LISTENING PARTY: Bat Out of Hell III

Francis Ford Coppola decided, after almost two decades, to return to the Godfather movies. The first two were and are among the most critical acclaimed movies in American history, so who could argue with a Godfather part III? FFC wrote a script, signed all the principals (Al Pacino, Diane Keaton) and hired the talented Winona Ryder to play the key role of Mary, Michael Corleone's daughter. But weeks before shooting was to start, Ryder got sick and dropped out of the picture, and FFC replaced her with his young, inexperienced daughter.

I mention this because Meatloaf also decided to make his Bat out of Hell series a trilogy, and when his collaborator and songwriter Jim Steinman quit the project, Meat was forced to hire Francis Ford Coppola's daughter to fill in. Well, not quite, but Bat Out of Hell III is a weird hybrid creature; Meatloaf found a few older Steinman songs lying around (including a few from an unproduced Batman musical, and one from a Celine Dion record) and then filled them in with songs that sound like they were only written because Winona Ryder got sick.


"The Monster's Loose"- This song is written by Nikki Six and John 5. I think that first guy is from Motley Crue, and that second guy is the robot from Short Circuit. Which would explain the fact that the music sounds like heavy metal-lite music, with lyrics that seem like its author was taught human emotion from Steve Guttenburg.

This song also serves as the album's subtitle. Any album that needs a subtitle is definitely in trouble. It would've been like if Bat II was subtitled "The Wrath of Khan."

"Blind as a Bat"- This song is also not written by Jim Steinman. It was written by Desmond Child, who co-wrote "Living On A Prayer" with Bon Jovi. However, unlike that song, Blind as A Bat doesn't make me want to rollerskate around Skatetown. It doesn't even make me want to be blind as a bat so much as it makes me want to be deaf as Marlee Matlin. I do want to give Meatloaf credit for singing his heart out on this song. I give him credit for really committing to it, like award-winning actor Raul Julia did when he appeared in 'Street Fighter' with Jean Claude Van Damme.

"It's All Coming Back To Me Now"- Ah, the first of the Steinman scraps. This came from a Celine Dion album. His duet partner, Marion Raven, is not, as I imagined when I first listened to it, the girl from 'That's So Raven', which ruins whatever tiny enjoyment I got from the song. I do remember one of the few bits of pre-publicity buzz this album got was due to the fact that Meat had apparently asked Scarlett Johansen to sing this with him and she turned him down. She went on to record an album of Tom Waits' songs. Winner? Nobody.

"Bad for Good"- Our second Steinman scraps, and dear god, I thank you that this album exists just for this one song. I believe it comes from Steinman's solo album, when Jim Steinman, the she-male who wrote all of Bat Out of Hell decided he didn't need Meatloaf's voice and charisma to make his overblown and creepy songs less overblown and creepy. He just embraced their overblown and creepiness. The best part of this song? Well, that's like asking which atom of the sun makes you the warmest, but the thing that I love particularly about this song at this moment is that they recruited Brian May from Queen to record lead guitar on this song. Combining Meatloaf and Queen is almost too much to handle. If Phil Spector had produced it, this song would've been so rock n' roll decadence that it would've crushed the earth and all life on it. But the combination of Meatloaf's voice, May's guitar, and Steinman's "You think that I'll be bad for just a little while, I know that I'll be bad for good" chorus hook, is enough awesome to make my bones ache. This is the one song on the album that feels 'Bat Out of Hell'-ish even a little bit. Part of the reason for that is this song is copyright 1979, before being a sexless freak had completely embittered Jim Steinman. That's actually probably the only reason, now that I think about it.

"Cry Over Me"-Having run out of Steinman scraps for the time being, Meat turns to songwriter Diane Warren, who also wrote 'I Don't Want to Miss A Thing' for Aerosmith. This might be the moment where you look around and think "Meatloaf's here, the album's called 'Bat Out of Hell', there's a bad painting of a guy on a motorcycle with a sword fighting a giant bat....why does it all feel so wrong?" and the answer, again, is that THIS SONG IS BY THE WOMAN WHO WROTE THE THEME SONG TO ARMAGEDDON. If an asteroid smashed into my house right now while I'm listening to this song, I'm afraid I'd deserve it.

"In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher is King"- STEINMAN! STEINMAN! STEINMAN! Oh, thank you Jim Steinman, for not only writing an unproduced Batman musical, but for also leaving the sheet music laying around for Meatloaf to find. So I think this song is written from the Joker's point of view, or something. You'd think the combination of Jim Steinman and Batman would be as awesome as the Steinman/Queen combo, but I guess Prince's "Batdance" has ruined me forever.

