The Orpheum
It appears that No Matter What / Life is a Lemon / Lawyers, Guns and Money will be the standard opening but after that it is (virtually) up to the audience!
The crowd's favourite seemed to be For Crying Out Loud again and once again we were treated to the first verse as well as the ending.
Rock and Roll Dreams seems to be Meat's favourite as there was no reason to play it because nobody requested it but he did after Anything For Love and after he'd explained, yet again, what "that" is.
Meat explained his imaging ideas behind singing and that he imagines something different each time he sings a song. His image for Heaven Can Wait tonight was a six year old whose grandfather dies.
There was a lot of talk about various American sports (which I didn't always understand!) but it resulted in John having to remove his Yankees T-shirt and play for a while in his vest! Meat also set off walking around the theatre while Kasim (wearing a red and black top and black trousers) sang a football song which was a real highlight for me!
It was another ornate 3,000 seater theatre which seems so cosy to me as I'm used to Meat playing in 12,000 + arenas in UK. The second concert and my second front row seat! Thanks Ticketmaster although I could have done without being sprayed by Meat's sweat twice!
Truth be told, unless one was a big fan, Meat Loaf's three-hour set might have been interminable without the comic relief, given his overarranged, overamped, and overemoted style, best executed in ''Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through'' and ''Bat out of Hell.'' For the faithful, however, the downside was - in all that time - only 15 songs got interspersed between the fan banter, which typically went: ''Twenty years ago, I was listening to this song with my boyfriend ...''
Most of those request-minded tales pointed to ''Paradise by the Dashboard Light,'' which Meat Loaf kept holding off. And those 15 tunes included the singer's space-capsule cover choice ''Johnny B. Goode'' (given a clean ride by his bombastic but tight septet led by ex-Utopia bassist Kasim Sulton) and a sing-along of ''Take Me out to the Ballgame,'' in keeping with Meat Loaf's love of sports. The stage had a locker-room motif, and while Meat Loaf donned a guitar with a Yankees sticker for tribal curtain-raiser ''Life Is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back,'' he later honored a young fan's request to have thunder-touch drummer John Miceli remove his Yankees jersey - only to have the singer stomp on it.
After Meat Loaf had begun the show by explaining the story format, with daughter/singer Pearl (''Not a chance,'' dad warned the guys in the crowd) telling how a Boston friend thought Meat Loaf sang ''Lawyers, Guns and Money'' (he obliged), the best fan exchange might have been the first. A woman named Kim described her beau Vinnie as ''very Italian'' and how she used to shed tears to ''For Cryin' Out Loud'' at age 15, wondering if she'd ever find the right man. It was touching to see them embrace to the line ''You know I love you.'' There were a few other illuminating spots, notably Meat Loaf visualizing a 6-year-old boy and his dying grandfather singing ''Heaven Can Wait'' to each other as an example of method acting. But picking two strangers to lie on a desk (like Meat Loaf once did for record execs) and simulate the petting scene in ''Paradise'' before Meat Loaf and vocal foil Patti Russo took that warhorse over the top was a silly idea that failed. Kim and Vinnie were better candidates.