Trollheart

Okay then. There have been some complaints about music threads where people just post pictures or a one-line description of an album they like. You can't do that here. Well, you can, but you shouldn't. That's not what this thread is meant to be about.

I run a section kind of like this in my journal which I call "Albums that changed my life". It's a chance to talk --- at length if you want --- about an album or albums and what it or they mean to you. Maybe what drew you to the album in the first place, your initial impression --- was it as good as you had expected? Did you have to work to like it? --- or what it meant to your musical evolution. Did it get you into the artiste? Did it change your outlook on any specific genre, or push you in any direction?

Spill, people! Spill! Oh, if you want to YouTube sure, but it's probably better if you don't. It's really more WHY you like an album I'm interested in hearing here than what it's like, though of course you can mini-review it if you want. And of course, we all have more than one favourite album, so post more than once certainly, but I'd ask that everyone limit themselves to one album per post.

So, one of mine then:



Bat out of Hell --- Meat Loaf

(Warning: this post comes with unasked-for information about Trollheart's youth. You have been warned. No small animals were hurt in the making of this post.)

I remember back when I was sixteen and on my way home from my part-time after-school job in a department store, my friend (sadly now passed away) and I would stare through the shuttered window of the local record shop, which proudly displayed among others this album. We were both fans of Moorcock, 2000AD, science-fiction and fantasy of all kinds, so it was the artwork that spoke to us. We would stare at the almost Boris Vallejo style of art on the album cover and remark how great it was, while scoffing that of course we wouldn't ever listen to that sort of music! But the cover was cool.

Then by whatever chain of circumstances I bought the album. I had heard just about nothing from it prior, not even the title track, not even on the radio. The closest I got was the closer, "For crying out loud", and when it was over I misheard the DJ and thought he said Meeglo, and wondered who that was? Hey, give me a break! All I had back then to listen on was a tiny tranny --- and no, I don't mean a miniscule person who liked to wear women's clothes! A tranny was a transistor, kids, a small mono radio that buzzed and crackled and spat at you, and as time went on the tuning dial stuck and crackled too, but it was all we had --- so it was hard to pick up what was said. Anyway, once I put on the album and heard that explosive intro to the title track I was, almost literally, blown away. I'd never heard a piano solo and guitar solo mesh like that, and never heard one that went on for so long that for a while I thought "Bat out of Hell", the track, was an instrumental!

To be fair, after that I found some of the other tracks a bit lacking, and the play-by-play on "Paradise by the dashboard light" always bugged me, but the great ballads like "Heaven can wait" and of course "Two out of three ain't bad" made up for that, and in time I got to love all the tracks. "Heaven can wait" is I think now one of the underrated tracks on the album. "All revved up with no place to go" was, I think, better served when it was sort of rewritten for "Dead ringer for love", but that's another story.

The album closes on the beautiful ballad "For crying out loud", and really, it couldn't be more different to the opener, which just punches your face in from the beginning, while this gently holds you and cradles you. Or, to use another analogy, if "Bat" kicks you over the cliff then "Crying" catches you just before you hit and lowers you gently to the ground. This is still an album I can play from start to finish, and even now I consider it one of Meat Loaf's best. It is in fact one of those albums you can find in the collection of a variety of music fans, from rockers to poppers and jazz fans to blues, electronica or metallers. It's just one of those albums that crosses genres --- not itself, not in its music but in its appeal --- and speaks to so many different types of music lovers.

And to think, it all began with two kids peering into the darkness as if into a candy store, marvelling at an album sleeve. Could I suppose be a metaphor for how many of us got into music in the first place. In recent years Meat Loaf has tried to duplicate the success of this album, with not one but two "followups", but though those albums are good, they're not a patch on the original. A true classic, and one which I think it's likely will never be superceded. Certainly formed a big part of my musical coming of age. And that shot on the back! Hot hot hot! Well, to a 16-year-old boy it was!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018