LISTENING PARTY: This Fire

Two embarrassing confessions, one after another
On Januray 20, 1998, I sat down with my friends Kristen, Jessica and Dan to watch the premiere of “Dawson’s Creek” a new teen drama on the fledgling WB network. Dan and I worked at Blockbuster at the time, and one of the downsides of the job was that while we were supposed to watch something called a screener, which was a two hour long video tape of ads that ran on a loop. A lot of time they were ads for movies that were coming out on video tape, but some promotional consideration was paid for to air ads for things that you couldn’t find in a Blockbuster Video. Like the premiere of “Dawson’s Creek”. One 2-hour screener probably had the Dawson’s Creek ad six times, and during an 8-hour shift you would watch the screener 4 times, meaning on the days when we didn’t defy corporate orders and put in a movie instead of the screener (which wasn’t as often as it would be a few weeks later when I was promoted to assistant manager) I would see the Dawson’s Creek ad 24 times a day, 5 days a week. And it became kind of a joke between me and Dan, about how many times we saw the Dawson’s Creek ad, that we would have to watch the premiere. We HAD TO.

We did watch about the first twelve minutes of the premiere and then we all just started doing other things. The show didn’t really captivate us. It never was supposed to. I was not exactly its target audience, and while I don’t think Dan really cared, I was secretly disappointed. Which is directly tied to my second embarrassing confession: the reason I was so pumped for Dawson’s Creek had to do with its theme music, “I Don’t Want to Wait” by Paula Cole. Because one year earlier, I had purchased Cole’s second album, and fell deeply in love with it. That’s my second embarrassing confession: I love “This Fire”

It’s like how some people have weird attractions to girls with hair on their face, or dudes with lazy eyes. There’s no way to really explain away it; if you’re being honest, you dig bearded ladies or lazy-eyed dudes because you’re just a sick freak. And that’s the best way I can describe my love for Paula Cole’s “This Fire”. I’m a sick freak.

This isn’t like my love of Meatloaf, or Rush’s early 90s work, where I can love it actually, but also from a safe, ironic appreciation of how cheesy it is. “This Fire” does not allow me that. I can’t claim to love it because it’s cheesy. It’s so overly earnest it would turn cheese right into skim milk.

I had seen Paula Cole perform with Peter Gabriel a few years before, and when I stumbled upon her record at my local Strawberries, and with disposable income for the first time in my life, I bought it, without even having heard a single song from it. (Can you imagine a time before hearing ‘Where Have All The Cowboys Gone’ or ‘I Don’t Want to Wait’?)

And I listened to it. And I loved it. And I’ve been ashamed ever since. This is my Paula Cole cry for help. Somebody start calling around to set up the intervention.


“Tigers”- One way to know that you’re about to listen to an overly-earnest album. It starts with a cappella singing. Oh God, sitting here listening to the lyrics to this song closely is about as painful as reading some girl’s high school journal. She just said something about sex-starved teachers staring at her ass, and then followed it up by ‘Goodbye lions, tigers, and bears.” So this song is about a loss of innocence, perhaps? God, at least when Alanis Morrissette awkwardly revealed her sexual history with a gross old man, it was Dave Coulier. Unless Paula Cole’s professor was Mr. Feeney from Boy Meets World, I just can’t get behind this. The song ends with backwards singing, which sounds like Paula is sucking all the words she just sang back into her throat. If only I could do that with all the vomit I spewed during this song.

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?- You’ve heard this song. Don’t pretend you haven’t. Unless you were born three days ago and haven’t discovered what a radio is yet. I feel like the 90s was the only era of music where there were this many songs with spoken word verses. I would also like to point out to Miss Cole, that cowboys in general did not enjoy the most stellar reputation for how they treated their ladies. Besides, I thought all cowboys were into other cowboys. Where have all the cowboys gone, Paula? Up to Brokeback Mountain. You’re going to be waiting a long time.

Throwing Stones- I should point out that Paula Cole picked out a really killer band. Jay Bellerose has become this generation’s Jim Keltner--the session drummer who plays drums on every cool singer-songwriter album recorded in the last decade. If you own a record produced by Joe Henry or T-Bone Burnett, Bellerose is the drummer. The guy is amazing. The record sounds great. It’s very well produced, and I believe that Cole got a Grammy nomination in 1997 for producing this record. What she did not get a Grammy nomination for? Non-pretentious lyrics. Because this record does not really have any of those.


