The main thing I remember about this concert was the audience! Meat had hardly finished Life is a Lemon before some guy attempted to get on the stage by bribing a security guard a mere $3 because he wanted to "praise Meat"! As he was unstable on his feet, Meat came off the stage and went over to him and adopted his "Southern Preacher" mode which was funny. As the guy kept trying to get on stage, he was escorted out of the building during Lawyers, Guns and Money! Later in the concert an incomphrensive girl tried to do the same! We also had someone in the balcony who sounded as though she was on drugs!
They played Out of the Frying Pan again and it sounded to me as though they had been rehearsing it as it was far more together tonight. Meat told an interesting story about how it was written. Apparently Meat and Jim Steinman were having dinner in LA and Jim (who according to Meat was "in a different state of mind" that evening) had ordered duck but when it arrived it was very greasy. Somehow Jim made a connection between the greasy duck and the LA traffic and wrote the first four lines of Frying Pan about that! However it was written or whatever it was written about, it's a brilliant song!
As the "piano girl" didn't know the "Wolf with the Red Roses" speech, Meat got her husband to lie on the piano instead so Patti did the refrains with him. It was very funny as Patti really played to his deep voice! He even included the "Again" line which is usually omitted. However, after Meat announced the first four people for the Meat Loaf Milwaukee Pops Choir nine people got up on stage which he found amusing so when he announced the rest, it ended up with about thirty people up there! Poor Patti had to sit on the edge of Tom's piano stool as it was so crowded on her side and Kasim resorted to standing on the shelf!
A new song for this tour (and one that Meat reckoned he hasn't sung since 1981) was I'm Gonna Love her for Both of Us. The guy requested it because he'd had fancied Ellen Foley (who Meat dated for three years) and Meat had loved her for the both of them! The band and Meat made a good attempt at the song but I do wonder if Meat Loaf can actually read music as again he didn't know when to start singing.
Meat mentioned twice that he had "the flu" but luckily his voice didn't seem affected at all. I did notice though that they omitted I'd Lie For You and Rock and Roll Dreams so I wondered if Meat wasn't up to the Rock and Roll Dreams ending as he is always breathless after that, even on a good day! During the ending of For Crying Out Loud (again his voice sounded fine to me) Meat said that just Tom was to play (maybe to save his voice by keeping the sound quieter) which unfortunately meant that they omitted most of the ending background vocals too which detracted from the song for me.
When Meat introduced the band (of course it was "Milwaukee's own Ray Andersen"!) he announced that the right hand side of the stage was the sick ward (they'd been wearing hygiene masks today!) as both Damen and Tom had the flu too! Poor Tom really did look sick and I thought he did so well just to get on stage tonight, let alone playing as well as he did. I noticed too that Meat didn't actually kiss Patti at all during the songs tonight and that she seemed to drink a lot more water than normal. PLEASE let's not have any concerts cancelled! Also when he introduced the band, for some reason he gave us a brief resume of Kasim's career saying that he'd played with Todd Rundgren, Utopia, Joan Jett and Hall and Oates!
Tonight Meat got the two DJs to play the Paradise couple and they were just brilliant! After they'd had the practice kiss, the "record executive" guy said that he felt left out so the female DJ got off the desk and sat on his lap and started kissing him so Meat got onto the table, "straddled" the guy and almost kissed him! Meat then got the "record executive's" wife to sit with John and when the guy turned his back, John would kiss and cuddle his wife! As soon as Phil Rizzto's speech started, the two DJs started kissing and rolling all over the table and then they fell off the table and continued rolling around on the floor! It was hilarious and Meat and all the band were roaring with laughter! The girl got so carried away that she totally forgot the "Stop Right There!" words! Later when Meat was trying to make his choice between Patti and the girl, she sided with Patti!
All in all, it was a very good concert despite the illnesses and the crazy crowd!