"Monstro"- What? No. Instrumentals? I feel like they made this in the hope they could get Jim Steinman to come in and do his creepy spoken word thing, about I'm a big whale and I'm going to swallow you and then you'll have to light a fire inside me and I'll sneeze you out, but, like, sexually. And then Jim didn't show up.

"Alive"- It does segue way into the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Oh, wait, no, still Meatloaf. Is this song also written by Johnny 5? ("Johnny Five...alive!") No. This song is written by four people, which outside of a band situation, just strikes me as too many people. If it takes four people to write a song this generic, maybe it means that the idea for the song wasn't that good to begin with. I hate that I can't direct my disappointment toward Jim Steinman. I could have so much fun picking on him for looking like Cloris Leachman when she first wakes up in the morning, but now I have a bit of begrudging respect for him deciding not to take part in this deal. And I don't want to blame Meatloaf. I'm so conflicted.

"If God Could Talk"- He'd say, 'Stop making Bat Out of Hell III.'

"If It Ain't Broke, Break It"- Oh, Steinman, I'm sorry for how much I picked on you during Bats I & II. It doesn't mean I want to hang out with you or anything. This song is also from your unproduced Batman musical, and while it isn't objectively good in any way, I love it still because it's YOURS.

I mean, it's total shit, but it's YOURS.

"What About Love"-Ah, the last non-Steinman song. It's also written by four people. Steinman must sit around listening to his complementary copy of this album, brushing his long, white hair and just laughing that it takes four people to even try and write a Bat Out of Hell song. And then he takes out his Batman action figures and starts using them to perform his Batman musical.

"Robin, quickly! To the Tony Awards!"


"Seize the Night"-Another Batman musical number. Since I've kind of made a truce with Jim Steinman, I'll just include some scenes I'd like to see in the Batman musical if it ever comes to pass.


"The Future Just Ain't What it Used to Be"-

"Cry to Heaven"- Here I am. I've nearly completed my look at the Bat Out of Hell trilogy. I don't know if there will ever be a Bat Out of Hell IV (although my guess is that if Meatloaf invested his 'Bat' money in the stock market, the answer is yes) but if not I'm disappointed that the whole thing ended without the giant bat getting his comeuppance. You can't just go and grab big-breasted women in chain-mail and make guys ride enchanted motorcycles to get them back too many times before you get your comeuppance. So if I could implore Meatloaf and Steinman to reunite one last time to write and record one more song in which the motorcycle guy finally defeats the giant bat. Steinman, you can probably just use that song from the 'Beowulf' musical I'm sure you've got kicking around somewhere. Just don't let it end here. That motherlovin' bat's got it coming.

To be continued....?

LISTENING PARTY: Bat Out of Hell II

So you're watching the Meatloaf "Behind the Music" and you've just watched the part where, following several commercial flops in the United States, Meat is forced to play small bars in Poland to make ends meet. And then the narrator says, "But the winds were about the change for Meatloaf" and then they show clips from the music video from "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" and you find yourself wondering: if things were turning around for Meatloaf, why does he look like a Morlock?

"I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"- True story: this song made its premiere when I was a freshmen in high school, and they played it at the first couple of school dances that year. They still also played Paradise by the Dashboard Light, meaning that there was only enough time left to play three other songs before it was 11pm and time to go home, but there you go. But there was a student teacher there who was really trying to be hip with all the kids, so he asked me when this song started playing, "What is it that Meatloaf won't do for love?" and I answered "Oral sex" and then he stopped trying to be my friend, and then started grading my papers for Geography really hard. I wish I could tell you that the intervening 16 years have given me greater insight into this song, but despite the fact that it is over 12 minutes long, most of the song is just Meatloaf repeating the title over and over again. So yeah, I guess I'm going to go with oral sex.

"Life is A Lemon (And I Want My Money Back)"-One way that I know that the reunited Steinman/Meatloaf team is completely self-unaware: they start out the second song on this album with background singers chanting "I want my money back", almost like they were echoing the millions of people who bought this album because they loved the first Bat Out of Hell. It just seems like a dangerous idea to implant the idea of refunds because merchandise (life in the song, the album in real life) has not delivered what it promised. This album promised me fun, bombastic rock n'roll songs about not getting laid. And apparently a guy on a floating motorcycle punching a giant bat. You've still got nine chances, Meat. Don't let me down.

