Meat Loaf

I went to see Meat Loaf in concert with my friend Peter last night. The Loaf is 64 years old, and still belting out bombastic teen anthems with a voice full of heart and a belly full of steam.

Bat Out Of Hell is an iconic album of the ’70s, channeling teenage lust, angst and rebellion. We wore the grooves off it. The album art turns the act of teenage escape into Lucifer’s fall in Paradise Lost. I wasn’t a fan of the “sequel” with “I’d Do Anything for Love,” but this album and his other early work like “Dead Ringer for Love” still move me. I know a lot of you cringe when someone selects “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” on the jukebox, pinching their quarter until the eagle grins, but the opening guitar riff transports me the the wonder of childhood when days were spent exploring woods and rust-stained concrete factories on the back of a Huffy and nights with albums like this spinning while we sat around a fire pit on the patio, roasting marshmallows on sticks and potatoes in the coals.