News & Updates

It took a bit longer than expected, but I've finaly finished my review of Hang Cool Teddy Bear.

Late last month, a new cast recording of Tanz der Vampire was released, and it's a blast. I've added a page for the Gesamtaufnahme Neue Wiener Fassung, which is German for 'Complete Cast Recording of the new Vienna Production'.

Also, I was able to obtain a 1977 press kit for Bat Out of Hell. I don't collect material like that per se, but as it included a print of my favorite photo of Meat and Jim together, I couldn't resist.

Yesterday, Hang Cool Teddy Bear was released in The Netherlands. In due time, when I've had the chance to form an opinion on it, I'll let you know what I think.

In a couple of weeks, a new, full recording of the current Vienna production of Tanz der Vampire will be released, starring Thomas Borchert, Marjan Shaki, Lukas Perman, Gernot Kranner, Anna Thorén and James Sbano. I've seen this version, and it was awesome. You can pre-order the album at Sound of Music.

Yesterday, "Los Angeloser" b/w "Boneyard" (a non-album 'B-side') was released as a digital single. So I added a page with the lyrics.

(Also, the temporary "Los Angeloser" page should now redirect to the single.)

After acquiring the 12″ maxi single of Bonnie Tyler's Have You Ever Seen the Rain, that part of my collection is complete.

If you're not living in North America, you can download "Prize Fight Lover"—an outtake from Meat Loaf's upcoming Hang Cool Teddy Bear album—on hangcoolteddybear.com. (If you're in North America, you'll have to wait a bit, as mr. Loaf's record company there has other plans with that track.) That site is also slowly revealing samples of the album, if you log in using facebook or Twitter. (I'm on Twitter too!)

Of course, you can find early transcriptions of those samples and the Prize Fight Lover lyrics on the Hang Cool Teddy Bear page.

Since the last update I've acquired two pretty rare singles:

• Totale Finsternis (Die Ewigkeit beginnt…), or, the "Love Duet" from Tanz der Vampire, and
• Patti Russo's Dance Dance Dance single. Which is as far as I know still her only official solo release on a physical format.

Meat Loaf's new album Hang Cool Teddy Bear is scheduled for release on April 19th, 2010. For now, the page just has the lyrics for the first single, "Los Angeloser."

Good news: Dans der Vampieren, the Belgian production of Tanz der Vampire is back on! Tickets for it's (limited) September 2010 run in Antwerp can be ordered from Music Hall Productions.

On April 7th of 2009 I made some changes to this website, which meant that I could add some visitor tracking to all pages. Here are some of the relevant numbers for last year.

There were 8,505 visits from 5,872 absolute unique visitors who stayed for 1:58 on average. With 2.61 pages per visit, that's good for 22,220 pageviews. Since April, there has been a strong upward trend: the number of visitors in December is almost twice as high.

Visitors stopped by from 90 countries. The top 5 is as follows:

1. Germany
2. United States
3. United Kingdom
4. The Netherlands
5. Poland

Unsurprisingly, search engines account for 69.04% of all visitors, and Google is king. At least 3,850 keywords end up at this website, ranging from snippets from lyrics to artists names, ect.

The three most popular albums are:

1. Tanz Der Vampire - Die Gesamtaufnahme
2. Taniec Wampirów
3. Patti Russo - MySpace

The browser stats is where it gets really interesting: Internet Explorer gets a beating from all other browsers!

1. Internet Explorer 46.62% (IE7: 51.37%, IE8: 36.34%, IE6: 12.23%, IE5.5: .05%)
2. Firefox 39.27%
3. Opera 5.01%
4. Safari 4.99%
5. Chrome 3.48%

If you promise to stop by again in 2010, I'll promise that I'll continue to update and tweak the site whenever I feel like it. ;-)

Since the last update there have been two new 'major' releases.

1. Only for a While is a compilation of mostly unreleased Steve Barton songs. It's released by Stage Door Records and quite lovely.
2. Bat Out of Hell: The Original Tour is a new DVD of Meat Loaf's 1978 Rockpalast performance. Beware of the US version, which reportedly misses the two covers.

Other updates include several additional single versions, but you probably don't need to track those down.

