Review by SueW:
I saw the last two concerts that Meat Loaf played in France (in 1994 and 1996) and they weren’t very well attended (less than 1,000 at each) so I wasn’t sure how well he’d be received in this French Canadian city but it was a brilliant crowd as most people stood throughout the whole concert! All the band and even Meat Loaf himself seemed to enjoy themselves far more than on Saturday in New Hampshire and I thought the concert itself was even better than the Cleveland one!

Meat Loaf’s voice was particularly strong throughout the whole show and he was obviously in a good mood tonight but the biggest change from Saturday was in Kasim as he almost ran on stage with a big grin on his face and bounded all over the stage right from the start! It was great to see!

The Bell Centre is a massive ice rink that seats up to 21,000 but for the Meat Loaf concert, only half of it was used but it was over 90% full. At 7.30pm (which was the time the concert was supposed to start) there was an announcement (in French and then in English) that this was a no-smoking facility and that cameras and recording devices were not allowed. When Meat Loaf took the stage (30 minutes late as always!) loads of people were holding up cameras to take photos and security didn’t appear to stop them taking pictures, however the guy next to me tipped me off that apparently security were looking at my camera (it has a long lens although is so old that its zoom is not as good as modern cameras) so I only took a couple of photos and just enjoyed the concert.

Kasim wore his lovely black velvety jacket with his light lilac shirt for the first part, his blue and white smock-top for Paradise and a black shirt with a small diamond shape on the back for the end of the concert. He also wore black trousers throughout. Tonight (in contrast to Saturday in New Hampshire) Kasim favoured his black KSulton bass as he only used his pearl coloured one for the first 4 songs. There was a lovely part near the end of the concert as there was a young boy at the barrier in front of Kasim and he ensured that both he and then his sister(?) managed to get a guitar pick!

One of the highlights of the concert for me tonight was a wonderful Kasim / CC duet! (Their voices blend together really well.) During You Took The Words Meat Loaf indicates for the band to stop singing so that the audience can take over but for some reason Kasim and CC tonight obviously didn’t see it so they continued singing a few more times and then burst into laughter!

Tonight during Out The Frying (And Into The Fire) as well as the projected flames on the album backdrops during the first chorus, at the end of the song they also projected 3 circles of flames on the backdrops too.

The long musical intro into Anything For Love was just brilliant again tonight – I really enjoy that part! I did notice though that Paul Crook does play a short lead guitar intro in the song that sounds like a motorcycle.

On Saturday in New Hampshire I thought that Dave Luther played a long sax solo in the middle but it was probably only half as long as tonight’s as Meat Loaf kept indicating for him to carry on playing! He received a massive well deserved round of applause afterwards.

Thankfully Paradise By The Dashboard Light tonight didn’t seem so padded as it did in New Hampshire and it certainly was funnier. At one point Meat Loaf made the comment that he was too much of a gentleman to look where his eyes wanted to look (Aspen’s leather-clad bust) but then rhetorically asked why, if men weren’t supposed to look there, did women go out dressed with that area showing?

When the photo-shopped photo of Meat Loaf with a taut chest is displayed on the screens, recently he’s been counting and saying that he doesn’t have a 6 pack but he has a 7 pack. Aspen then replies something along the lines that the only way he’d have a 7 pack is if he was carrying a 6 pack of some local beer and a single beer of another type. As I don’t have a clue about beer, these jokes go slightly over my head but apparently tonight she mentioned an American beer which received a massive boo from the Canadian audience! She and Meat Loaf then had a contest about who got booed more times!

One nice part during Paradise By The Dashboard Light was that, when Meat Loaf was sitting near the speakers at stage right, the audience started singing the praying for the end of time part by themselves. I've seen that happen several times in Europe but not on this side of the Atlantic.

Aspen received quite a good reception tonight from the audience (especially from 4 young guys in front to me!) although the comment from the guy behind me was a derogatory "She’s good but she's no Patti Russo"!

During Mercury Blues there’s a part near the end when Randy Flowers and Paul Crook stand in the middle of the stage to play (in Europe this was when the sparklers were going off behind them). Possibly because Meat Loaf hadn’t moved his microphone away from the front of the stage, but tonight they didn’t quite meet at the middle properly! It probably looked okay for anyone who hasn’t seen the show before but Meat Loaf immediately went over and slapped poor Randy across the chest and then went over to Paul too!

After seeing over 250 Meat Loaf concerts it’s rare that I still get a real buzz after a concert but tonight I certainly did as it was such a brilliant concert!

Roll on Kasim’s solo gig on Wednesday!

Other websites:
Meat Loaf's official website MeatLoaf.net has a thread about this concert here.

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