I went to Hasting’s yesterday and picked up the new Meat Loaf CD, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose. Eh. What to say? It’s not a bad CD. But it’s a long, long way from what we saw with the first Bat Out of Hell … it doesn’t even touch the second one. Hell, Dead Ringer is a better offering (personally, I love Dead Ringer). The problem is that not all the songs on this one are by Jim Steinman, and those that are have all been done before.

Meat Loaf is, by far, a better singer than Steinman. However, Steinman’s version of “Bad for Good” has a raw, vicious quality that just isn’t there in Meat’s version. “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” Yeah. This is the third time it’s come back to me. I’ll take the Pandora’s Box version, thank you, although I do like Marion Raven’s voice (Kim disagrees with me on that one). Same is true for “The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be.” I love this song as it is on Pandora’s Box Original Sin CD. I can’t remember the singer’s name, but it’s a black lady with an incredible, gospel/blues voice, and that just seems to work better for this song.

My favorite song on Bat III so far is “In the Land of the Pig, the Butcher is King.” Not surprising, it’s another remake of a Steinman tune. I can’t figure out why Meat hasn’t redone “Dance in My Pants” yet.

Now, I know there was legal problems between Meat and Steinman. And Steinman had some health issues, I guess. Still, it’s a damn shame Meat made a Bat album without Steinman’s full cooperation. Rumer has it the songs Steinman originally wrote for this CD will be released by another band called The Dream Engine. I look forward to hearing more of that.

Some of the other songs, written by Desmond Child, Nikki Sixx, John5, et al, just don’t work so well for Meat. They’re not bad songs. They just don’t work with his over-the-top delivery.

Bottom line … Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster is Loose is very listenable. It’s not bad. At times it’s pretty good. It’s much better than Meat’s Welcome to the Neighborhood. But it ain’t worthy of the Bat name. If you’re not familiar with Steinman’s Bad for Good or Pandora’s Box’s Original Sin you’ll probably like this one better than I do.

In other news … I’m subbing a Spanish class at Westmoore High School this week. Normally I’d have passed on this one, but I was asked to do it. I don’t speak Spanish. Never took a Spanish class. But it is five days with one class, and that’s nice. Westmoore is the top ranked football team in Division 6A in Oklahoma (that’s the top division), and there’s a lot of excitement over that in the school. Reminds me a little of when Enid High won the championship when I was a senior (no, I didn’t play).

I would have argued this point when I was in high school, but now I can say without a doubt that high school girls really do mature faster than boys. In general. High school boys are better than junior high boys, but often just barely.

Still no news from Scrybe Press. Or the other publishers. Dammit! I did pick up a copy of the December Realms of Fantasy magazine with Scrybe’s ad featuring my books. I can’t imagine dropping the cash for that ad, then not delivering the three books promised for October. Whatever.

I still haven’t blogged about my contests. But you can read all about them here.

Well, I guess that’s enough for one evening.