News

If this news broke a couple weeks earlier, we could easily have mistaken it for an April Fool’s prank: TV icon William Shatner will cover Pink Floyd on an upcoming album.

“Searching for Major Tom” will contain 19 cover songs all with a space theme. The Floyd song will be “Learning to Fly” from the band’s 1987 album “A Momentary Lapse of Reason.” The track features Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream on keyboards and guitar.

While Shatner’s first album (1968’s “The Transformed Man”) is of … er … questionable quality, but at least one, 2004’s “Has Been,” is, with rarely an exception, top-notch — due, in part, to collaborator Ben Folds, in our humble opinion.

“Searching for Major Tom” will also include covers by Deep Purple, Thomas Dolby, U2, Queen, David Bowie, Duran Duran and others.

Shatner announced the album in February, but only just recently announced details.

From the Didn’t See That One Coming Department, we got a heads up yesterday about another 8-bit redo of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Joe Allen who runs Pterodactyl Squad, an online record label that freely distributes its music, all inspired by video games, tells us, “Each track has been handled by a different artist, forming an all-star cast from the chiptune scene, and the whole album flows together just like the original.”

You might remember last April we told you about Brad Smith, a then-27-year-old game programmer from Ontario, Canada, who had re-recorded “Dark Side” using nothing but ’80s-era video game sounds.

“We believe our version blows that one out of the water,” Allen boasts.

Calling Mr. Smith: Have you received the challenge? And might we suggest “Animals” next?

You can download Pterodactyl Squad’s version of “Dark Side of the Moon” from the label’s Web site.

Foo Fighters will include a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Have a Cigar” in its compilation “Medium Rare.”

The all-covers album will be issued on vinyl on April 16, “Record Store Day.”

It’s unclear whether this version of “Cigar” will be the one from the 2000 “Mission Impossible II” collection that features Queen’s Brian May; or the Foos-only recording that appeared on the band’s “Learn to Fly” EP the previous year.

Record Store Day is a celebration of the unique culture surrounding more than 700 independently owned record stores in the US, and hundreds of similar stores internationally. Learn more at the Record Store Day Web site.