Finally, in other news, Meat Loaf is still working on his next album, Jim Steinman's Bat Out of Hell: The Musical now has a website and an unofficial forum, and Dans der Vampieren is still off.

Last week, I received a 1991 promo-cd of The Garage Project featuring Patti Russo. You can find all the details I could find on the Let the Good Times Roll page. Also, I added the lyrics to "Don't Ever Put Out the Flame" (a work in progress song she's just added to her MySpace) to the other unreleased tracks page.

And while we're on the topic of work in progress songs: Meat Loaf is in the studio recording his new album. One of the songs that might make it is Los Angeloser, witten by James Micheal (who wrote "Did I Say That?" and co-wrote "Blind as a Bat", "Couldn't Have Said It Better", "Love You Out Loud" and "Man of Steel".) I've added a temporary page for the lyrics of his demo version.

And Dans der Vampieren is still off. Total bummer.

On a final note, I'm doing some Meat Loaf related blogging at the moment on my weblog. See the link on the sidebar.

Dans der Vampieren, the the Belgian production of Tanz der Vampire scheduled for a December 2009 run in Antwerp and a February 2010 run in Ghent, has (for now) been postponed until September 2010.

Musical van Vlaanderen vzw, the producer of the musical, blames the delay on Studio100 and Stimuhl, two competing musical production companies, who appealed a yearly € 2.5 million goverment grant. Studio100 and Stimuhl say that this postponement cannot be blamed on their appeal, as they claim that Dans der Vampieren wasn't covered in the grant.

The Belgian Council of State has yet to rule on the appeal, and Tanz Belgium remains in limbo until then. It has been confirmed that tickets already bought will be refunded, and that groupreservations will be cancelled.

Related links:
⇒ Article on Broadway World

Lately, I seem to be on an online shopping spree. Lots of Dusty Springfield records, and some items related to this website. And in case you start to worry, don't. I'm not starting a Dusty website anytime soon. Here's the list of updates.

• Meat Loaf — Bat out of Hell 12″ US promo
• Meat Loaf — Two out of Three Ain't Bad 7″ US promo
• Ellen Foley — Nightline 7″ single
• Children of the World — The Time is Now featuring Ellen
• Jim Steinman — Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through 12″ US promo
• Karla DeVito — Interchords sampler 12″ US promo

In other news, Meat Loaf is in the studio recording a new album, and provides, ahem, useful updates via Twitter. (If you like, you could also start following me, but I tweet mostly in Dutch and it's very rarely Meat Loaf/Steinman related.) The album is scheduled for sometime next year, and one of the songs which is being recorded is Los Angeloser, written by James Michael who also (co-)wrote "Did I Say That", "Couldn't Have Said it Better" and "Blind as a Bat".

Dans der Vampieren is the official title of the Belgian version of Tanz der Vampire. There are two limited runs in Antwerp (December 20, 2009–January 3, 2010) and Ghent (February 3—14). Ze zijn op komst seems to be the gateway to all official information.

As it's a national holiday in The Netherlands, I have the time for an update. In a frenzy of internet shopping (and a not particually fruitful trip to the "most impressive record fair of the world") I acquired some stuff:

• Meat Loaf
  • Blind Before I Stop (UK 12″ including two live tracks that later reappeared on the "Special Girl" singles)
  • I'd Do Anything for Love (US promo including two heavily edited live versions and the unplugged version)
  • The Very Best of Interview CD (the answers to 17 questions)
  • The VH1 Storytellers Sampler (three songs and their stories)
• The Sisters of Mercy
  • This Corrosion (12″ of this song produced by Jim)
  • Vision Thing (LP, includes "More", which is written and produced by Andrew Eldritch and Jim Steinman)
• Ellen Foley - Another Breath LP
• Bonnie Tyler - Making Love (including two slightly different edits)

On the Meat Loaf page, I also added the Chat out of Hell interview CD I have had lying around for years, and a section for the books. If anyone has a copy of Phönix aus der Hölle by Patrizia Kurz und Ralf E. Isenbarth (ISBN-10: 3927801844, ISBN-13: 978-3927801844) for me to complete that part of the collection, please get in touch. (Hey, I had to get in that link to the revamped colophon somewhere …)