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| Loaf review Ottawa 16th March | |
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Pudding 12:36 am UTC 03/18/07 |
| Sounds like the Loafster was struggling a bit. Scotiabank Place, Ottawa - March 16, 2007 By DENIS ARMSTRONG -- Sun Media OTTAWA - As guilty pleasures go, few are as rare a treat as Meat Loaf, but at last night's Scotiabank Place concert, the burly singer was strictly dishing out old leftovers in what was a surprisingly unmusical concert. It is positively mind-bending to realize that it is 30 years ago that the bubblegum opera of the original Bat Out of Hell album transformed a struggling singer and actor -- Loaf played Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show -- into a cartoon-embracing rock-god, selling almost as many records as Michael Jackson's Thriller, thanks to Jim Steinman's over-heated songs about teenage romance. Yikes. There were a few moments when Loaf's voice failed him completely, and I thought, were it not for either his Wagnerian ego, or the-show-must-go-on determination, the 56-year old might call it a night. But then, as anyone who has followed Meat Loaf's roller-coaster career, he never quits. The evening began, as the 4,200 fans on hand hoped, with two songs that will follow him to his grave, the base-running ballad Paradise By The Dashboard Lights and Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth. With a red kerchief in hand, and wearing a Senators jersey, Loaf let it rip and while there were times when the 56-year-old singer pursued his teenage love interest across the stage as if he had a hip replacement, he was vocally robust. But while covering I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) and Objects In The Mirror Meat Loaf seemed to lose most of his vocal range and power while at times, struggling just to stay in the same key as his six-piece band trying to cover for him. There were moments after an intermission when he showed flashes of his former glory in the late 1970s when he was the closest thing rock and roll had to a romantic baritone like Pavarotti, and he picked up his vocal energy on the title track from the latest chapter in the Bat Out of Hell trilogy The Monster Is Loose, Blind As a Bat and the lighter-waving classic, Two Out of Three Ain't Bad to go with the eye-popping camp theatrical look with three video screens, a dazzling light show, lots of pretty girls and sound effects. While the second half was a big improvement, it wasn't quite enough to get the taste of bland leftovers out of my mouth. Pud | |
| URL: | Jam review |
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