Carmen- This song is a really beautiful song. It’s really sparse, it sounds like it’s only a single guitar and maybe a bass, and then the whole rest of the song is in the drums. I’m not usually a drum guy, but this record has some of the best drum playing of any record I’ve ever heard. I don’t know who Carmen is, but I do know that he eats acid. I’m not usually a drug guy, but I thought you dropped acid. Like isn’t that the terminology? Or are people eating acid now? That just sounds dangerous.


Mississippi- This song features a didgeridoo. And mentions that Cole likes it from behind. That combination must make it unique in pop music, right?

Nietzsche’s Eyes- In case you hadn’t figured out that Paula Cole went to college, she has a song named Nietzsche’s Eyes. She might have well just included a Photostat of her BA in the album’s liner notes.

Road to Dead- Many of these songs have a certain musical kinship to the work Peter Gabriel was producing at this time. Weird bubbling keyboards. Guitars used more as textual effects than harmonically. Great, atypical drumming. I thought I’d bring that up. Like I said, lots of this record sounds really really good. What doesn’t sound so good is writing lyrics that make it sound like you think Dead is a place. I mean, you could walk on a road to Death, I suppose. You could walk on the road to the Dead. But a road to dead? That just sounds like you didn’t learn proper grammar. And as we learned the last song, we know Cole went to college, so what gives.

Me- As I usually do before I start one of these, I went to youtube and searched for Paula Cole songs, and found about 14,000 videos of women singing this song into their computer cameras. I suppose it is a really empowering song. You know what’s an even more empowering song for ladies to sing in the privacy of their bedrooms into their webcams? “Sussudio.”

Feelin’ Love- Do we really need a song about sex at this point? We already know that you like it from behind while someone plays a didgeridoo. What else do we need to know? That you can come up with five and a half minutes worth of strained sexual metaphors? Got it. This guys makes you feel like a sticky pistil leading into a stamen. Those all sound like sexy words, but I don’t know. If my wife were to say that to me, I’d probably hide her copy of Planet Earth from her for a while. Near the end, Paula Cole tells us that she is both Barry White and Isis, and I couldn’t help but think of a team-up between the late soul-singer and the 70s super heroine. What adventures they’d have had.



Hush hush hush- This sound features Peter Gabriel and a very determined clarinet. Thinking back upon it, I wonder if I heard that Peter Gabriel appeared on this record, and that’s why I bought it. But he sings about 8 bars in this song. How do you think something like that works? Paula Cole sings back-up on PG’s 1993-4 world tour, goes into the studio, and invites him in? Did she write those lines in the song with him in mind, or did she find the best two lines on the whole album for him to sing on? I’d be a little intimidated, if I felt Peter Gabriel owed me a favor, asking him to sing just two lines on one song on my album. How did she know that these two lines were the best ones for him to sing? What if your next album you come up with something even better for Peter Gabriel to sing, but oops, you’ve already used up your shot. I couldn’t take that level of pressure. But I’d probably never be asked to sing the Kate Bush part on “Don’t Give Up” either, so I doubt it’ll ever come up.

I Don’t Want to Wait- There are about 7 billion people on the planet. It’s a huge figure, one almost beyond human comprehension. If you want to realize how big the number 7 billion is, just think about how many times you’ve heard this song. Because you’ve probably heard it at least 7 billion times. Now imagine that every time you heard it, a new person was born. And now you’re starting to get a handle on our burgeoning overpopulation problem.

But honestly, what did you think of this song before you’d heard it billions of times? It’s hard to remember, but I remember thinking the song was pretty pisser. I thought this whole album was pretty pisser.

And now comes the shocking third embarrassing confession: I still love this record.

I wrote this months ago and have had it saved on my computer under an innocuous title so that it wouldn’t arose my wife’s suspicion. Several nights since I’ve had nightmares where federal agents seize my computer, having gotten word that I was involved with “some unsavory Paula Cole stuff.” I wake up in cold sweats. But I felt like it was time for me to be honest with all of you. I have a problem.

