Monday, December 16, 2013

My Music Monday

I have a little musical / math problem for you:

Meat Loaf + Bonnie Tyler = ?????

The answer is Fire Inc.

Fire Inc. is sort of fictional band that brought the music to "life" for Diane Lane in the movie Streets of Fire.

Never heard of it? Yeah, I'm not horribly shocked or surprised. But that movie also brought about Dan Hartman's hit, "I Can Dream About You", which wasn't sung by four black guys - that also appear in that same movie.

The movie is horrid. Lane is always great to look about, but c'mon - the movie has Amy Madigan, Rick Moranis, Willem DeFoe and Michael Paré.

I know - I know - you're thinking, how did this movie not clean up at the Oscars in 1984, but it just didn't. Like Amadeus was soooooo much better!

For anyone familiar with Jim Steinman, who wrote or co-wrote all of Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell, and Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and "Holding Out for a Hero", he certainly has a niche sound / style. You like it or you hate it, but there is probably very little in between.

Rarely are Steinman's songs under the five minute mark - or four minutes with radio edit, and "Tonight is What it Means to be Young", this week's selection, is no different.

A few months ago, the email group (ok, Jon, Morty and myself) were going back and forth over whether or not Bat Out of Hell was a good album. I loved it back in 1977 but it fell out of favour with me years later, only to kind of pop up on my radar again, but only if I can skip "Two Out of Three".

Steinman certainly has a formula for his bigger anthem rock songs - and "Tonight" is no different. And there is a point when the generic lead singer (who is not actually Diane Lane) at times sounds like both Tyler and Mr. Loaf.

No, I don't like to run anymore, but now and again, I will get on the treadmill at the gym - and there is something about this song that makes it a good lead off for the first six minutes of my run.  Ok - the first 4:30.  The last minute and a half are just not needed - it goes on too long.

But if you opt to play this, you'll see the first 1:39 (or so - longer here than the song because the video starts off before the music), you can see where a non-runner would build up to the bigger launch at that 1:39 mark. I can be at full stride by 1:42.

It's odd that the song is almost 20 years old, but it's not like it was a hit or that anyone other than me ever listened to it - let alone still listens to it. Lord knows radio never played it.

Clearly, "Tonight" is not a song that is going down in the top 100,000 songs of all time, but it has its place in my liberry.

As you watch the video you might get a sense of why it was not Oscar caliber. Ms. Lane, even in heavily shadowed filming, is horrible at lip synching - and you have to believe that this was the best take!

 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for sharing this...both Nico and I are big fans of his music, so adding this to our music rotation...also found a new version (will post on FB)

Brett