"Rock N'Roll Dreams Come Through"- I think there're few things I hate more than songs about the transformative power of rock n'roll songs. Because honestly, music clearly is something that is very important to me. But I don't believe that "Cat Scratch Fever" ever really saved anybody's life. In this song, rock n'roll dreams help you get through the fires of hell. But then there's a soprano sax solo. So I'm just getting conflicted messages all over the place from this song. And since it is longer than Das Boot, they're just going to keep on coming. If only I had a good rock n'roll song to listen to that would change my life.

Yeah, sorry Meatloaf, this song is definitely not doing it. The only Rock N'Roll Dream I have now is that this song were six minutes shorter.

"It Just Won't Quit"- If you're talking about this album, then, yeah, no shit.

"Out of the Frying Pan (Into the Fire)"- WHAT.THE.HELL.IS.WITH.ALL.THE.PARENTHESIS. ON.THIS.ALBUM. Also, Jim-fucking-Steinman, give your audience some credit. If the song is called "Out of the Frying Pan", anybody who is older than seven will understand that you leave the frying pan and end up in the fire. You don't need to spell it out for them. Or do you? You seem like a guy who needs help with the obvious. For example, things I thought were self-evident that you seemingly don't get: rock songs really shouldn't go much beyond six minutes, and that's only if you've written Kashmir. So your need to write songs longer than a Republican filibuster every time is really starting to piss everybody off.

"Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are"-I wrote about this last week while I was listening to Pearl Jam, so I don't have too much to say about it, other than it's really damn long, and while the title is pretty apt, having Meatloaf repeat it eleventy-zillion times kind of robs it of a lot of its poignancy. Also robbing the song of its poignancy? The image of the girl you're having sex with in the backseat of your car "rising up like an angel rising out of a tomb." I mean I guess the word 'angel' is nice, but man, there are few words that are bigger boner killers than 'tomb.'

"Wasted Youth"- Jim Steinman loves his spoken word intros. On Bat I, he was a werewolf or something. So here, because excess is the keyword of the day, he doesn't do a spoken word introduction, he has his own spoken word track. (Which I think might've been something Meatloaf pushed for so that way people could just skip over it.) So he's not a werewolf here, but I guy who gets some kind of magically enchanted guitar that "moaned like a horny angel" and "howled in heat" and instead of using it to become a famous rock n'roll star, which I feel is the plot of at least two Corey Haim movies, he decides instead to go around and kill people with it. At one point he violently screams about smashing the guitar against the body of a varsity cheerleader, which makes me sad, because in 1993 Jim Steinman was probably close to fifty years old, and he's still angry that girls from high school wouldn't sleep with him, even though he looks like Jessica Tandy. The first Bat album was full of the kind of braggadocio of a guy who had never gotten laid (Remember that scene in the 40-year Old Virgin where Steve Carrell talks about how breasts feel like bags of sand? Every song about sex written by Jim Steinman sounds like that) but this second one just has some kind of angry sadness to it. This spoken word song starts with Steinman growling, "I remember everything" and I just want to tell him that maybe that's his problem. Also? Still no giant bat punching. F-minus.

"Everything Louder Than Everything Else"-This is my favorite Meatloaf song, hands down. When I was taking AP Calculus in high school, I used to put this song on repeat when I was taking practice tests, much to the consternation of my classmates. But this song is the perfect song to get you pumped up to spend three hours taking integrals. I'm not sure that's the effect that Jim Steinman was going for, but at this point in the album he's probably getting arraigned for beating cheerleaders to death with his guitar, and I hope they throw the book at him.

"Good Girls Go to Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere)"-Do you know how annoying your need to use parenthesis on every title to spell out everything to your audience is?(Very annoying.) This song is probably the closest in spirit to those from the first Bat album. The tone isn't angry, like many of the other songs on this album, but instead doing that bragging thing about how awesome loose women are that only shows that you've never actually been within six feet of real lady parts. At some point, Meat sings about getting erotically burned, and while I'm not going to pretend that I'm some kind of sex expert, I think one thing that the phrase "erotically burned" denotes is that you have no idea what sex is like. That this song also contains a bass solo denotes that you have no idea what good music is like, either.

"Back Into Hell"-This is a synthesizer instrumental. I'm guessing this is where the giant bat gets punched.

"Lost Boys and Golden Girls"- I would literally sell my soul for this song to be about Estelle Getty and Bea Arthur. But it's not. If the first Bat Out of Hell record was meant to capture the anticipation of sex, then maybe this one represents first consummation: long, awkward, and totally disappointing.

