Actors/Musicians... a ramble through YouTube and my mind on a hot Wednesday in July

My last post was about Duchovny's book. I'm still stuck on him at the moment.

I've never been a fan of "The X-Files" but I know David Duchovny from at least one other thing that he's done, and when the book "Bucky F*cking Dent" crossed my desk at work I knew I wanted to read it. (If nothing else there promised to be baseball.) While looking up the reviews I discovered that he'd released an album last year. I had no idea! Seriously, I don't watch tv and I don't always pay attention to the radio.

Before getting the MP3 though my mind wondered "Is it actually any good?" I listened to a few songs online, on YouTube, on Amazon, etc... but the jury was still out so I got the MP3. It's not bad. The critics say he's imitating others but that's to be expected for his first release. Okay. I'm okay with that.

This got me to thinking about other actors who have released albums. The first two that came to my mind were David Hasselhoff and William Shatner. Classics. Shatner is of course terrible in a cheezy, 70s kind of way. He doesn't sing. He talks while music is playing. Hasselhoff is of course classic 80s. He does actually sing but he also thinks he's sexy and the videos are just.... cheese. What can I say?

Further curiousity led me to this--
http://www.billboard.com/articles/list/513481/25-movie-stars-turned-musicians

Now I don't want to just repost all the videos that are listed in that article. That wouldn't be right. Some of them have me curious though and I'm continuing my research and exploration of "actors turned musicians" through YouTube etc...

Kevin Bacon is mentioned in that article, but not this video:

This isn't bad. It's newer so it doesn't have the cheese factor that those older actors have.

I can't judge country music, but Jeff Bridges was mentioned in the article and his music actually feels kind of genuine, like he was made for this. Here's one example-

I almost missed Bruce Willis! I guess Bruce had the chance to sing a little in one of his movies and decided it was fun. He's not writing his own material, as far as I know. He's just having fun doing covers.

 

God, that's the whole concert! Oops! 22 minutes!

Try this instead, it's shorter, only 8 minutes- 

Steve Martin is a comedian, an actor, a writer who has published novels, and a banjo player. His banjo playing has appeared in comic form in at least one of his movies. Bluegrass music is something that I learned in school and when I was younger but it's not always featured in popular culture. It's what he plays though, and good for him. Even back in 1979 he has a banjo with him while doing comedy as shown here-

I'm not big on Steve Martin though, I'd rather listen to Russell Crowe. The article mentions him doing "Testify" with his band but I did some looking around and found some other things-

I'm trying to think of what I want to say about this one. I'm making a short list for another post and I think this one is going to be on that list.


Crowe covering a Bruce Springsteen song-

So now circling back to where I started. I think William Shatner might be in the article, and man he's just... crazy bad, cheezy...  I shared this in a couple of places earlier today-

Duchovny's music is better than this thankfully! It's interesting that Shatner embraces this stuff though and continues to perform over the years in this way. I guess if it pays the bills then who am I to knock it?

I'm not sure with Hasselhoff if I should share something old or something new. Maybe a little of both.

This is from 6 years ago and pretty much sums it up...

And for older stuff--

Which brings me back to Duchovny, although I could go on about Russell Crowe because I might be his newest fan. As I'm writing this blog post Crowe's music is growing on me as YouTube slipped into "autoplay" and his music is continuing in the background.

Duchovny's music is the newest of the ones I'm covering here. This fan video is less than a year old.

This song is one of my favorites, although I had to look up the lyrics because I originally thought there was something sexier, dirtier, than what he actually says-

The audio isn't perfect on this version I admit but he actually looks a bit more like a musician than he does in some of the other videos.

ThinkSayRecords is David Duchovny's recording label I believe and the official video for "Hell or Highwater" is over here-

So I'm not sure how well the music is selling. He did a tour last year I guess, and now he's busy with his tv series "Aquarius" again, working on Season 2. Looking around Twitter and there seems to be a pretty solid fan base. This amuses me. I'm willing to join them and go for the ride but I also need to up my game and find the Russell Crowe fans too.