There aren’t really any programs for people like me, who love, irrationally, music that even Sarah McLachlan finds too preachy and feminist. I also have been having nightmares about Aborigine porn.

LISTENING PARTY : Speaking in Tongues

I knew about David Byrne’s big suit before I had heard his music. My dad had the cassette tape of “Stop Making Sense” in his car, and I would see its cover amongst my father’s other cassettes. “Bat Out of Hell” had a guy on a flaming motorcycle, like Ghost Rider. “Led Zeppelin I” had a flaming dirigible. Talking Heads just had a guy in a suit. And you couldn’t even see his face. I wouldn’t know what David Byrne looked like until I bought his solo record “Uh-Oh” in 1992. I just saw the suit. And like a lot of things that you see out of context when you’re a kid, I didn’t really think that there was anything weird about the Big Suit. It’s probably why all the suits I made my mom buy me for all my middle school and high school semi-formals were always several sizes too big. It was my upbringing you see.

I didn’t really listen to Talking Heads until my dad got their final album “Naked” in the then nascent CD format. It was the first CD we owned. I loved it, and went back and dug out “Stop Making Sense” their famous live album. Most of the songs on the cassette version (which contained 8 songs, as opposed to the remastered version, which has 406) came from their “Speaking in Tongues” record. In a lot of ways, it’s my least favorite of their records, but truthfully, it’s probably their truest. Their first record they are still developing, and the songwriting isn’t so strong. Their next three albums were collaborations with Brian Eno. Their post-Stop Making Sense records were either David Byrne solo records in all but name (Little Creatures, True Stories) or the sound of a band falling apart (Naked). Speaking in Tongues is the album that sits more or less in the middle of their ouvre and was the first one they wrote and produced together. It’s also a weird album. Even for them.

“Burning Down the House”- I think that ‘Psycho Killer’ or ‘Once in a Lifetime’ will probably be their legacy song, but this song was their biggest hit. I’ve read that it was payola, that Sire records paid radio stations to play the song, but it is catchy. Even if it contains the most nonsensical lyrics every written. Trying to analyze these lyrics is like recovering from a stroke: you recognize all the sounds the words make, but it still sounds like Dutch.


“Making Flippy Floppy” first of all, if making flippy floppy means what I think it does, it’s no wonder I was terrified of sex growing up. Byrne spends the whole song giving directions: “lie on your back, put your feet in the air, bring me a doctor, I have a hole in my head.” It’s like if David Lynch wrote a ‘Dear Penthouse’ letter. The instrumental section sounds like a sea lion have sex with a power drill. I remember listening to this song in my dark bedroom when I was 13 and swearing swearing swearing that I would becoming a monk and never think about girls again.

“Girlfriend is Better”- This is a sad true story. When I was a freshmen in high school, I used to sing the refrain to this song (“I’ve got a girlfriend that is better than that”) out by my locker so that girls would either think I had a girlfriend or ask me if I had a girlfriend. This was my plan for getting a girlfriend. It didn’t work. I don’t know exactly my thought process was--maybe that if enough girls associated me with the word girlfriend one of them would want to become mine. Only one girl--Jill Pittsley--even noticed. She said something like, “Wait. Do you have a girlfriend?” And I was like, “No.” And then she walked away.

“Slippery People”- As I mentioned, I heard the live version of most of these songs well before I heard their studio counterparts, so I always think that my ipod is dying when I hear this song. It’s soooooo mucccchhhhh slllloooowwwweerrrr than the live version. Which makes it creepier. Because it’s about people. People who are slippery. Why are they slippery? Have they been making flippy floppy with each other? Do you have to get slippery to make flippy floppy. I swear swear swear I’ll become a monk and I’ll never think about girls again. Please don’t make me get slippery.

“I Get Wild/ Wild Gravity” -I think I’ve spoken before about my distrust about songs with parenthesis, but I’m ever more dubious of songs with slashes. Am I supposed to circle which one I think the title should be? Is this a test? I think it should be… Wild Gravity. That seems more like a Talking Heads song title. I Get Wild sounds like something by Morris Day and the Time. Or something that someone who has never gotten wild says to impress some college guys, or like what a narc says to try and convince somebody to sell him drugs. Wild Gravity sounds like something that happens while you’re making flippy floppy. Do you see a pattern forming?

