Florida Theater
After a long, long introduction by the two disc jockeys, Meat sang along to Home By Now / No Matter What as usual. Pearl obviously wasn't quite ready for the flashing lights of Life is a Lemon as she was bending over adjusting her trousers! After that Meat again asked for some lawyer jokes which were funny although one was the same as was told in Orlando!
The bad news was that once again this was an eleven song concert (the average length has been fourteen songs) but the good news was that the talk was more amusing and flowed better. Some of us wondered if Meat has shortened the number of songs he sang because he may not be feeling 100% as he looked tired and sounded a bit husky. Also during the concert Kasim had two cups of a hot drink (tea or coffee?) which I've never seen him drink on stage before. I just hope they all make the last concert tomorrow night!
We had the now regularly played Hot Patootie and again Meat danced with a lady from the audience and even he remarked on what a good dancer she was as others often slip from his grasp!
The piano girl tonight started saying the Hot Summer Night speech by herself but got a bit lost in the middle so Tom (hidden from Meat by her mass of hair) was whispering the lines to her! A girl from the balcony had earlier told Meat that she'd waited for fifteen years for a hug from him so he included her in the Jacksonville Meat Loaf Pops Choir and she was so enthusiastic that it was infectious! Firstly when she hugged Meat as she got on stage he remarked that she seemed to have left her bra back in the balcony! As soon as he started singing You Took the Words, she started dancing and as her front was jiggling so much, Meat actually stopped the song and asked her to keep still as the audience was distracted! This didn't deter her and others started dancing too so that when the choir were about to start singing, there were two couples jiving - poor Kasim couldn't get them to stand still and sing so Meat had to intervene!
Next came a long stretch of inane questions until Meat was desperately asking if anybody had a question that related to a song so that he could sing! Eventually someone asked a question with the word "anything" in it so Meat seized on this, got Tony to drag that darn blackboard out again and sang Anything for Love! After Patti sang the line "Sooner or later you'll be screwing around", Meat really mucked about trying (and succeeding) in making Patti laugh! He pulled faces and literally jumped across the stage at one point!
As the band didn't know the song they listened to it through their earpieces while Meat talked to fill the time (sorry, I don't really remember what he said as I was busy watching the band's reactions!). As I could see so clearly it was fascinating watching them all listen to it and prepare too play! John, Damon and Pearl all looked quite passive as they listened but both Patti and Ray were tapping along to it. Tom looked quite concerned (the song relies on the piano a lot) and Kasim's face was a picture of concentration! Towards the end, Kasim went over to Tom and followed through the first line of music with him.
When they came to play, it sounded very good for a first attempt! As usual with unusual tracks, Kasim had to count Meat Loaf in and Meat got lost once in the song so Kasim sang that part (which sounded wonderful to me!) but I was surprised at how much they sang as they performed a full two verses and choruses! Other than Peel Out, this was one of the songs I really wanted to hear live on this tour!
We then went back to more normal tracks with Two Outta Three Ain't Bad and Meat's usual story about how it came to be written (someone asked Jim Steinman if he could write a song as simple as Elvis Presley's I Love You, I Want You, I Need You and he replied later that he couldn't but that he could write "I Want You, I Need You but there ain't no way I'm ever going to love you so don't be sad because Two Outta Three Ain't Bad) and the audience singing the last line of the bridge (personally I preferred it earlier in the tour when the audience sang ALL the bridge).
Next came the "In 1975 we didn't have a demo of Bat Out of Hell because you couldn't make a demo of it" speech into Paradise by the Dashboard Light. Something unusual came up tonight (!) as usually Meat checks and then asks the guy if he's getting excited and then pours some cold water over him to calm him down but tonight the guy actually was visibly getting excited which Meat (and most of the females in the audience) found hilarious!
Bat Out of Hell was brilliant as always and then they did the long intro into All Revved Up (with all the audience sitting again!). Once again during the musical part, Kasim went across to Damon's side of the stage and they stood back to back playing guitar which was great to watch!
It was certainly a concert I won't forget tonight ....!