LISTENING PARTY: Bat Out of Hell

There's one week a year, usually in late October-mid November, that we call "Stoked for the Loaf" week at Stately Tressel Manor. It's the week where, inexplicably, I become enamored with the recorded ouvre of Marvin Lee Aday, known the world over as Meatloaf. To most youngsters, Meat is just that guy with the man boobs in Fight Club, but he also has probably the most impressive trilogy in recording history with his Bat Out Of Hell series. I know what you're saying; There aren't that many trilogies in recording history, and while it's true that nobody was clamoring for "Use Your Illusion III", we shouldn't let Axl Rose's shortcomings overshadow the 'Loaf's achievement.
Now I've resisted doing Meatloaf for several reasons. 1)I'm never really sure if Meatloaf is taking himself all that seriously, which means making jokes at his expense are really jokes at my expense. And I hate anything that makes me look bad. That kind of funnels into reason two. 2) I don't know how openly I should flaunt my love of Meatloaf. Because when I do these livebloggings, I only do them for albums that I have genuine affection for. I wouldn't pick on an album I didn't think was good somehow. So, by the very nature of doing a Meatloaf album, I'm admitting that I think Meatloaf albums are somehow good. Which is only partially true. The truth is that I think Meatloaf albums are totally awesome. 3) Since the songs are so frigging long, I worry that I might run out of things to say in the twelve minutes it takes Meat to finish singing "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." But here we go: I figure if Meat can sustain enough energy to perform two hours worth of these songs being two hundred pounds overweight, I should certainly be able write about some of them for forty-four minutes being twenty pounds overweight.

"Bat Out Of Hell"- Oh god, we're only four measures into this song and I'm already tired. I think you can pick up on Jim Steinman and Meatloaf's theatre background in the way the song opens with an overture. By the time we're forty seconds into this album we've already heard six hundred different musical ideas, all of which are about sexual braggadocio. Which is pretty funny when you consider the album was written by Jim Steinman:

And produced by Todd Rundgren:


two of the most lady-looking dudes I've ever seen. I mean, really Jim Steinman looks like he just came from wherever that place is that old ladies go to have sex with old bikers. And I mean that he's the old lady. Because he looks like an old lady. Meatloaf also had long hair at the time, but he's sensibly realized that old hair on men doesn't look that great. I guess luckily for Jim Steinman he's really an old woman.
And looking at Todd Rundgren reminds me of a story from when the band Hanson first appeared on the scene: we were all tooling on Hanson, and then our bass player said, "Yeah, but the lead singer is pretty hot," not realizing that the lead singer of Hanson was in fact a boy. I mention this because I have to admit that looking at Todd Rundgren turns me on. Because he looks like a girl.

So the point is that I can see the combination of two guys who looked like girls and a guy who looks like he ate a middle linebacker needing to prove their manliness. So they do it with the maybe the gayest sounding rock n'roll songs about men getting it on with ladies of all time.

"You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night)" I hate songs that have parenthesis in their titles. There's no place for parenthesis in rock n' roll, unless you're doing a Works Cited page. So what's the point of the parenthesis in this case? What was so important to Jim Steinman about it being a hot summer night that it needed to be added to the title? My other favorite thing about this song is Jim Steinman's spoken word introduction: because if there's anything that rock songs need less than parenthesis, it's spoken word introductions. But Steinman loves them, so he starts this song with something about werewolves, and virgins offering him shit under the full moon light, like her throat. I don't know. It grosses me out to think about it, especially because I think this is how Jim Steinman talks to girls all the time. So you couple that with the fact that he looks like Karen Black in Children of the Corn IV, you can imagine that he doesn't get a lot of ladies. Which would explain why in the songs he writes it sounds like he's never heard a woman talk before, because it's clear he never has.


"Heaven Can Wait"-This is ballad about Warren Beatty. I think. Or about not getting laid.

"All Revved Up and No Place to Go"- Wait, another song about not getting laid. This is really making me reconsider what exactly they mean by "Bat Out of Hell." For the record, I think that Meatloaf, even being overweight, got revved up but then got to go places. Sexually. The man has an animal charisma. I think he did okay with the ladies. Probably because he wasn't always approaching women with tortured metaphors about I'm a werewolf and my penis is a motorcycle.

"Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" -I love this song. I love it despite the fact that Steinman has Meat tell a girl that he's crying icicles instead of tears. I love it despite the fact that the verses seem to indicate that the girl isn't in love with our protagonist, but the chorus makes it seem that the guy is all about hooking up but doesn't want to commit. (I want you, I need you, I'm never going to love you, so two out of three ain't bad.) I love it even though in almost any endeavor except baseball , two out of three is kind of bad. It's a 66.67%, which is not enough to transfer it to a four year accredited college. (Okay, by the second go around, the chorus starts out by explaining that the girl is telling him that she's never going to love him, which makes more lyrical sense--as much lyrical sense as one can find on a Meatloaf album.)

