BSPH: William Shatner / Henry Rollins - I can't get behind that

"I can't get behind that" is a song by William Shatner with a guest appearence of Henry Rollins, Adrian Belew on guitar, Matt Cameron on drums and Ben Folds on board as a producer. That's an odd match. It was released in 2004 on Shatner's musical comeback "Has Been". The album fully embraced Shatner's over the top scenery incinerating delivery and found profound sincerety behind it.

The strange thing with "I can't get behind that" is that even within an album it stands out as an odd piece. It is not really a song. It is more of sponteneous combustion of creativity. It just happened. And as such it is very curious example of a concentrated burst of creativity. It is also a fine case study on how momentary decisions can results in something that stand out. (Try not to overthink this thing as much as i am.)

From a musical standpoint, "I can't get behind that" is a weird beast. There is no structure to speak of. It just starts and goes on and then stops. The main focus is on drums arrangement. Drum patterns are extremely textured - there are many moving parts: aside from the basic rhythm, there are numerous bongo fills, some bells, tom-toms, claps. It is chaotic.

The pace is relentless. It is basically a drum solo with some voices tucked on. Drummer kills it. Deep in the background we can hear barely audible bass line. And also lots and lots of fills by Andrew Belew. His contribution to the track can be summarized as "doing some sounds here and there". His guitar quacks, squeaks, roars, whirls, purrs, shrieks, gawks, yawns, sighs, bawls, belches. It adds ridiculousness to the whole thing .

Lyrically, it is also a curious thing. On the first glance, the song is merely a listing of various things and events both Shatner and Rollins "can't get behind". Part of the charm of this song is in the fact that the majority of the things mentioned are relatable to any person. However, jam-packed together, they become really strange. And it uncovers true nature of the song: it is actually a stream of conscioussness. Just some stuff that comes out of the mouth. And as such it is a fascinating document of one particular session.
 Shatner and Rollins go back and forth with their lines, capping each with "i can't get behind that". The array of subjects is relatively random. Basically, anything that comes to the head at the moment. At first subject are relatively common, but further they go - more maddening and abstract it gets. After a while they drop "can't behind that" and start just spurting various buzzwords at each other. At one point even start arguing whether "size matters". 

In many ways, "I can't get behind that" is a makeshift tongue in cheek riff on the concept of "shaking air" i.e. complaining about stuff that doesn't deserve such attention. On the other hand, most of the observations are composed in shorthand buzzword fashion which makes it even more twisted in retrospect.