Eric Cartman, “Come Sail Away”
It was pure genius for South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone to transform a seventies’ earache by Styx into an Eric Cartman clunker. I can’t get through this track from the 1998 “Chef Aid” album without cracking up.
BONUS SONG
William Shatner, “Has Been”
“Riding on their armchairs / They dream of wealth and fame / Fear is their companion / Nintendo is their game.” Who could have predicted that post-Star Trek Shatner, reduced to a figure of fun by the nineties, would produce one of the best albums of 2004?
Captain Kirk again! In the self-effacing title track from the 2004 album Has Been, William Shatner acknowledges his downward career arc while reinventing himself as a musical wit. Produced by Ben Folds with an all-star cast of session musicians, Has Been features songs that work as intended - alternately serious and satirical. The well-received album marked the turnaround in Shatner’s fortunes.
The unexpectedly funny one that springs to mind after listening to all of this was the 80's Bruce Willis album called The Return of Bruno, that I, wince, indeed used to have myself, back in the time when Bruce was the smartest alec on TV playing opposite the gorgeous Cybil Shepherd in Moonlighting.
Wondrous!
BTW, a list of South Park creators should include someone named Kyle McCullough....I know him and his entire creatively crazy family...