mog and the zen of batmetal-mom maintenance

oneweekoneband:

Origins in sin

My mum loves rock music more than you do. In fact, my mum loves metal more than you do. My mum is the most metal person I know, which is annoying because otherwise it’d be me. It’s embarassing- I arrived at sixth form and, confronted with a new array of band t’s, thought ‘why the fuck is that dude fronting like Black Sabbath aren’t mum-music?’ My mum introduced me to Faith No More, AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Judas Priest. She refused to buy me a Kylie album for my 21st birthday and insisted I had some Iron Maiden instead. She’s also a deeply committed Christian who spends most of her time singing in church choirs and writing detective novels but seriously, my mum loves rock music.

The reason it’s important to know this is because it’s where my Meat Loaf origin story comes from; when I was seven my mum (well, both parents but I knew which one was responsible) gave me Welcome To The Neighbourhood for Christmas. It was one of a handful of CDs I then owned, thus endlessly precious and was meticulously copied to tape for me to play in my cassette/radio deck.  At the time, nothing about this stood out.

Welcome To The Neighbourhood, along with The Bats and Bad Attitude, constitutes part of the world-defining canon of the Meatloaf’verse. There are many other Meat Loaf albums, of course but they’re just taking place in the same universe, not drawing out the map and calibrating the physics engine. I’ll come back to the first track off …Neighbourhood tomorrow but for now, it’s time to talk about the song I most loved when I first had it. 

Back to the Meat’verse ourselves; if this is the first time you’ve eaten at the altar of ‘Loaf then it might confuse you- this is no Bat Out Of Hell, no I Would Do Anything For Love; those are epic pieces, battles of the self, whereas this is the every day admin and drudgery of being a motorbike riding, hell raising, wheel spinning, bar propping, love needing, sex taking sinner. Welcome To The Neighbourhood is all about hedonism- a sweaty summer’s night of an album, from the frenetic humping of its opening track to the swooning ballads at its close.

Origin Sin is the third song, coming after enormo-bellow-ballad I’d Lie For You (And That’s The Truth) and just before the album briefly turns kitsch for 45 Seconds Of Ecstasy. Wait yes, I said ‘briefly’ and ‘turns’ -Meat Loaf is not kitsch. Kitsch implies a level of unsophisticated meta-clutter that isn’t how this works at all. The metaphysics of the Meat’verse are highly calibrated, as John Martin’s visions careen around the blood-red dust clouds of the horizon and Jack Vance’s dying earth grows colder, the metal only gets hotter and the work of preserving the good by being the baddest is a thankless, unending task.

From our bar in the Meat’verse, it’s getting real late. The crowd is thinning but not enough to make it worth trying to get the serving girl’s attention- the remaining punters are fractious, barely contained and the humidity’s 100%. There’s a storm coming somewhere on the horizon, it’s 3am and you ought to have been gone an hour back. The jukebox is playing some Eagles shit and as you hear the first drops of rain begin to fall, you know that ain’t water.

The Harley’s safe and you’re crafty, experienced- you’ll wait it out as long as the roof will hold but with all hell’s coals tumbling down on the corrugated iron as the crowd scream, you can’t help but feel jaded. Fuck it, another beer- this is nothing, except a reminder that the rule about never staying more than one night in a town counts even if you haven’t been to bed. But hot coals work as well as a lighter and you pranged the cigarette machine open two hours ago so at least it’s a net gain. 

Sometimes, though, you’re just so damn tired of the game. When it’s endless miles of roads and the familiar ache in your hip where the bike gives you poor posture, the beast feels like it could be beaten back, taken out in your tailwind. When you’re just some sweaty dude in some swampy bar, drinking some chemical swill while teenagers dare each other to chuck the glowing coals around, it all feels less grand, all the heat gone out of the mission. Even fucking is pretty mechanical these days, it’s been too long since you fell in love.

And you should be off. Such a cheesy notion, this vagrant existence; all the power of the bike, the burn of the road and you might as well be commuting between one encounter with your own shadow and the next. When you’re drunk and maudlin like this you get in such a funk and then it’s even worse having to put up with your own thoughts like a teenage existential novel. Fuck this, the bike’ll take it on the road and you can’t here anymore.

There’ll be hell to pay some day, put it all on the bill

[TOMORROW: BURNING RUBBER! NON-REFUNDABLE LEMONS! LIES! THE WOLF WITH THE RED ROSES! SIRENS! LOSSES! FINDS! LAWYERS IN THE BACKSEAT GETTIN’ IT ON VIDEO TAPE!]