“Swamp”- While the groove starts, the vocal microphone picks up Byrne mumbling. Maybe he’s calling somebody from the studio, telling them a dirty joke or something, or telling them about the last time he got wild. The band lets him do this for about half a minute, and then he realizes what’s happening and starts singing the song. I don’t know why it’s called “Swamp” (well, yes, I do. I listened to the commentary on the Stop Making Sense DVD.) It was called “Addiction” and then they remixed in an attempt to make it more swampy. Nowadays, that’s just an effect in protools. You just click a button. But back then, the only way to make something more swampy was to douse it with a special chemical, light it on fire and toss it into a swamp. At least that’s how it worked for Alec Holland.

I like the idea that you just name your song based on how you want it to sound. “Give it more reverb. We’ll call this song, ‘Reverb’.” If this were the way bands named songs, then every Boston song would be called ‘Better’.

“Pull Up The Roots”- David Byrne has told us how to have sex on side A, so now that we’re on side B, he’s giving us gardening tips. Songs that were recorded for this album but not included were: “Rotate Your Crops”, “Stain Your Deck”, and “Plunge the Drain”.

“Moon Rocks”- David Byrne starts off this song by claiming that he can do flying saucers. I’m not really sure how one does flying saucers. He then tells us that because of protons and neutrons he ate some moon rocks. Also that he has some of those rocks in his boots. Maybe this is a song about an astronaut. Because who else would have moon rocks in his boots? Unless moon rocks is 1983 slang for some kind of drug. Like, “Oh, man, I got wild last night with some moon rocks in my boots.” Actually, that really does sound like an outdated drug reference. “I are a rock on the moon.” God, I hope that’s a drug reference, because I’d hate if we were meant to interpret this literally. Imagine what eating moon rocks would do to your teeth. Also, wouldn’t you have to take your helmet off to eat the moon rock? Or are you eating the moon rock back in the space ship? Didn’t NASA send you up with any of that space ice cream? Do moon rocks go good with Tang? Damn, these lyrics are deep.

“This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” - Finally, some parenthesis. This is a really beautiful song. At least I thought so. I was asked to DJ a dance when I was in 8th grade, and I played this song, expecting it to be a good song to slow dance to. It’s a little too fast for a slow song. Also, it sounds a little bit like the music from “legend of Zelda”. And while I was the kind of 13-year old who thought lines like “We drift in and out. Sing into my mouth” were romantic gold, I was also the kind of 13-year old who thought singing about how my imaginary girlfriend was better than that would somehow nab me a real girlfriend. Needless to say, the dance floor cleared, and shortly thereafter somebody commandeered the stereo system and put on a BoyzIIMen tape.


David Byrne taught me a lot about romance. He taught me that suit jackets should always be several sizes too big with giant shoulder pads. He taught me that sex involved lying on my back with my feet in the air until I got slippery. And that “hit me on the head and I go who-oo-ooo” was a tender romantic pick-up line.
It’s a miracle that I’m not a celibate, sexless freak.

LISTENING PARTY: Frank

As I’ve mentioned before, the summer and fall of 1992 was the beginning of my love affair with popular music, and as such, I spent much of that time meticulously going through and listening to all of my father’s records and CDs in an attempt to discover what kind of music I was going to like. In December, I made it to the sole Squeeze CD he had in his collection: Frank. I don’t know what exactly prompted me to pick up this CD, but if I had to guess, its turtle-based artwork might have been the big draw.

I listened to it before we went to his officemate’s Christmas party. I didn’t really know many people there, and spent most of the time either sitting in an easy chair, or studying the breakfast cereal in their pantry, thinking about menstruation.

Because the cornerstone song, for me, on this album is about menstruation.

So if there were to be some kind of word association game, it would go like this.

Christmas--Roly Blanchette’s house--Captain Crunch Peanut Butter Crunch cereal--turtles--menstruation.

God Bless Difford and Tilbrook!

