MEAT LOAF

Saturday, 31 October 1981

Brendan Byrne Arena, Meadowlands
50 New Jersey Route 120
East Rutherford, New Jersey 07073
USA


FLAC master, 22 January 2022, by elegymart:
Analog audience recording (stereo) {recorded by Gene Poole}: unknown mics/recorder > 1980-82 US Maxell UDXLII C90 (Type II CrO2) analog audio cassette master {from the Gene Poole collection} > Sony TC-WE435 (azimuth adjustment) > Roland R05 (24/96) > Cool Edit Pro 2.0 (audio cleanup, convert to 16/44) > SHNtool (fixed SBE) > CD Wave (track splits) > TLH (WAV > FLAC8).
Created this text file.


Total running time [72:04]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01 I'm Gonna Love Her for Both of Us [4:33]
02 You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) [6:50]
03 Love and Death of an American Guitar [2:28] >
04 All Revved Up with No Place to Go [9:31]
05 Peel Out [6:13]
06 Everything Is Permitted [8:16]
07 Paradise by the Dashboard Light [23:17]
-- encore --
08 Gimme Shelter [10:52]


Band line-up:
Marvin Lee Aday (aka Meat Loaf) – lead vocals, guitar
-- Neverland Express --
Davey Johnstone - lead guitar
Mark Doyle, George Borowski - guitar
Steve Buslowe – bass guitar, vocals
Paul Jacobs - piano, vocals
George Meyer - keyboards, vocals
Pamela Moore - female lead vocals
Ted Neeley, Eric Troyer - vocals
Terry Williams – drums


Notes:

THE GENE POOLE COLLECTION VOL. 205

Here's the latest installment of the Gene Poole Collection, a random wellspring of recordings which surfaced in 2020. To paraphrase Lou: This is gonna go on for a while, so we should get used to each other, settle back, pull up your cushions, whatever else you have with you that makes life bearable in what has already been the start of trying decade...

Some of Gene's handiwork has probably been heard by your very ears before, for the most part via the Stonecutter Archives, but this is the first major unearthing of tapes direct from the legend himself. As promising as that may seem, it's best to let the surprises hit as they are shared. The trade-off to the prolific taping on Gene's part is that the expectations for a perfect track record would be unrealistic and unfair. There will be instances of incomplete recordings, caused by late arrivals to gigs, recorder and mic malfunctions, and other assorted foibles as would befall any mortal taper. There will be times where a master from another source exists which could be superior. For the most part, Gene recorded with a variety of mics and recorders, and many shows suffered from wire dropouts, so that only one channel was extant in the capture. Due warning about the past imperfect out of the way, credit should be given where due as well -- for many shows thought lost forever, it's exciting to discover that many of these even in incomplete form have now cropped up.

The transfers, the audio fixes, and the research all have required some lead time -- many tapes had scant info (sometimes just the name of the artist/band, with no date listed for the performance). Needless to say, gear documentation is virtually nil -- if we wait around for that precise detail to be forthcoming, nothing from the collection would probably see the light of day.

This time we head over to the Brendan Byrne Arena for a set from the recently departed Meat Loaf (RIP). As of this writing, Meat Loaf's passing was less than 48 hours ago and the unconfirmed news is that it was Covid-related.

But let's not go down that rabbit hole of corona politics, and instead step back a few days to the Sunday prior. Gene has been in the process of a massive moveout and Stonecutter had been asked to stop by over the weekend to come grab a few things that were not being packed for the move. Yours truly was enlisted to help, and dutifully as a trustworthy friend, went over to assist, but prior to reaching the house, Stonecutter warned to pick up the pace. Gene decided against moving an entire floor's worth of vinyl, CDs, videos, and to our shock, was leaving the majority of his cassette and DAT masters behind. 1-800-GOT-JUNK? was called in and they were due to arrive within 25 minutes. Gene's fatalistic zen outlook was salvage what you can, and what you can't goes to the junkman. Vinyl was jammed into the trunk and interior of the Stonecutter mobile, with no space left for the master recordings. That left approximately a hundred pounds worth of cassettes and DATs in five bags for elegymart to cart away. No grumbling here... if not for the Sunday drop-in, all of this history would truly have been gone. As Stonecutter marveled, Gene almost never took a day off from taping, but most of the documentation to verify that claim were minutes away from vanishing permanently.

Now fast forward four days later to news of Meat Loaf's death... there's a cassette in the stash labeled "Meat Loaf" -- and in typical Gene fashion, not enclosed in a case, no jcard, no info, nothing else). The news prompted moving this to the top of the pile for transferring. What we have here is his appearance at the Meadowlands over forty years ago, on the Dead Ringer tour. This is corroborated during his encore intro by his reference to the Stones' upcoming shows at the venue in the following week, and by a short Billboard review of the show at the time.

Compared to many of Gene's other Brendan Byrne Arena masters, the sound on this one is a notch clearer. There are still some flaws (at least one instance of tape chew), and the recording doesn't start until after the first ten minutes or so of instrumental playing by the Neverland Express -- it in fact cuts right into the first song with vocals in the set. Not unexpectedly, the tape flip on this one happens in the middle of the lengthy "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."

Forget about Setlist.fm -- it seems recordings of this tour have barely surfaced and the setlists provided for these shows barely resemble what actually transpired, so much so that one Meat Loaf fansite suggests "Peel Out" was never played on this tour even though the song was listed in the tour program. Well, here we now have the evidence -- by the skin of our teeth -- that it was indeed performed.

Thanks to Gene for taping, and for allowing us to thread through that narrow eye of the needle to rescue this recording from oblivion.

Enjoy,
elegymart