As the title suggests, the album is the follow-up to Meat Loaf’s first solo album, 1977′s Bat Out of Hell, [...]]]> We all have guilty pleasures — music, books or movies that we’re a bit abashed to admit we enjoy. For me, one of those is Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell.

As the title suggests, the album is the follow-up to Meat Loaf’s first solo album, 1977′s Bat Out of Hell, a collaboration between Meat Loaf and songwriter Jim Steinman. I wasn’t a fan of that album, finding it bombastic and over the top. For reasons that have been detailed elsewhere, it was another 16 years before the two would collaborate on Back Into Hell. I will be the first to admit it is as bombastic and over the top as its predecessor. So why did it grab me? At the risk of providing more than you’d care to hear, it has a lot to do with circumstances of my life. It not only spoke to particular things at a particular point, what I heard were things one should occasionally be reminded of.

Released 17 years ago this week, I don’t recall how I ended up first hearing the album. What I do know is that preceding year or two were close to a nightmare. A heart attack left me wondering if I would make it to 40, let alone 50. My father died. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My father-in-law suffered a debilitating stroke. That’s not to mention the “routine” stressors for someone approaching “middle age” who’d just built a new house and had three children seven or younger. Suffice it to say there was more than a touch of melancholy, disillusionment and even anger — and, fortunately, a wife who was indispensable in persisting against it all. And those are the emotions the theater and bombast of Back Into Hell addressed, particularly the first five cuts.

A much shorter version of the opening, 12-minute “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” became Meat Loaf’s first and only number one single. Although it has echoes of “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights” from the first LP, when I hear this song now it’s like meeting up with an old friend. There’s any number of lines in it that I love to this day (“I know you can save me/No one else can save me now but you”) but the call and response duet near the end of the song can still bring goosebumps. Immediately following is the disillusionment of “Life is a Lemon and I Want My Money Back.” The elements that make up our life or that we believe important begin to seem defective when “There’s always something going wrong/That’s the only guarantee.” We end up believing that “Everything’s a lie and that’s a fact.”

Moving back to salvation is “Rock and Roll Dreams Come True.” It’s one of the songs on Back Into Hell where so many lyrics said so much. “You can’t run away forever/But there’s nothing wrong with getting a good head start” sure sounded good. For me, that head start came from both my wife and music, there “when you really really need it the most.” I agreed that “the angels had guitars even before they had wings/If you hold onto a chorus you can get through the night.” The concept of survival appears in the next tune, “It Just Won’t Quit.” Steinman and Meat Loaf again seemed to be putting some of my thoughts into words: “And I never really sleep anymore/And I always get those dangerous dreams/And I never get a minute of peace/And I gotta wonder what it means.” They also asked questions we all probably confront at some time: “Does it get any better? Can it get any worse?/Will it go on forever or is it over tonight?” Hearing someone express your thoughts sticks with you.

“Out of the Frying Pan” continues the roller coaster. It not only talks about how killing time “will kill you right back,” but, more important, the woman the narrator desires is “the answer to every prayer that I ever said,” something I frequently thought of my wife during these times.

Yet it wasn’t just me who loved the album. It made my wife a Meat Loaf fan (it didn’t carry me quite that far). And, perhaps making others wonder about my parenting skills, my kids also loved it. Even today, my middle daughter may be able to recite verbatim the spoken word “Wasted Youth.” Her favorite lines come from a setting reminiscent of The Doors’ “The End.” As a son stands poised above his parents’ bed, ready to bring an electric guitar crashing down, he cries out, “I said ‘God damn it daddy!/You know I love you/But you got a hell of a lot to learn about rock ‘n roll!’”

Now all of this has been about my relationship with the record. I should also note that although theatrical and occasionally overproduced arena or anthem rock, the album has some excellent musicianship and some superb production values. In addition to Meat Loaf being among the few artists who could pull this off, the album is also further evidence that Roy Bittan, best known for being in Springsteen’s E Street Band, may well be the best rock and roll pianist in the world.

So there’s a lot of reasons Back Into Hell has a permanent place on my iPod. Yeah, it’s a guilty pleasure but one came at the right time in my life.

“Everything Louder Than Everything Else,” Meat Loaf, Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell

In making the announcement, the Library of Congress said the five sets the trio performed on June 25, 1961, “are [...]]]> Today’s music moment comes about only because of today’s news. The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings 1961, the outstanding performance by the Bill Evans Trio, is one of 25 new additions to the National Recording Registry.

In making the announcement, the Library of Congress said the five sets the trio performed on June 25, 1961, “are recognized as some of the greatest live recordings in the history of jazz.” I’ll certainly second that. In honor of this event receiving deserved recognition for its role in American music, I have combined two reviews I wrote when a box set of the recordings was released in the U.S. to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Evans’s September 15, 1980, death:

It is likely that no one — not even the participants — knows when an extraordinary musical moment is going to occur. That was probably the case when pianist Bill Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian showed up at New York City’s Village Vanguard on Sunday, June 15, 1961.

They knew they would be recording two afternoon matinees and the three sets they would perform that night. More than 40 years later, jazz fans owe a debt to the fact Evans agreed to record that day. What was captured on tape borders on legendary. While parts of the recordings were released on vinyl later that year as Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, Riverside has now released a three-CD box set that contains the entirety of the material in the order it was recorded during the day’s five performances.

Given the ultimate result, things did not get off to an auspicious start. About a minute into “Gloria’s Step,”‘ the first tune of the first matinee, the power to the recording equipment went out. Although it was quickly restored, even that gap exists for posterity in this compilation. Thankfully, that initial breakdown was not indicative of what was to come.