"Frank"- This album starts off with a 15 second intro in which the keyboardist refers to the drummer as Fatty, and as a result, the drummer refuses to count off the song until he apologizes. This might be my favorite opening track of all time.


"If It’s Love"- Squeeze is probably best known for their song ‘Tempted’ and that’s a good song, but I think that ‘If It’s Love’ is the quintessential Squeeze song. It’s catchy as all hell, is full of weird British vernacular, and utilizes some of the most bizarre metaphors. Something about how love makes your teeth green. Or that it makes you like an egg in the teeth of a shark. I don’t know if that’s a thing that’s happened. I haven’t watched much Shark Week, but I feel like sharks ate lots of eggs, I’d have heard about it by now. Regardless, I’ll have this song stuck in my head for the rest of the Obama presidency.

"Peyton Place"- This song is another catchy one. Here’s a spoiler alert: all of these songs are catchy ones. It’s what Squeeze does. Glenn Tilbrook writes catchy tunes, and Chris Difford writes lyrics to go along with them that are reference 1950s novels about deceit and hidden decay in suburban America. I know that doesn’t sound like a winning formula, but I don’t know what else to tell you: it is. You are wrong. Think about the catchiest song you can imagine. Now imagine if the lyrics were based on ‘Revolutionary Road’. It’s like a 1000 times better now. Also, I’ve never said this before in my life but: this piano solo is so amazing I never want it to end. It’s over, but I’m still thinking about it.

"Rose I Said"- Usually a band might put two catchy songs at the beginning of the album, then stick in a ballad, or maybe a less melodic bluesy number or something. Not Squeeze. First of all, they’re so confident, they don’t even open their album with a catchy song. They open by making fun of how fat their drummer is (or how much of a jerk their pianist is) and then throw three catchy songs right in a row. Probably that’s because they don’t know how to not write catchy song. Squeeze has had like 4000 different bassists, but the one that seemed to last the longest (from their middle period) Keith Wilkinson, is probably the most interesting. His bass parts are always melodic, realizing that having a more straight bass part might make the songs easier to listen to, but Squeeze is almost performing an experiment to see how much melody one song can contain before it explodes.




"Slaughtered, Gutted and Heartbroken"- Some of my favorite moments on Squeeze records is when they let Chris Difford take lead vocal. He’s got a deep, relatively unattractive voice, but maybe because he writes all these lyrics, or maybe because he sounds a little bit like Droopy Dog, he really sells the comical despair of this song. I kind of love the line “like a bad coat I need shaking” like enough that I would marry it if I wasn’t already married, and song lyrics were marriable. Unlike the piano solo in Peyton Place, the guitar solo could disappear and I’d never mention it again. Back to the lyrics: there’s something brilliant about spending the whole song talking about how much you’ve screwed up your life and your marriage, but then having the chorus be “Things could be worse” In the outro he just keeps repeating that he’s a stitch short of a tapestry, which is similarly brilliant. Everything about Chris Difford is brilliant, and screw you if you disagree.

"This Could Be The Last Time"- This song has the distinction of being the song before the song about menstruation. It’s catchy, and kind of forgettable. Man, Keith Wilkinson must have gotten paid by the note for this bass line. It’s really busy, and there’s something that sounds like synthesized background vocals which is probably the only touch to remind you that this album was made in the 80s. It otherwise has a pretty timeless quality. Here comes the song about menstruation.



"She’s Doesn’t Have to Shave"- So, you’ve guessed it. This song is about how women get their periods, and how it makes them really emotional volatile. I know that Difford is trying to be supportive, offering to do the dishes for her, and ruminating that women are lucky they don’t have to shave, and men are lucky they are not doubled up in pain. Both of those things are true, but I hope he’s not trying to say their comparable. As a man who has had a full beard for most of his adult life, I can admit here: mainly it’s because I hate shaving. But shaving isn’t something I dread or despise. It’s just kind of annoying. And the razor blades cartridges are expensive. I certainly wouldn’t compare it to all the shit women go through when they get their periods. It’s kind of shame, because this is literally the catchiest song on the album which therefore makes it the catchiest song in the history of recorded music. And it’s kind of embarrassing to think about for too long, and especially to sing along to.
Embarrassingly, later that year, I was in my 8th grade biology class when our teacher graphically described menstruation and I passed out in front of everybody. I would’ve thought that this song had prepared me, but it let me down.

