Klassic KRUD

Jim Steinman

I’ve been meaning to post this for a while now, I realized somethign and just had to share… Two songs, and they each have two things in common: both are track #6 on their respective albums, and both are composed by Jim Steinman. I strongly urge you to listen to them with the volume cranked as high as it can go.

I didn’t get to know about Meat Loaf until I first watched Fight Club, and even then I didn’t know much about the man other than he had done the albums “Bat Out Of Hell” / “Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell”. I hadn’t even heard the albums until I bought them on a whim online, and WOW… it was like a Spectorean wall-of-sound out of nowhere! I’m not really a fan of most modern rock, and these songs turned out to be right up my alley.

It’s hard to tell though with “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” whether it’s the guitar leading and being backed up by the piano, or if it’s the other way around – with both of these instruments they seem to alternate taking the lead with the other one slamming into the song for extra emphasis. The quality of the recording is unmatched (at least to my ears) – it’s the difference between a bright fire engine-red convertible that’s been freshly washed vs. a brown rusted Yugo that hasn’t seen a drop of water in 20 years. (My apologies to the Yugo owners). Besides, that engine-revving intro just sets the scene for the entire song and is best listened to with the volume cranked sky-high. (That reminds me, I ought to add this to my playlist of songs to listen to while driving if I haven’t yet already…)

The lady coming into the song at 5:53 unnerves me for some reason… I think it’s something about the way she’s vocalizing, how her voice kind of seems to float around until it finds the pitch. Maybe it’s just annoying to me, though. That’s really about the only part in the entire song that I don’t like, and the rest of the song clearly makes up for it.

The Story Behind The Album has some interesting info to check out as well.

“I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” [ buy Bat Out Of Hell II ]

A few weeks after I bought that album, I was at Otakon where I was watching the anime music video contest and saw this video set to “Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young” from Streets of Fire. I thought that it sounded similar to the Bat Out Of Hell tunes, so after searching around I discovered that (surprise, surprise) they were both by the same composer, Jim Steinman. This one’s energetic enough to dance to, but it’s one of those ones that I need to dance to in secret else I really look a fool. But now that my secret is out, I guess it’s safe to rock out to in public now. I haven’t heard the other songs from Streets of Fire yet, but hopefully they’ll be as awesome as this one.

It just occurred to me that perhaps Streets of Fire would be like what if Bat Out Of Hell were by Meat Loaf’s complete opposite, especially in the gender bits. Hm. I don’t know that much about Streets of Fire, actually – I should keep an eye out for it and see what I can find.

“Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young” [ buy Streets of Fire ]

Dave and I will attempt webcasting sometime before 4 pm EST (so in the next 2 hours or so) as a test-run, and we’ll try to do an actual show sometime between 5:15 – 7:00 pm EST. Whatever it ends up being, I’m sure it’ll be something!

3 thoughts on “Jim Steinman

  • Anonymous

    My name’s Jim. I found “Streets of Fire” the other day on DVD for $9.95 at a local supermarket. You should check it out, by all means. One of my old faves.

    Reply
  • Awesome – I think I might take a look for it tomorrow if I get a chance after work… I talked with a friend of mine about it and she recommended it (but she’s got quite the crush on Willem Dafoe, hahaha)…

    Reply
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