New Jersey Performing Arts Center
It was an evening of people arriving late as the concert started very promptly at 7.30 (as have all the concerts of the tour) but lots of people were still arriving during Life is a Lemon! Meat noticed that there were some empty seats in the front row so when those people arrived during Lawyers, Guns and Money, they received a large cheer! Later about six people arrived at 8.50 so three were dragged up on stage for You Took the Words! Meat did remark that Tom Brislin only lived 12 miles away and he was half an hour late for the soundcheck too!
As Tom, Ray and Kasim were all local boys and Patti had been born close by, it seemed like a homecoming concert. Kasim especially seemed to know a lot of people in the audience. Patti and Pearl were wearing their evening dresses again.
Although the set list chosen by the audience was uninspiring to me again, the questions were more interesting - was Heaven Can Wait about a suicide (no, but it prevented one), will there be a Bat III (maybe as Meat is supposedly meeting up with Jim Steinman tomorrow), how does someone get a front row seat without paying a lot to soldout.com (that person will get a front row seat for free at the 1/1/2000 concert!), was Meat's real name Marvin (it was but he changed it legally in 1985 to Michael) and so on. Meat also ranted for a while that he absolutely hates his name being written as one word and not the two "Meat" and"Loaf"!
In Paradise we had the most un-amorous couple of the tour so far! Meat held the word "light" in his operatic voice (as he used to on the European Greatest Hits tour) but he mucked it up the first time so he repeated it and his voice sounded really strong (thank goodness!).
The guitar ending to Rock and Roll Dreams went on for ages tonight which was brilliant! At one point Meat got Kasim and Damon to stand at the front of the stage with him playing for a long time - they really rocked on that track!
They did loads of songs from Bat 1 and finished with All Revved Up which I just love. He didn't pick me but I got interviewed for tv afterwards!
Great new band and Pattie's lost weight too