What the entirety of these CDs reveal is the higher level to which Evans, LaFaro and Motian took the jazz trio. This is not LaFaro and Motian serving as a rhythm section while Evans dominates. This is a sublime yet intensive improvised musical dialogue amongst partners, a dialogue at which listeners can only marvel. At times, the interplay between LaFaro and Evans is as if they are speaking to each other in another musical dimension, transported there in part by Motian.

LaFaro is not simply in the background keeping time or laying down a bass line. Even when not up front — and Evans gives LaFaro plenty of chances to be up front — his performance is as much a force in the entirety as Evans’s own inimitable style. And when LaFaro is up front, Evans trades roles easily. As he ‘comps’ to whatever musical course LaFaro charts, he not only retains and reminds us of the elements of the underlying theme but lays the groundwork for his own subsequent improv when the lead is handed back to him.

While LaFaro and Evans often gracefully change rhythms and moods in the course of any one tune, this is done with and through Motian as the backbone. And in keeping everyone on course expressively, Motian he is never intrusive or overstated. His eloquent performances should serve as an exemplar for any percussionist.

Given the pervasive excellence of the box set, it is unfair to highlight one or more songs over others. Still, the performance of “Waltz for Debbie” in the trio’s closing set — which was released on the LP of the same name — is a masterpiece. It is a prime example of the importance and legacy of this evening and this trio to modern jazz. And hindsight adds a tragic power to this. LaFaro died in a car accident less than two weeks after this recording, making the Vanguard performances this incomparable trio’s last public dates.

Taken in its discrete sessions or as a whole, this set can help create a true jazz fantasy. Take these CDs, put on your headphones, close your eyes and listen. You will be in the Vanguard, hearing the clinking glasses, the occasional bar conversation and wanting to stare daggers at the woman who laughs a bit too loudly as some comment at her table, seemingly oblivious to the marvelous performance to which serendipity has brought her.

Any true fan of the jazz trio would have loved to be in her place. Unable to do that, consider this release a slice of heaven in a box.

Bill Evans, Liner notes, Sunday at the Village Vanguard

Okay, there might be [...]]]> When the June 9, 1973, issue of Billboard magazine briefly reviewed Jimmy Buffett’s new release, it called it a “[g]ood soft rock collection.” Evidently, the reviewer didn’t get any clues from the album title or liner notes or pay any attention to the opening notes or other content of the album.

Okay, there might be a couple tunes on A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean you might argue were “soft rock.” Yet to have that as the only description of the LP means you ignored the title’s play on the song Marty Robbins took the top of the country charts in 1957, “A White Sport Coat (and a Pink Carnation).” It means you ignored author Tom McGaune’s observation in the liner notes that the album contains “spacey up-country tunes” and that it was somewhere in “the curious hinterland where Hank Williams and Xavier Cugat meet.”

How, though, can you ignore a pedal steel guitar kicking off the album’s opening cut, “The Great Filling Station Holdup,” and that is a key element of the supporting “Coral Reefers” band? How, though, can you ignore that the bulk of the album is what would eventually come to be called the “gulf and western sound”?

The public wasn’t fooled, though. The album reached the top 50 on the country charts but never breached the top 200 pop albums. The novelty tune “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” exceeded 50,000 units in jukebox sales alone shortly after release and was still described by Billboard as a jukebox favorite more than three years later. The writer of the “blue” song, as Billboard described, was listed as “Marvin Gardens” and it parodied country love songs and the ultimate goal of many bar room encounters:

I really do appreciate the fact you’re sittin’ here
Your voice sounds so wonderful
But your face don’t look too clear
So bar maid bring a pitcher, another round o’ brew
Honey, why don’t we get drunk and screw

That song closed the first side of the LP, which, for my money, may well be the single best side of music on any Buffett album. I don’t know if I’d heard it before then but I became a huge fan of A White Sport Coat — and Buffett — in 1975. It was near or shortly after the peak of the country-rock/country trend that had burgeoned in the prior few years. Sure, “Why Don’t We Get Drunk” was a hoot but the balance of the songs on that side of the LP are well worth the time, whether the country-tinged and also humorous opening cut or the Caribbean feel of “Cuban Crime of Passion.”

Yet “Grapefruit-Juicy Fruit” was and remains my favorite cut on the LP and likely my favorite Buffett tune altogether. At just under three minutes, it is a compact love song (“You know it gets/So damn lonely/When you’re on a plane alone/And if I had the money honey/I’d strap you in beside me”) yet still imbued with Buffett’s unique humor. The quality of that first side (remember, these were the days when as long as you had to get up to flip an album over it was just as easy to grab something else) is what ranks it above the follow up LP, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, as Buffett’s best.

Although I also enjoyed his albums over the next couple years, which, along with A White Sport Coat and Living and Dying, are the heart of what would become known as the “Key West” albums. Still, I grew a bit further away from Buffett with each ensuing album after Living and Dying and by the time “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” put Buffett in the Top 40 in 1977 and 1978, to me it was a different Jimmy Buffett.

So while I am a huge fan of Buffett’s work in the mid-70s, I am not and never have been a Parrothead. That term came about in the mid-1980s and by then it had been more than five years since I’d bought a Buffett album. To me, they were latecomers and if you asked many self-professed Parrotheads about “A White Sport Coat,” you would get little more than a blank stare. If you really want to hear Jimmy Buffett, this is the album to start with.

“Grapefruit-Juicy Fruit,” Jimmy Buffett, A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean