Ryan's Reviews

I have many happy memories of the albums of Bette Midler, from "Experience the Divine: Greatest Hits" which I heard the same day as "Bathhouse Betty" in 1998, followed up by "The Divine Miss M", "The Rose" and "Beaches", and everything else I've been able to hear since, but "Broken Blossom" was not one of these albums until relatively recently. The fourth studio album from Bette, released 17 November 1977 on Atlantic Records the same year as her double release "Live at Last", was something I barely knew in any form at all. I just knew it had a version of Billy Joel's "Say Goodbye to Hollywood", "A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes" from Disney's "Cinderella", oh and of course "Paradise" from Bette's 1980 live album "Divine Madness". I'd just managed to secure myself a copy, and would be listening to this for the first time, right on the verge of a f...

For the record, in case you didn’t know already, Bette Midler's Album Discography includes: The Divine Miss M (1972), Bette Midler (1973), Songs for the New Depression (1976), Live at Last and Broken Blossom (1977), Thighs and Whispers and The Rose soundtrack (1979), Divine Madness (1980), No Frills (1983), Mud Will Be Flung Tonight! (1985), Beaches soundtrack (1988), Some People's Lives (1990), For the Boys soundtrack (1991), Gypsy soundtrack (1993), Experience the Divine: Greatest Hits (1993 reissued in 1996), Bette of Roses (1995), Bathhouse Betty (1998), Bette (2000), Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook (2003), Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook (2005), Cool Yule (2006), It's the Girls (2014) and the Hello, Dolly! Broadway Cast Recording, bringing Bette's performing career full circle in the revival of this beloved classic. Today I'm going to be looking at Bette's double album live classic "Live at Last", issued on the Atlantic Records label in June 1977...

I remember everything. I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday. I went into the local JB Hi-Fi to get myself a copy of the latest album from Meat Loaf, 2011's "Hell in a Handbasket", so named because Meat had thought "the whole world had gone to hell in a handbasket." The front cover is a picture of Earth facing Australia (it faces different continents depending on where you live) and the whole planet is made up out of human skulls. He's really not mincing words here, not to mention pictures. I brought the album home, which feels like a week or so before the 115th Annual Grand Final of the Australian Football League, and found myself instantly captivated. It was the first time I'd really been grabbed this way by a Meat Loaf album since "Couldn't Have Said It Better" and "Bat II" itself. It was an awe-inspiring experience. It was emotional. It was gripping. It was powerful. It had bits of rap in it. In my opi...

In 1977, Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman released their classic "Bat out of Hell" produced by Todd Rundgren on Epic/Cleveland International Records. It contains such standards as "You Took the Words Right out of my Mouth (Hot Summer Night)", "Two out of Three Ain't Bad", "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", and of course, the title song. Really, this whole album is standards. The original "Bat" tour followed over the next two years. Fifteen, sixteen years later, Meat Loaf and Jim returned to the well with "Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell" released on Virgin/MCA Records in 1993. With Jim producing, the album yielded "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", "Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through", and "Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are", featuring videos directed by Michael Bay. Another legendary tour would follow. The achievement of "Bat II" woul...

Imagine if "Bat out of Hell" had been re-recorded all throughout Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman's career. There might have been a version in 1981 which would sound like "Bad for Good", or "Midnight at the Lost and Found" in 1983, or Jim's work on Bonnie Tyler "Faster than the Speed of Night", the soundtrack for "Streets of Fire" or Pandora's Box "Original Sin". The list goes on. Imagine it in 1993 alongside the sequel "Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell". What would it sound like? How would "Took the Words" come across sonically in say 1993? How about a 1984 version of "All Revved Up"? "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" has an orchestra in 1998 and it sounds like the original cast album of Jim's musical "Tanz der Vampire". Not to mention "For Crying Out Loud" if it had been recorded in 2016. What if we took vocals from one version and put it together with a...

It was late 1999. I was browsing a bookstore when I came across the hardcover version of Meat Loaf's autobiography "To Hell and Back" written with David Dalton. Besides the fact that it was Meat Loaf, the cover design and layout of the book instantly grabbed me. I'm sure it made a terrific Christmas present that year and when I got the chance, I'm sure I devoured it from cover to cover. Here was the story of the performer behind classics like "Bat out of Hell" and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show". Here, as I would discover, was a story of perseverance and inspiration. Because we journey with Meat Loaf, in a carefree conversational manner, through his early years growing up in Dallas, suffering from personal losses in his life, joining his band in Los Angeles and winding up in a production of the musical "Hair", before finding his way to New York and meeting composer Jim Steinman. In the wake of his performance in "More Than You De...

Calling "Live around the World" the definitive Meat Loaf album experience is tough when you've got a discography that includes "Bat out of Hell", an album so definitive in my mind it could have ended Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman's career, "Dead Ringer", which some refer to as the original "Bat II" (or is that Jim's "Bad for Good"?), "Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell" and 2016's "Braver than we Are". What this double CD live album from 1996 *is* in my mind is the definitive document of Meat Loaf live on record. To me, every single fan should not be without this album, even if you've only heard one or two songs. That's not easy though, because from what I understood this was only really a limited release at the time of around 250,000 copies. That's what Uncle Wiki says anyway. There are only 250,000 copies of these to go around, unless somebody reissues it in future, which I totally unequivo...

This blog started with a Meat Loaf review, specifically his first album which was… not the legendary "Bat out of Hell", but "Stoney and Meatloaf"  released in 1971. Here I am about a year later and the world has since mourned the passing of both Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman, that extraordinary combination of performer and writer who created some of the most memorable, stirring, haunting music I've ever heard. How do you express your feelings writing? Let's look at moments from some of the output in chronological order. "Bat" contains "For Crying Out Loud" and I'm not even going to attempt to describe that right now. You just have to go off and listen to it (again) and then see how you feel. With "Bad for Good", Jim's album, there was "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through". To me, both the original and the remake from "Bat out of Hell II" are equally inspiring and brilliant, sort of like the two versions of...