There’s this thing they have in French: l’esprit d’escalier. The spirit of the stairway. I don’t think we have a word for it in English.
It means, well, the clever things to say that you only think to yourself when you’re on your way out. All the cool stuff you wish you’d said at the time.
Last night, before starting “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” Meat Loaf said, We’re gonna try to make it sound as much like 1976 as possible, for you people. It ain’t gonna happen … but we’re gonna try.
And he was right. It didn’t sound anything like 1976. That’s 37 years ago. That was four years before I was born. In 1977, Bat Out of Hell came out, and three years later, I was born. Thirteen years later, mr. Loaf made a glorious comeback with Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell and the massive hit single “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That).” Even then, he sounded nothing like 1976. And now, it’s 20 years later still.
No one in their right mind would expect a 65 year old man to sound like he did 37 years ago.
Meat Loaf’s show in the IJsselhallen in Zwolle was the only Dutch concert on his Last at Bat: Farewell Tour (or whatever it’s called). And even though it didn’t sound anything like 1976 and despite that mr. Loaf wasn’t always spot on, it was a great show. Wickedly awesomely so.
To be honest, the first half of the show didn’t impress me much, mostly due to the selection of songs. But then he sang “Objects in the Rear View Mirror …” and he had me. Again, mr. Loaf wasn’t perfect, but the band was awesome as ever and let’s face it: when Jim Steinman’s music is being played and it’s is being played well, I turn into a puddle of goo. You can mop me up, so to speak.
The second half of the show—you know, the part where he plays all of Bat in the right order—was epic. The arrangements stayed for the most part close to the album versions, which meant that there was no extended sing-along in “Took the Words” and that song was over and done with in less then 11 minutes, but where they deviated, it worked. “Heaven Can Wait” got an acoustic guitar solo, and “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad” got a lengthy instrumental interlude. Usually, I’m not the biggest fan of “Two Out of Three”, but this arrangement, and especially mr. Loaf’s performance, wow. Just wow.
And then, the moment that you knew that would come. When you play Bat Out of Hell all the way through, when you’ve managed to get past that song to the last song on side B, well, that’s my very favourite Meat Loaf song. It might just as well be my all-time top 5 number one song ever. It’s the one song I wanted to hear most. Even if the rest of the show would have been as disastrous as the 2008 Amsterdam fiasco, mr. Loaf could have saved the show with just an acceptable performance of “For Crying Out Loud.” Luckily, he exceeded my expectations. I can’t quite say that he nailed it, but fuck it. It was awesome.
With Meat Loaf retiring from touring, it’s likely that I won’t see him perform live again. Well, it is what it is. And this was an excellent goodbye.
Steven Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower was another one of those books that somehow didn’t make the cut for my list of 40 books to read before my 40th birthday.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower was, if I recall correctly, one of only two movies I saw in a theater last year. Hailed by some as the “The Breakfast Club of a new generation,” it managed to push a lot of my buttons in precisely the right order.
So, lists be damned, I read the book as well.
Like the movie, the book is funny, and smart, and all those those things I usually rattle of in lists about these kinds of books and films. I can’t help it—and frankly, I don’t give a damn—but those stories where the socially awkward kid, the misfit or the underdog eventually crawls out of his shell, wakes up and smells the coffee, they appeal to me on a level I probably don’t even want to analyse too much. Because, well, you know.
There’s this scene where Charlie, the book’s narrator, drives with his friends through this tunnel. In the book, it goes like this:
Anyway, Patrick started driving really fast, and just before we got to the tunnel, Sam stood up, and the wind turned her dress into ocean waves. When we hit the tunnel, all the sound got scooped up into a vacuum, and it was replaced by a song on the tape player. A beautiful song called “Landslide.” When we got out of the tunnel, Sam screamed this really fun scream, and there it was. Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. Sam sat down and started laughing. Patrick started laughing. I started laughing.
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.
In the movie, it’s like this:
I get that. A lot.
At the end of March, Yori Swart released an 12? EP called Weigh In Weigh Out. And she did a few shows to promote it.
One of those shows was in Tivoli’s Spiegelbar, which is, as the name suggests, a bar with loads of mirror(ball)s. And it was a relaxed little show. The opening act was nice, being able to sit down was nice (although the seats might have been a bit more comfortable), having Jupiler straight from the bottle was nice, and Yori was very nice.
Last week, with a loud bang and the smell of fried electronics, my computer died on me. I’m not quite sure exactly what blew up, and I don’t really care, as it was completely written off anyway. I’ve had this PC for seven or eight years, and it was my brother’s before that. In fact, I’m kinda glad it died, as it now gives me a pretty good reason to actually get a new one. I’ve been putting that off for the past two, three years.
Luckily I still have my laptop. Which is perfectly fine for some surfing the web, mailing and posting stuff on websites. But if I want to, say, work on this website’s redesign or needle drop a record, well, let’s just say it’s possible. If you really want to. Which I don’t.
So y’all just gotta wait a little bit longer on stuff.