"Love Circles"- Difford’s back on lead vocals. He’s not quite as well suited to this one, but it’s still a terrific song. It’s catchy as all---yeah, all right, you’ve got it. These songs are all catchy. “Love circles up above and waits until you break down and weep, and then it’s out of your reach.” That’s really heartbreaking, and probably true. This song is all about being alone--there’s a great line about cutting yourself some cake “but just one slice” before going to bed. I like that because it highlights that the narrator is all alone, but also because I’m impressed that anybody can eat just one slice of cake. If there was a whole cake in my house and I lived alone, there wouldn’t be any cutting of any slices. I would just try and eat the whole thing, eating it like a watermelon. Thank god there isn’t any cake here right now, and that I have a wife that would ask me where a whole cake went. The guitar solo is naff in this song. For the longest time, what I thought was the guitar solo was really the bass line going on while the atonal guitar solo was going on. I don’t know what Glenn Tilbrook was thinking. Maybe he had a whole cake in the recording booth and that’s the sound his guitar was making while he stuffing his face.


"Melody Motel"- I don’t really have much to say about this song. It’s catchy, clearly. It’s kind of honky-tonkish. But that’s it. I just really want some cake right now. Damn you Squeeze!

"Can of Worms"-This song is catchy, but that’s almost offset by a really bad woodblock part. That’s right. The woodblock part is so bad that I actually notice that there even is a woodblock. I’d hate to think that somebody recorded the woodblock part separately, headphones on in the recording booth, just bopping his head, every third beat, hitting the woodblock. Whoever it was should be ashamed of himself. Was it the producer? Did they let Chris Difford do it since Glenn Tilbrook tends to play most of the guitar parts himself? Was it somebody’s girlfriend? We’ll never know. But I will never rest until I found them. And make them pay.

"Dr. Jazz"- The keyboardist of Squeeze is named Jools Holland, and for the past twenty years or so, he’s been a talk show host on the BBC. He left Squeeze shortly after this album (he wasn’t included in the band photos that went along with this record with the note, ’Jools was on holiday’) and this is his lead vocal track. He also wrote the song, and it’s decent. It’s also pretty catchy, although probably the least catchy song on the album--which means it would be the catchiest song on any other album you can think of. This is probably the best line-up Squeeze ever had, and this is probably their best album because of it. It’s also impossible to find (it might be on itunes, but it’s been deleted from A&M for twenty years) and I’m really glad it was one of the 16 free Cds my dad picked when he joined the BMG music club in 1988, because I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if I hadn’t heard it. Like for example, if I hadn’t heard their menstruation song, who knows what would’ve happened when I was in 8th grade? Maybe I would’ve gone into a coma.

"Is It Too Late?"- Never, Squeeze. Never.

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: The Wall

I don't know what it is about the early winter months that makes me nostalgic for overblown, bombastic, and pretentious rock albums. I figured I'd take a break from all that and listen to one of the least overblown, bombastic, and pretentious rock albums of all time. Pink Floyd's The Wall.

I have to admit that I had no idea who Pink Floyd was in the early days of December 1992, when my friend and bandmate Jesse let me borrow his copy of the wall, taped off of his father's vinyl. I subsequently dubbed a copy of that tape, which meant that for the first four years of listening to this album, it was on a twice-dubbed cassette copy of a 12-year old vinyl record. Meaning that, while 13-year Ryan listened to this album for the first time with the lights off in his bedroom, freaked out by all the strange noises and weird screaming that accompanied this album--due to the poor quality of the tape he had, there was still so much strange noise and weird screaming he couldn't hear.

"In the Flesh?"-So, if you're making an overly pretentious and overblown concept album, the first thing you need to do is record a piece of spoken dialogue and then split it in half and play the second half at the start of the record and the first half at the end, so that it creates a loop. I think Britney Spears did this same trick on "Oops, I Did It Again"

I have since read many books on Pink Floyd, a band that I have been fascinated with since that fateful December night 17 years ago when I first heard singer/composer Roger Waters barking out orders to the lighting crew before airplanes zoomed by and crashed. So I know a lot of the backstory behind the creation of this album: Waters' loss of his father in WWII, the slow descent into madness of Floyd's first singer, Syd Barrett, the increasing dehumanization of rock n' roll tours. But I knew none of that when I first heard this album. Instead, I thought I was going fricking crazy.

