Month: May 2006

R.E.M. – Fables of the Reconstruction

Back at the height of my R.E.M. days the mid-90s, Fables of the Reconstruction was my favorite of the group’s records from the IRS Records era. I hadn”t listened to it in years and now I suddenly remember why I loved it so much.

It’s mid-tempo and melodic, with a "sparkling" production value that’s professional but not too slick. And the songs themselves are compellingly well written, though Green Grow the Rushes is a bit of a downer. Making up for it though are Driver 8 and Can’t Get There From Here, which practically rock well, as much as R.E.M. could before Monster.

Interesting side note: The album artwork implies that the title of the record could also be Reconstruction of the Fables and is to designed to create an infinite loop: Fables of the Reconstruction of Fables of the Reconstruction of the… and so on.

A video for you: Driver 8 and Can’t Get There From Here, live on Tyne Tees The Tube TV show (circa 1985). Check out Micheal Stipes’ hair!

Welcome to the new tunequest

Hello everybody. Starting today, tunequest is being served with WordPress, a very very cool content-management system/blogging tool I discovered while working on one of my day jobs. The previous tunequest site had been manually coded using Adobe Golive CS2. It’s a nice enough program (though prone to crashing), but it was tedious for maintaining a journal-style site. Golive will continue to be used for the static pages (graphs and songlists) and because I like its CSS interface and site integration features.

I’m hoping the new site will allow me to post more fluidly about the journey that is tunequest. Plus, as a database-driven site, I’ll be able to implement some more advanced features, such as the cloud.

In the meantime, I’ll be integrating those old musings into this new format.

Shatner Rapping: No Tears for Caesar

Part of the Musical Star Trek Actors Series

  1. Shatner Rapping: No Tears for Caesar
  2. Leonard Nimoy – Mr. Spock’s Music From Outer Space

Below is the music video for No Tears For Caesar, available on the bonus materials DVD for Free Enterprise.


William Shatner raps some Shakespeare, Marc Anthony’s speech from Julius Caesar specifically. And true to form, the good Cap’n Kirk doesn’t disappoint; he’s always entertaining when he’s got a microphone. That’s the theory behind those old priceline.com ads anyway.

The song and video No Tears For Caesar from the 1998 movie Free Enterprise (a film tailor-made for the post-modern Star Trek fan) are, as Spock would say, fascinating little productions. Shatner rapping… well not rapping so much as doing his trademark spoken word routine, a kind of precursor to 2004’s Has Been.

In any event, I whole-heartedly recommend the film. It’s worth it for Shatner alone, but has lots of other trek-related gems, like Jerry Goldsmith references! and yes, i’m genuinely excited by those.

Oh. this isn’t Shatner’s only Shakespeare recording; his 1968 record The Transformed Man contains some much-exaggerated spoken word from Hamlet, Henry V and Romeo & Juliet.

Next in series