"Paradise by the Dashboard Light"- When I was in high school, they played this song at every high school dance. There was this really beautiful girl named Santina, and she and I would command the dance floor every time the DJ threw it on. The dance basically consisted of Santina busting out some really sweet moves, while I stood about three feet away from her doing my best middle-aged Dan Ackroyd impression. You know, just swinging my arms and snapping my fingers, occasionally moving my feet. And by the end I would be exhausted.

By the Phil Razzutto part, where he makes the not even slightly obscured sexual references, I'd basically be laying on the floor, gasping for breath, while Santina strutted around my winded corpse. We performed this at every dance throughout high school, but she never wanted to go out on a date with me. Looking back now, the fact that I was as in-shape as a 55-year old Dan Ackroyd who didn't have the stamina to make it through an entire Meatloaf song might have had something to do with it. But luckily for everybody involved, I realized that, and didn't do anything crazy, like write an overblown rock opera about it and then entice my overweight friend into performing it.

"For Crying Out Loud"- I kind of forgot how short albums that originally appeared on vinyl are. Limited by the format, they usually top out at 40 minutes. So now we're almost to the end of Bat Out of Hell, and you get the sense that if only they had a full 72 minutes that compact discs offer, Steinman and Meat could really explore the depths of the guys who don't get laid phenomenon. But as they were hampered in by only forty minutes, they decide to end the album with this solo piano piece that really encapsulates, rather succinctly--oh, shit here comes the Philharmonic Orchestra. This isn't going to be over anytime soon. Well, hopefully, they will use it tastefully and subtly--oh wait, Meat just asked the girl if she can see his Levi's busting apart. And now here comes the glockenspiel. We're none of us escaping with our dignity intact with this one. I just checked the liner notes, and this song is performed by BOTH the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Because if there's one thing a song about blue balls needs, it's TWO fricking orchestras playing at the same time. And I think that might be the ultimate metaphor to describe Bat Out of Hell.

And it gets worse with the sequel.

LISTENING PARTY : Dance Naked

John Mellencamp can't get no respect. He's seriously like the Rodney Dangerfield of rock and roll. Part of it his own fault: a lot of his stuff is pretty terrible. And nobody will ever forget his decision to spend much of the 80s wearing either a vest with no shirt or his grandmother's eyeglasses. And yes, who the hell wants to live in a pink houses? But he's released a number of really pretty excellent albums that are considered, thoughtful and soulful (Big Daddy, Human Wheels, Mr. Happy Go Lucky).

I'm not going to talk about any of those albums today. I'm going to talk about Dance Naked.

"Dance Naked"- I don't think rock lyric writing gets more zen then the opening couplet of this song. "I want you to dance naked/so I can see you." It's really a simple request, really. I know that it sounds pretty misogynistic, or sexist, or really just kind of creepy, but John does tell you near the end that you can dance naked "but only if you want to." There are a great many pick-up lines that I have heard that I cannot imagine ever working, but having a rock singer from Indiana who not only has cauliflower ears but a cauliflower face say to you "I want you to dance naked, but only if you want to"? I can actually see that working.

"Brothers"-I've never had a brother, and I don't think I would like to have one. John Mellencamp's tale of two brothers who wreck each other cars, get each other beat up, and don't approve of anything the other one does, well, it isn't doing too much to make me rethink my position. Especially, because with my luck, my brother would become a high-selling but critical ignored or underestimated singer-songwriter who would write songs about how much he can't stand me. Luckily I have sisters who are far more attractive and successful than me, with doctorates in biomedical engineering. I dodged a bullet there.

"When Margaret Comes to Town"- I love songs with girls' names in them. Especially when the name in the title is part of a statement, or a question, or just a dependent clause. "When Margaret Comes to Town." "Meet Virginia." "Amy Hit the Atmosphere." "Debbie Does Dallas." I can't remember who that last one is by. This song has a pretty cool little breakdown section right before the guitar solo. T

This album's history, from what I can remember from an issue of Entertainment Weekly I read 15 years ago, was that after the commercially disappointing "Human Wheels" album, Mellencamp decided to record an album really quickly (like two weeks-quickly, although that seems like a long time to me) and a side effect of this is that only three of the songs have a bass guitar on them! So it's two guitars and drums and that's it. Where was his bass player? On vacation? How badly did John Mellencamp want this album done? Bass player: 'I'll be fishing until the 12th, but I'm available after that.' Mellencamp: 'Screw you. I'm getting this album done in 3 hours or I'm not doing it.'

