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| Same concert different review | |
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Pudding 11:05 pm UTC 03/21/07 |
| In reply to: | ML sounds like bad karaoke - Pudding 06:06 am UTC 03/21/07 |
| Meat Loaf nostalgia Mon, March 19, 2007 By JAMES REANEY, FREE PRESS ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT COLUMNIST That was an extra large helping of Meat Loaf at the John Labatt Centre last night. The legendary U.S. rock singer was shooting a DVD of the concert, virtually guaranteeing wild and crazy pandemonium from the 6,000 fans when he hit the stage. From then on it was Bat Out of Hell -- the rock trilogy that took three albums and many labels to complete -- all night long. Meat Loaf spent an extra long first set to highlight an early Paradise by The Dashboard Light, complete with a mock showdown with a backup singer in a skimpy outfit, the big guy's own "second favourite song" Objects in the Rear View Mirror and I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That). It's hard to know what will survive for the DVD. Presumably the various outfits painted on the two women singing backup will stay in -- as a more visual than musical component of the concert. A trim or two could lose the most embarrassing moments in the first showdown when the wig-wearing Meat Loaf and the Dashboard babe take turns humiliating each other. There's a good reason Meat Loaf excels at playing troubled and lost souls in his movies, not horny teenagers like the Dashboard male. The song sketch reached a low point when Meat Loaf cursed out the teasing babe and she flounced off. Not a great moment in rock history. The two -- Meat Loaf, now with short hair, and Aspen Miller -- had a sweet moment of reconciliation during Anything for Love. She looked a lot more at ease accepting Meat Loaf's tender approaches in a nice black dress for that song than she did fending off his gropes. The extravaganza had started with just a bit of 1977's All Revved Up With No Place to Go, an appetizer before the main course arrived for Paradise. Meat Loaf may not sprint to the stage, and he may move a lot more like a fan carefully toting beers down the stadium steps than a quarterback scrambling in the pocket. He did wear a San Diego NFL jersey for a while, inviting the comparison. What he did was stay up and active and deliver value for money and hits, hits, hits during the show. Meat Loaf still had enough voice to bellow the "thank yous" more than two hours later during Bat Out of Hell. There was an intermission, but that was just a breather before he came back for such classics as Two Out of Three Ain't Bad and Bat Out of Hell. He did say some strange things that will weird up the DVD. Meat Loaf was running on leftovers -- "brain dead" for a minute or two when he puzzled over a technical glitch around his keyboard player. He finally settled on "power strip" for the cause of the glitch -- not apparent to many of us -- and urged the crowd not to plug too many appliances into any one strip. Meat Loaf said security at the Elton John show thumped fans with cameras. It was nice that Meat Loaf hammed it up for his fans with cameras, but did the John's security really do that when he was here? "I'm sucking up," Meat Loaf claimed -- in a nice way -- in introducing Objects. "You haven't heard this story," he insisted before his saga introducing the song derailed when an audience member told him opener Marion Raven had already told the same yarn to introduce one of her songs. Meat Loaf acted surprised. He should know how. The man has appeared in more than 60 television and feature films. This time, he went through some amusing bluster about Raven being just 22 and already stealing material -- but he never did finish the story. They did a duet later in the show, which ran about three hours. Meat Loaf sang while seated on a stool -- which got the audience on the main floor to sit down, too -- before getting up to give some soulful yelps at Objects finale. In the second half, the fans on the floor were up and cheering along for Two out of Three, another song that called for a seated delivery. If there is one problem with shooting a concert DVD, it's that the cameras don't do much for the audience except get in the way. Last night, the view from Section 104 was blocked by a big boom during the climactic moments of Anything for Love. I guess "One man’s Meat is another man’s poison"...LMAO Pud | |
| URL: | London Free Press |
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