Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Some nights I just pray to the gods of sex and drugs and rock and roll
Spent Labor Day the way our founding fathers meant it to be spent - Meat Loaf concert. Because, dammit, schlock makes music fun, and in the schlock category, there is simply nobody in Mr. Aday's weight class.
Pun somewhat intended.
Meat Loaf is an unfortunate victim of the law of diminishing returns, by which I mean he really, really needs to patch things up with Jim Steinman. Put it this way - Bat out of Hell is an album all rock fans should own, Bat II is a pretty good rock album, and Bat III has a few good songs, plus something with Jennifer Hudson that is far, far less than the sum of its parts. At this pace, Bat out of Hell IV would consist mainly of covers of K-Fed songs.
But I digress. As anyone who's tried to sing "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" in their car on the way to work knows, properly singing a Meat Loaf song is not for the faint of heart, and it's apparent onstage that getting through two hours of belting is asking a bit much of the 60 year old Meat Loaf, although he did have his moments where he sounded almost as good as I did in the car...I mean, as he did when the albums were recorded. Regrettably, this did leave a few moments where the show resembled a kick-ass arena rock band being fronted by Dennis Hastert.
OK, fine. He's aged better than Dennis Hastert.
Seriously, the band was amazing, and did more than their share of the heavy lifting. And once Meat broke out the wig and the cheesy 70's tuxedo for "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," nobody minded that he couldn't hold the high notes like we remembered.
Pun somewhat intended.
Meat Loaf is an unfortunate victim of the law of diminishing returns, by which I mean he really, really needs to patch things up with Jim Steinman. Put it this way - Bat out of Hell is an album all rock fans should own, Bat II is a pretty good rock album, and Bat III has a few good songs, plus something with Jennifer Hudson that is far, far less than the sum of its parts. At this pace, Bat out of Hell IV would consist mainly of covers of K-Fed songs.
But I digress. As anyone who's tried to sing "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" in their car on the way to work knows, properly singing a Meat Loaf song is not for the faint of heart, and it's apparent onstage that getting through two hours of belting is asking a bit much of the 60 year old Meat Loaf, although he did have his moments where he sounded almost as good as I did in the car...I mean, as he did when the albums were recorded. Regrettably, this did leave a few moments where the show resembled a kick-ass arena rock band being fronted by Dennis Hastert.
OK, fine. He's aged better than Dennis Hastert.
Seriously, the band was amazing, and did more than their share of the heavy lifting. And once Meat broke out the wig and the cheesy 70's tuxedo for "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," nobody minded that he couldn't hold the high notes like we remembered.