"Wild Night"-This is the one you know, the cover of the Van Morrison song that you probably don't know. It's also the first one to feature a bass guitar, played by the then unknown Me'Shell Ndegeocello, who sings duet. This is the only song that songs really fleshed out and produced, which might have something to do with the fact that somebody else wrote it in 1971. That would be like dressing a 24-year old up as a baby and talking about how well behaved it is. Clearly cheating.

"L.U.V."- I started writing songs by myself the summer this album came out, and I used this song as the template for most of them. To whit: verses filled with nonsense rhymes semi-rapped like Dylan in Subterranean Homesick Blues, with a rather catchy chorus. There's a great moment, however, right after the solo section where Mellencamp sings a capella "Wait a minute, let me check my tan/ Am I the same color as Superman?" My guess is probably, since Superman grew up in Kansas, which is right near Indiana. You guys were practically neighbors. Also, because of his Kryptonian ability to absorb the yellow sun, I'm going to guess he can't tan.

"Another Sunny Day"- This is the ballad on the record. I think it's about the environment. Actually, the more I listen to it, it seems like John's complaining about people complaining about the state of the environment. I always thought he was a bit more progressive, because, frankly Mr. Cougar Mellencamp, even back in 1994 the planet was going to hell. I wonder if he still sings this song after watching "An Inconvenient Truth"? Probably not, as it's kind of sucky no matter what the lyrics say. Listen, Mr. Mellencamp, I know that you're going to die soon, but I'm hopefully not going to, so I might have to worry about where I live being underwater when I'm older. I'm sorry if that's bumming you out. But it wasn't like "Rain on the Scarecrow" was exactly a real upbeat number.

"Too Much to Think About"- We're back to rocking out, without the bass again, and I think this is the album that made me really appreciate what a good bass player could bring to a song. Or even a really terrible bass player. Namely: bass.

This title of this song may refer to any number of different things. One thing it certainly does not refer to? This album.

"The Big Jack"- I've been ragging on this album and it certainly deserves a lot of it, but frankly, I own it and know it well because when I was 15, I kind of liked it. Hell, I still kind of like it, in the same way that I like Count Chocula--I like it but at least now I'm aware that it's not any good. And I like it anyway. One thing that makes the album really likable? It is about 30 minutes long. I think kids today would feel ripped off, especially since CDs can hold more than twice that, but for me, there's something comforting about putting this CD on and knowing that it will be over faster than an episode of "Herman's Head."

"The Break-Out"- This album is what used to be called an EP, which was like a single but longer. EP stood for Extended Play, and full-length albums used by called long players, as though long and extended were different measurements on the same scale. Like there's hot and cold? This is like hot and warmer. Warmer than what? Hot? Cold? Isn't extended relative to what it's been extended from?

In case you haven't figured it out, "The Break-Out" has nothing discernible interesting going on in it. It's a pretty standard plate rock song, the kind you'd throw on the end of the EP you were recording in two weeks while your bass player is on vacation as a stop-gap measure between two excellent critically acclaimed but commercially disappointing albums. This disc probably sold more than all of his really great albums combined, which is too bad, because if this were my first exposure to John Mellencamp, I'd spend the whole album messing with the EQ on my stereo trying to figure out why every song was so trebly and then Me'Shell Ndegeocello would start playing the bass line to "Wild Night" and blow out my speakers and I'd throw this album in the trash.

LISTENING PARTY: Voodoo Lounge

I'm doomed, doomed I say, to associate certain albums with certain periods of my life, to the point that I listen to albums that I know instinctively that I should no longer enjoy. Each summer for the past six years, I've been working/teaching at the summer program I attended when I was 14, and when I bought the Rolling Stones "Voodoo Lounge" album. And so every summer, when the program rolls around, I find myself digging out this album and listening to it, instead of say, "Exile on Main Street" or "Sticky Fingers" or even something by Mozart. I can't help it, you see. It's out of my control.

Maybe surprisingly to people, I've always been a bigger Stones fan than a Beatles fan. A large part of this has to do with my father's influence: I don't even think he ever owned a Beatles record, which seems to be some kind of mean feat for someone who was a teenager when "Revolver" came out. I think a part of it that there has always been more of a cohesion to the Stones as a group, in that they all seem to be part of a band, instead of four (well, let's be honest, three) talented musicians and songwriters who played together. I think if you played a space alien "Here Comes the Sun" and "Rocky Raccoon" and then followed it up with "I Am the Walrus" they would have any idea that they were by the same band. Play a space alien "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and then follow it with "Sweet NeoCon" from the Stones' most recent album, that alien will most likely be able to tell that they are by the same group of people. That alien will then kill you and declare war on the entire human race. Because that's how bad "Sweet Little NeoCon" is.

