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Monday, August 01, 2011

music

inspired by my recent journey around youtube i have decided to theme this month by having a selection of videos from some of my favourite musicians.

i came to music relatively late. while my contemporaries were indulging themselves in punk (some of them even gobbed on by sex pistols) others were extolling the virtues of led zeppelin. it just didn't seem that important to me.
ah how that changed.
around the end of the fifth form i became a music fan. i suspect it had more to do with the people i hung around with at the time than anyone band or musician. fortunately music fell into my lap and i was hooked. i still am. back then i was interested in who played what on what and that would lead me to new bands and sounds. it was a period of raw exciting discovery.
over the years i would say my tastes have expanded, rather than changed.
unlike some of my pals i don’t have a deep knowledge of music history. i couldn’t tell you where most of what i listen to sits in the ‘history’ of music, i couldn’t tell you who influenced who. mostly i don’t care. i am very much of the mind that if i like it then that is good enough.
there was a time when i wanted to know about the people who entertained me and then i discovered that some of my heroes were total tossers, so now i just listen, watch and read – all that matters is that i like it.
i have very few favourite songs as music relies so much on mood so what gets me going one day may leave me cold another. also i am a child of the long player, so when i listened to music it was always an album experience, even in the days of the ipod i am still mostly listening to full albums rather than a selection of favourite tracks.
enough preamble, on with the show. if i had to choose one favourite song i think it would be meat loaf’s ‘bat out of hell’. i think i caught the video on ‘the old grey whistle test’ and i knew i had to have the album. when i saw the rich corben cover i was sold. who could resist the epic bombast and over the top pomp(osity) that was jim steinman and meat loaf.
this is why the punk wars were fought.
this is why the punk wars were lost.
i give you ‘bat out of hell’.



as an added bonus here is a video of jim steinman doing 'rock and roll dreams come through', it is from the album 'bad for good'. this was supposed to be the follow up to 'bat out of hell' but meat loaf had problems with his throat (as i remember one of his 'cures' was to gargle his own piss)so jim did the follow up himself, with some help from his friends.
and you want to know something? i loved it. still do.
however i had never seen the following video until the other night and what a camp classic it is.
quite what was going through jim steinman's head as he mimed in front of two modern dancers will never be known. jim, looking like gene wilder, has donned a pair of gauntlets in order to sing while a man and a woman dance (and i am being generous here) with a silver guitar. camp is not the word. the somewhat less the macho posturing is aided by the reluctance of the man to let the woman play with his guitar (and we all know what that is supposed to be... don't we).
someone should have butched the whole thing up.

camp as tents it maybe - i still like it

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