No one’s forcing you to click “Play”

One thing about blogging every day is that it makes it harder to hide the more embarrassing details of our lives.

I spent most of today proofreading a book, while Michael, Hyla, and the dog ran errands. So far, a virtuous if uninteresting day. What could I possibly blog about?

When they returned, they had groceries, a few other odds and ends they picked up along the way, and a DVD of a Meat Loaf concert (1978, Germany).

And here I have to admit that Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell album was the first album I ever bought. Up until then (at age 12), I bought all of my music on 45s. My parents had bought us a few albums (mostly Carpenters albums — yeah, I adored them), but my “rock music” collection was all singles. Until Bat Out of Hell.

It mostly wasn’t my style. I’d bought it because I loved the (extremely tame) hit song, “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” but the cover illustration kind of terrified me, and the opening riffs of the first song on the album, the title song, seemed to me so loud and extreme, I skipped over it for years.

But I ending up loving that album, and playing it endlessly (to my grandparents’ chagrin, I’m sure, since I listened to it that first summer on their console stereo). So, watching the DVD tonight was a true guilty pleasure. Sure, Meat Loaf is kind of revolting to watch, and the video and audio quality of the video were pretty bad, and the notes were pretty flat at times, and oh! the sweat that was flying. But I know every note of that album, and those songs are just plain silly fun.

Here’s the funny thing: all through the DVD, Hyla was rolling her eyes and yelling, “Gross! Look at his chest hair! Look at his sweat!” And after it was over, what did she do? Go to the beginning and press “Play,” of course.