"Love is Strong"-My father bought me a remaindered copy of Bill Wyman's autobiography the spring of 1994, and so I was hyper-aware that the Stones were going to be playing with a new bass-player. So I paid extra-close attention to the bass playing on this opening track, which turned out to be a blessing, because it made me not notice Mick Jagger's awful harmonica playing. Let me take that back. His harmonica playing isn't awful in that he is playing the harmonica poorly. Even if you play the harmonica perfectly, like a virtuoso, it will be awful. Because the harmonica is one of the worst instruments in the history of the world. I guess the fact that it's small made it a popular instrument, as opposed to the contra-bassoon, but I think I'd rather listen to a contra-bassoon solo on a song.

"You Got Me Rocking" I wonder, sometimes, how bands like the Stones keep writing new songs. Their lyric conceits tend not to be the most clever in the world, and most of their songs tend to focus on "I'm a man, you're a woman, and either a) I'm really into you in a sexual way or b) you broke my heart and now I'm going sing about it" and I wonder how they keep coming up with different ways to say that same thing over and over again. "You Got Me Rocking"? I bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that sometime in the late 70s early 80s there was a bunch of high school/college kids who formed a really terrible band, and one of the guys in the band wrote a song called "You Got Me Rocking" and they might have even played it in a bar a few times. That guy is now an orthodontist.

"Sparks Will Fly"- I remember in the pre-release to this album there was a lot of press about Mick Jagger was using the f word on several songs. I remember a pretty irate letter to Entertainment Weekly complaining about this, before the album came out, that it showed that Jagger was leaving behind his true fans to court a younger, hipper audiences. Because if there is one thing that the kids really love it's listening to 64 year old men sing about how they want to "f*** your sweet ass." Especially if that 64 year old man looks like their grandmother and is wearing a red silk shirt unbuttoned to his navel.

"The Worst"- Johnny Depp made it cool to be Keith Richards, but even before that, Keith Richards made it cool to be Keith Richards. In many respects, I like his voice more than I like Jagger's, maybe because Jagger always sounds like he is the consummate actor, taking on a role, a role of being a 64-year old man who wants to f*** your sweet ass, and Keith Richards just sounds like he's being honest and singing from his heart. This song he tells you that he is the worst kind of guy to be around, and as cool and inscrutable as he seems in interviews, I'm going to guess based on the sheer amount of heroin and whiskey he has consumed that yes, he is the worst kind of guy to be around. This is a really nice song, though.

"New Faces"-I don't really know the division of labor as far as songwriting goes in the Jagger/Richards partnership, but I think that some songs are mostly written by Keith and finished up by Jagger, some are mostly written by Jagger and finished up by Richards and then they each write songs entirely separate from each other. And every couple of albums I think Mick comes up with the idea to write a song that has a harpsichord in it. Because even though Jagger has more money than he knows what to do with, he didn't get that way by wasting his money. And you know that some night back in the early 70s, he got juiced out of his mind and bought himself a grand harpsichord. And to justify its purchase he hauls it into the studio every five years and makes the other guys play on his harpsichord song. He's not going to let his money go to waste.

"Moon is Up"- This song is awesome. I think I read that they recorded the drums at the bottom of stairwell, far away from the band. I think this might be because nobody in the band really likes Charlie Watts, because he shows up to play the drums dressed like he's actually come to do their taxes. (And we know how the Stones feel about paying taxes.) So they stuck him in the basement and told the engineers to find a way to record his drums from down there. It makes for a really cool drum sound, and the song is really pretty fun, and there's a moment where you can hear Keith laugh as they're starting it, and I love moments like that, where you hear someone count off, or somebody snicker or cough or laugh. Because then I know it wasn't made by robots. Well, except Charlie Watts. He's kind of a robot. But remember, we stuck him down in the basement.

"Out of Tears"-You know that orthodontist who wrote a song called "You Got Me Rocking" for his lame garage band? Well, his cousin was in a band, and one of those guys wrote a song called "Out of Tears" Jesus, how did we make it through thousands of years of popular music without having a major song called "Out of Tears"? Truth be told, this song isn't so bad. But it is sounds exactly like you think a song called "Out of Tears" would sound. There's a great slide solo by Ron Wood in the song, and damned if I don't always forget that he's actually in the band. When I was a kid, I used to see him and think he was Rod Stewart back when Rod Stewart had darker hair. And, yeah, I know they were in the Small Faces together, and I saw that Unplugged they did together, but I'm still not totally convinced.

"I Go Wild"- This song was actually really fun when I saw them play it live. Jesse and I got snuck into Foxborough Stadium (and were then thrown out, and then were snuck back in) to see the Stones that same summer, and I remember thinking then that this song didn't sound so terrible when played beside their classic tunes. I still marvel at how Mick Jagger can basically write the same song over and over again and never sound that sick of it. How did he spice this one up? He threw the C-word into it. I know that that isn't such a huge crime in England, but man, could you imagine that guy who wrote the letter to EW about him using the F-word? He probably had a heart attack when he heard this song. But you know what? That's what the kids are into these days. The C-word. They totally dig it.

"Brand New Car"- That orthodontist is kicking himself that he never sent those demo tapes into the US Copyright office.

"Sweethearts Together"- This is one of those songs that was written about a man and a woman, but is really about Mick and Keith. You can even picture them singing together on the same microphone together, working out the harmonies together. Well, really, probably their lawyers each worked out what the harmonies were going to be. Edward G. Perlman, Esq: "We will stipulate that Mr. Richards will sing a perfect fourth above Mr. Jaggers." Hugh L. Pressman, Esq: "So stipulated. Conditioned on Mr. Richards being allowed to sing in unison with Mr. Jagger when the melody returns to the tonic in the chorus." (Pause) Perlman:"I'll take it to my client."

"Suck on the Jugular"- I'm going to just skip over this one. The Stones literally have a closet filled with tapes of Keith Richards guitar-licks with generic titles on them, like "Start Me Up" "Satisfaction" "Suck on the Jugular" and when they record an album, they go to this cubbard and pull a tape out, and Jagger just free associates over the riff. I mean, how else can you account for the guy who wrote "Gimme Shelter" singing "Been keeping cool, been lying low,been dancing smooth, been dancing slow" ? He spent less than seven seconds on that.

"Blinded by Rainbows"-Remember how like, five seconds ago, I was asking how Jagger could keep writing the same song about "I'm a man and you're a woman" over and over again. Well, I take it all back. Because when he tries to branch out, all hell breaks loose. What the crap is this song about? It talks about explosions and limbs being blown off, and talks a lot about Jesus, but man alive, what does it mean to be blinded by rainbows? Has Jagger ever seen a rainbow? They're fainter than hell. I mean, seriously, I've been out places after it's been raining, and I'll see a rainbow, and I'll point it out to someone, and you should watch them squint their eyes to try and see it. Can you get blinded that way, by trying to look at something too hard? I have to admit I'm not really sure. I remember really liking this song when I was 14, and musically, it's pretty good. And the vocal melody is really nice, too. So nowadays when I listen to it, I just pretend that Mick is singing in Italian or Portuguese, or something. Then I can enjoy it fully.

"Baby Break it Down"- There are some songs I listen to I'm convinced the singer is getting paid for each time he sings the title. If this song were one of those deals, and Mick Jagger wasn't already a millionaire, he would be by the time four minutes and seven seconds it takes him to sing this song was over. Dear god. He sings it an average of once every 7.27 seconds. If this were a drinking game you'd have killed yourself by the time the song was over.

"Thru and Thru"- The second Keith song, and I think that it got some play a few years ago on the Sopranos. It's a great song, and it has a great vocal performance. I also like how it takes several minutes of just Keith and guitar before it really gets going, which surprises the hell out of you when the song really starts to get moving. I'm just going to listen to it, if you don't mind.

Oh, wait, I forgot, Keith drops the f-bomb into this song as well. Because he says that he has the f-in blues, and then that he has the awesome blues, and I'm not really sure what that means. But if Keith Richards says it, it must be kind of awesome. Or kind of f***ed. Or both.

"Mean Disposition"- I wonder how groups sequence their albums, because Thru and Thru is as close to a tour de force as latter-era Stones gets, and the decision to not only follow it up with a song as mediocre as "Mean Disposition" but also end the album with it? I have no words. This song has been on every single Stones album in one form or another since Goat's Head Soup. It was even on their weird psychedelic album with the lenticular cover. Mick says 'yeah' at the beginning of the song, and despite what I said earlier about those kind of exclamations, I HATE this one. It's like Mick is making fun of us for still listening to this crap. It sounds so fake and forced, like when you see some lame band at a bar late at night and the singer says yeah when the guitar player does a blues lick but screws it up, and the singer is standing stockstill just nodding his head to the music. 'Yeah.' We know you're not excited, dude. We know you're up past your bed time. Go back to your orthodontics practice. Leave the rocking to the professionals.