[carole]

Originally Posted by Fenechboy

Just have a quick rant here - earlier tonight, I was out shopping, and decided I'd buy a DvD copy of Bat with MSO (I still don't have it ). Beats waiting for it to arrive off eBay.

Now, I normally buy my Meat Loaf merchandise off the internet. So I don't really know what's available around here and what isn't. As it turned out, I didn't end up getting my Bat with MSO. Why? Because there was literally ZERO of anything Meat Loaf in the shopping center.

Wait. Correction. They had a single copy of Bat 1, three of HCTB and a VH1 Storytellers DvD.

I asked my parents about this lack of Meat - why is someone with so much talent so unknown around here. Well. Apparently they thought he had a heart attack and died shortly after Bat, which is why no one has heard from him in the last 30 years I WTF'd, then asked about AFL. Their response?

"What do you mean? Anything For Love was on Bat out of Hell."

Yeah, they thought Meat's been long gone since 1978. The only songs outside of Bat they knew was AFL and RRD. Which, apparently, were on the original album.

Now, this got me wondering - why is there no such thing as Meat Loaf here? There was literally ZERO promo for HCTB, with the one exception in the day or two Meat was on the radio. Now that it's out, it's been completely forgotten and just left to rot (where I am, at least). I haven't heard Los Angeloser on the radio or any promo material. Now that I think about it, the only Meat I heard on the radio is Paradise. And that's very, very rarely.

I'm depressed - I'm literally the only person in my corner of the world that has heard of Meat Loaf. I've never really talked about my obsession with Meat Loaf; I know there's fan sites like this, so I just took it as liking Meat was something pretty common. Apparently not. Has promotion for his material really been this bad? Long story short, does my lonely corner of the world just have horrible taste in music, or is this a world-wide problem? Is this why HCTB hasn't sold as much as it should? Is this why ALL of his work hasn't risen to the extreme levels it should have. HORRIBLE promotion? Please tell me it's been better around the rest of the world. PLEASE.

Normally, I wouldn't post something like this, but the fact that my parents seemed to think that he's been dead for the last thirty years has me worried

I totally feel where you are coming from, I get so frustrated with the lack of promotion for any Meat stuff over here. The last album that got any sort of promo here was CHSIB, but his tour dates were announced at the same time the album went on sale so they were advertising his concerts with the album, so that may have had something to do with it. We had no ads for the MSO DVD, or Storytellers DVD or The Very Best Of, I actually bought it in the US when I was on holidays there, as I had not seen it over here. No ads either for his documentary the other year. But The Rolling Stones put one out, and hey presto plenty of ads for them, and some other artist that I can't remember. Every time I see an ad for an album, I get so frustrated that they don't advertise Meat like that. But his concerts always sell out over here, so obviously he still had a huge fan base over here, they just don't seem to buy the albums. Meat comes out here and makes all sorts of radio and TV appearances to promote, but when it comes out a month or so later, zilch and except for the die hard fans like us who are hanging out for it, the rest of the world forgets. I don't know who to blame for it all, the record compamy, or the TV networks. But I really want to kick someone's arse over it. The Today Show did show a snippet of the Los Angeloser clip, but that was it, as far as I know it was never played on Video Hits. I bought the MSO CD when I happened to be out shopping with friends and we went into a record shop, so I just checked under Meat Loaf to see if there was anything I didn't have, and got really excited when I saw that, so I bought it. I hadn't seen any ads for it and wasn't in the fan club back then so would never have known of its existence if I hadn't seen it in that shop. Then when I got home and read the back, saw that there was a DVD too, so couldn't wait to go and get that too.

Carole