This 2006 performance...
 

YouTube Video

I really dig this one! When I think about how bad the whole Bat III experience has been for him, I wonder how he could do this. His singing is flawless here, although it was done for TV and he sure was very nervous.

In recent years I have only seen mediocre TV performances that I can't force myself to like. However in the studio he always pulls it off.

Absolutely fantastic! Don't think i'd seen this before!

I've seen this performance several times before, but it really is great :-)

Always loved this one - Meat's voice is full on. One of the best versions of AFL in the past decade. In fact, I'd go as far to say that there's a lot of '93 style Meat Loaf in this one.

for those that hadn't seen them before, heres a couple of the others..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Bc0EPUo95M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bJNMjbipFA

Possibly one of the best live versions of IACBTMN, in my opinion.

I don't want to be offensive towards meat, but I ask myself where the heck that ability to sing hides sometimes when Meat is on stage/ in a TV studio.

I hope he doesn't get me wrong when he reads this. The video I posted proves that he can do it. I guess his condition depends on many things and everything was write for this moment.

Life everything in life sometimes things go well and other times they go to shit. :shrug:

oops...I meant right

pitiful the worst semi official AFL ever after 3 bats live. and that IACBTMN is horrid. He looks exhausted and uninterested in anything that's going on. Paradise is decent till aspen comes in. There is a reason 2006 and 2007 in meat's life should be burned.

His ability to sing on stage is demonstrated show after show. There will be times when he's struggling with a throat infection but still delivers a show so as not to disappoint thousands of fans, there was the 3 Bats tour when he was suffering from the vocal cyst, yet still pulled off some pretty spectacular performances.

TV studios are always difficult I think. The setting is sometimes cramped, Meat has little time to take command of the space as he does with a stage show, sometimes he can't have the band play live and has to sing to a backing track, sometimes he's warmed up and ready to go but they keep him waiting for 15 minutes before he can get on. Meat has always said he doesn't enjoy TV performances, and often he has no live audience to pull from.

And as Evil has said (in different words) .. live performances will always depend on a multitude of factors; sometimes everything works perfect .. sometimes it doesn't.

But that ability shines the heck through a multitude of times more on stage than it doesn't.

Caryl

I disagree entirely with every word, except that he looks tired (he was tired long before the promotion circus got to this stage0 .. but to say he looks "disinterested" is just beyond belief. Meat never looks disinterested when he's delivering a performance to fans who have taken the trouble to come and see him perform. That's the hallmark of the man and to suggest otherwise is to demean both his talent and skill as a performer, and his commitment imo. I can only think you're taking what you now know of Meat's disaffection with the recording and promotion of Bat3 and putting a spin on what you see.

Meat delivered an album loved by hundreds of thousands of fans, and wonderful shows to many, many more. Anyone who was privileged to be at the RAH would not thank you to expunge that from history, nor would many hundreds of thousands of fans who went to shows on the tour that they loved. Burn not lest ye be consumed in the fire!

Caryl

Yet rather unfortunately it seems that many of the poorer performances are captured for posterity and many of Meat's more spectacular performances are not. :shrug:

Have to agree with Caryl. The word "pitiful" at the start of Wario's post is just insulting, too. But it's cool, everyone has an opini... (sorry, I got bored just thinking that last bit). But hey, comment on the post and not the poster. Actually, I had a great line but I'm not going to go there :lol: I feel like I've grown.

very true, but meat has also said (paraphrasing) he would give exactly the same performance to a group of 3 as to a group of 13000, so does meat draw energy from the audience and the atmosphere like most performers? or is he truley in a zone where the audience or lack off make no difference to his performance?

pretty much completely unrelated to the above comments but the thought popped into my head, so i've asked it :-)

I'd say the size of the audience doesn't make much difference to Meat.

2 nights before the 2006 Albert Hall show he played an amazing concert in Mannheim, in front of a much smaller, non-Meat Loaf crowd, whilst he was the "headline act" he was by no means the reaosn everyone was there.

At the tail end of the Casa De Carne tour Meat played the show in Helsinki in front of no more the 2000 people, in a venue the size of a medium UK arena that should have held 12000+... arguably that was the best show of the tour, certainly better in my view than the show in London that same summer in front of 10000+

No, like Andy, I don't think Meat needs a large audience, and puts as much effort into it whether there be 5 or 15,000; he would give his considerable all however few or many there were. What I meant was that even a handful of people sitting as a live audience in a studio would in my view be an audience as far as Meat is concerned, and I think that may be a factor. When you watch him on stage, even though he will get in the zone, I think there's always a part of him that is aware of the audience and their reactions and response, just as he'll signal to have the sound levels adjusted without skipping a beat or losing any of the passion of his delivery, or notice a light not in the right place. He remains a perfectionist all the time he's on stage, and imo misses very little, if anything :)

It was really just one thing I thought might contribute to the difficulty of some live TV studio performances .. and I think there must feel a difference between even a handful of people who are truly an audience, as opposed to technicians all with specific things they are doing. I've sat in a TV audience as Meat has performed, and would liken it to playing to a very small theatre, as opposed to a rehearsal with a few company members dotted around the theatre. Even a few people who have chosen to be there and be entertained must give a performer something to feed off I would have thought, and a studio with no audience must feel very empty and sterile to a performer like Meat. Sure you can think of the millions who will be watching on TV .. but that takes us back to his often expressed stress about live TV as a medium ;) .. (and this is unlike a movie where you can watch the rushes and go for another take if you aren't 100% happy). I also wonder if to have at least some live audience helps perhaps bring the focus to them and away from the thought of the millions? And of course as a performer you have no idea of how those millions are responding, whereas with a handful in the studio you do have that feedback and connection.

But these are just my thoughts. Only Meat could say if there's anything to them or if I'm way off the mark :-)

Caryl

If I remember that interview correctly, Meat said that he'd give the same performance in front of three trees- he didn't care what the audience was doing. If that's true, then the lack of one shouldn't matter.

In which case I'm hopelessly wrong, but only Meat could say :-) It was just a thought, and I expanded on it

Caryl

Yeah, I'd have thought as you did, but that's what the man said. :shrug: ;)

It's too bad he's singing along to a backing track for half of it ;) You can hear that he's struggling through it after the first chorus (note: after the track vanishes), just like every other performance of this song. Anything for Love and Paradise aren't half bad though :D

Meat on Today, NBC Oct. 27 2006
 

"That was great!!!! The band was already warming up when Meat drove up in the coolest BatMobile, got out and, talking to the camera and gesturing the whole time, with typical unstoppable momentum charged the stage.. Loved his energy, loved the way he smiled during Paradise :) He looked and sounded fantastic - good interview, too! He was totally up for it - makes you wonder if the TV nervousness is a myth :) It's All Coming Back was so good - I think it's even better done standing like they did today, and I love it when Meat looks right into Marion's eyes when he's singing.. And Anything For Love was stunningly good! Maybe the best I've seen?? ... When Meat sang the next-to-last "that" ... whoa.. !! Fantastic!" - Kathy

...That was my impression back then, and it's one of his appearances that I keep on my recorder and play every now and then. It always makes me smile :) His singing is superb, but the thing I love most about his Today performance is just how up for it he was! :) Shortly after this, I was on the road and people (at a rest stop and a restaurant) asked me, "Did you see him on the Today Show?" He impressed a lot of people very favorably by doing that show. It was an exciting time.

Now is an exciting time too! But so was then.

Can't believe you said that. Either you're winding us up or you've got earplugs in. Completely disagree and thankfully so does everyone else.

Thanks for that Kathy .. from someone who was there ;) It also reinforces my view that when Meat has an audience any TV "nerves" go out of the window. He's a born performer .. Yes, he always gives his all, and yet imo an audience brings out the very best of him :-)

Caryl

going by your logic I apparently ive got earplugs in. i hate everything about the 2006-2007 era. everything except dave luther's introduction