"The Thin Ice"- Yoko Ono's biggest solo hit was a song called "Walking on Thin Ice." I mention this because Roger Waters sings a little bit like Yoko Ono on this track. Which is to say not at all.

"Another Brick in the Wall, Part 1"- This album was also my introduction to songs that had parts to them. In my youth, a song was a song, and then you'd just hear another one. But then Roger Waters came along and decided that songs were never finished, just replayed again later with slightly different lyrics and even more headache inducing vocals. This song ends with a long guitar coda overdubbed with sounds of children playing. This scared the shit out of me when I was 13 for some reason.

"The Happiest Days of Our Lives"- This song starts with a helicopter. I don't really know why. I also don't know why that this was its own song and not just the beginning to "Another Brick in the Wall, part 2" It's all about how teachers are mean to kids. Which means your seventh grade brother wrote it.

"Another Brick in the Wall part 2"-Somewhere, someone has written a 40-page dissertation on the way this song blends disco beats with the refrain "we don't need no education" but I don't want to read it, and neither should you. And the person who wrote it should be ashamed of themselves. This song is famous for its use of a children's choir on the second verse. Those kids were all paid for their services with a copy of the album. Roger Waters used the money he made off this record to buy a private island. I don't know what that means, except that while Roger Waters has gone to write and record several more rock operas and one for real opera, none of these school kids ever went on to record their own rock opera. So while we'll never know who was the real musical genius behind the Wall--Roger Waters or a group of 20 eight year olds--I think we can make an educated guess. What?

"Mother"-After hearing this song, I was terrible to my own mother for about five years. So I think Pink Floyd owes my mother an apology.



"Goodbye, Blue Sky"-This is a really beautiful song about a cat eating a bird. And then about some zombies.

Then there are two flowers raping each other.


"Young Lust"-I think this song reveals the brilliance of the collaboration between Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour. So this song is supposed to be about a young boy's grappling with his nascent sexuality in the grip of a controlling mother.
I feel like Gilmour took one look at the song title and said "'Young Lust'? My guitar knows how to do that." and turned Roger Waters lonely song about masturbation into one that was 100% about cock. That's magic, folks.

"One of My Turns"-This song starts with the mother from Leave it to Beaver playing an operator trying to reach Pink Floyd's wife. And some man answers, which leads Pink Floyd to bring a groupie back to his hotel room. And then the groupie talks about all the cool stuff that it's in the room. This lasts for about forty-five minutes. Then the song starts. Over a really 1979-esque synthesizer, Pink talks about feeling cold as a razorblade and tight as a tourniquet and dry as a funeral drum, and then the drums and guitars kick in, supposedly representing his freak-out. He asks the groupie if she's like to see his favorite ax. When I was 13, I didn't know that people referred to guitars as axes, and thus thought he had turned into a serial killer. Or a lumberjack.

"Don't Leave Me Now"-During this song he doesn't mention anything about trees or logs or how cold it is, so I'm thinking he's not a lumberjack.

"Another Brick in the Wall part 3"-I had to convince my mother to let me rent "Pink Floyd The Wall" the movie from our local video store because it was rated R. I'm pretty sure I saw it before Christmas, which was only about two weeks after Jesse lent me the album, but it seemed the longest two weeks of my life. I was desperate to see the film the band made about the album, and when I finally saw it, it was torturous. It felt like two whole weeks while I was watching it. I thought that maybe everything just felt like it took forever when I was 13, but last year I tried to watch 'The Wall' movie again, and after about four hours I stopped, unable to take anymore. And that only got me to the second roar of the MGM lion.

"Goodbye Cruel World"-This is the end of the first disc of the double album, and I wonder what someone would've thought if they bought this from like a used record store and it only came with the first disc. I'd ask them, but they probably have killed themselves due to extreme depression.
The stage show for this record involved a giant wall being built across the stage with this song being the one where Waters inserted the final brick. I actually think this is one of the coolest conceits for a rock n' roll show I've ever heard of, although I don't know how I'd feel as an audience member if the band I went to see didn't want to see me so much they built a wall in front of me.

"Hey You"- I remember I went with this girl named Jenny to a homeless shelter to volunteer, and when her mom was driving us, this song came on the radio, and Jenny said "Oh, Mom, I love this song! Turn it up!" and I decided this meant that she and I needed to get married. She went on to become a Patriots' cheerleader and I write about albums I listen to on a blog that nobody reads, so you can see how that turned out.


"Is there Anybody Out There?"-This is a mostly solo acoustic guitar piece. I'm sure if I went to the Wall show, this is where Floyd started throwing rotten fruit at the audience from over the wall.

"Nobody Home"-This is one of the most affecting songs on the album. And really, if you wanted to know what Roger Waters felt about the rock n' roll lifestyle, this song would do the trick. He talks about having the obligatory Hendrix perm, which someday, when I'm not too busy writing on this blog that nobody reads and wondering what Jenny is up to, I might go into a barber shop asking for the obligatory Hendrix perm just to see what might happen.


"Vera Lynn"/"Bring the Boys Back Home"- These two songs are really one song, which is all about WWII. Roger Waters is meant to connect rock n' rollers going out onto tour with young men going off to battle the Nazis. One group saved Europe from self-destruction. The other made it cool to wave around lighters and dayglo sticks in the air and yell out "Freebird." I'm not one to pass judgment.

"Comfortably Numb"- This is probably the most famous song from this album, and is probably tied with "Money" to be the most famous Pink Floyd song of all time. Which is funny, because it's all about getting a hyper-cortisone shot before going onto stage to perform in a giant stadium rock show. That really boils down the universality of the Wall to its core, doesn't it?


This performance is from 2005, the final performance of Pink Floyd ever, and the first time the original (well non-Syd Barrett original) members played together in 25 years. I mention this because for all the fun I'm poking at this record, seeing this band reunite after so many years was a big deal to me, even though I was an adult. It was a great moment. Even though David Gilmour looks a little bit like Skeletor.

"The Show Must Go On"- You wouldn't know it from the liner notes (the liner notes don't even mention the band's drummer,Nick Mason, so I'd hardly call them comprehensive) but this song features background vocals from Toni Tennille, from the Captain & Tennille. Which might be the scariest thing about the whole record.



"In the Flesh"- A reprise of the album's opening track, this time without the question mark, and with added racial slurs. There's some business when you watch the film that Pink Floyd (the character, not the band) has turned in a fascist. Which I guess is cool. I mean, I'd guess I'd rather have a rock star pretend to be a fascist then pretend to be a socialist, like when John Lennon tells us to imagine no possessions when he's playing an ivory grand piano in his mansion.

"Run Like Hell"- At this point in the record/movie/Roger Water's life, things are so bleak I applaud all of us for keeping on.

"Is there anybody weak in the audience?" We're all weak, Roger.

"Waiting for the Worms"-There's actually an interesting point to be made with the central metaphor of this song, about how isolating ourselves from the world makes us vunerable to the decay of self-doubt. The problem is if you weren't isolated from the world before you listened to this record, you probably would be by the time you got to this song. Although I suppose it's better than another Captain and Tennille song, I suppose.


"The Trial"- I can't even imagine being a Pink Floyd fan during this time, having grown up with the band since the late 60s. Getting stoned and listening to Ummagumma or Set the Control for the Heart of the Sun getting to the end of this record and hearing them performing a Gilbert & Sullivan number about dueling toothed vaginas.
And giant balls.

Somewhere there is a cassette tape featuring the band I was in when I was 13 performing a cover of this song. This alone will prevent me from ever running for public office.

"Outside the Wall"-At this point in the show, the giant wall would be torn down, showering lightweight cardboard bricks on the audience, followed by this quiet melodica-driven song. On the tape I had, the sound quality was bad, I don't think I even heard this song at all the first few times I listened to the album. I was still thinking about the raping flowers, and giant toothed vaginas, and how rock music turned you into a nazi, and I just pulled the covers over my head.