ROCK / A Loaf who rises to the occasion

ON Meat Loaf's last visit to Britain, his accession to the stage at the Reading Festival was greeted with a hail of urine- filled cider bottles. It is a fitting testament to the magic of showbusiness that he should return five years later as a conquering hero: his single Number One for six weeks, his album having swatted aside all pretenders to its autumnal predominance, from Nirvana to the Pet Shop Boys. The magic of showbusiness is something Meat Loaf understands better than anyone. Marvin Lee Aday might have become a vegetarian, but he still has 'MEAT' emblazoned on his guitar strap.

Those who complain about the lack of 'progress' exhibited by Bat Out of Hell II miss the point. No one wants Linford Christie to switch to 800m. No one asked Georgia O'Keeffe to paint horses. In any case, it is on stage that Meat Loaf comes into his own. Wembley Arena on Monday night is almost too small for him. He starts in top gear, with 'I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)', and keeps on changing up. It's more than three hours before he reluctantly takes his leave; in a shower of glitter and with a memorable parting invocation to a happily exhausted crowd to 'never stop rocking'. There has been an interval, but no respite - this man's idea of incidental music is full-volume Wagner - and not a dull moment either. Meat Loaf does random Elvis impressions. He heaps undeserved abuse on the stewards for their orange jackets. He makes up for his 'failures'

on earlier visits to London by revealing how much he truly loves us.

The Loaf is not just a ham. There is a real emotional charge to his performance. He knows himself to be a figure of pathos as well as awe, and he makes the most of it. Meat is a minotaur, condemned to patrol forever labyrinths of sexual and emotional fervour that most of us escaped in late adolescence. He is most affecting in ballad mode: emoting up a storm on 'Two Out of Three Ain't Bad', with one of his heroically tight- trousered backing troupe providing sensitive accompaniment on a beautiful orange piano with flames down the side. But 'Bat Out of Hell' is the song everyone has come to hear, and it does not disappoint. The ending of this lasts a good 10 minutes, and when it finally finishes you want him to sing the whole thing again.

If there's one song that sums up the Meat Loaf / Steinman world view, though, it's 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light', a Grease-style mini-

musical, again taken from the first Bat album. Patricia Rousseau, Meat's new female sparring partner, is a worthy successor to the great Ellen Foley. She glides serenely through this interminable battle of the sexes drama in heels that would be the undoing of a lesser woman, and approaches the immortal couplet 'We were barely seventeen, and we were barely dressed' with awesome commitment. The song's refrain, swiftly picked up by the crowd, is 'It was long ago and it was far away, and it was so much better than it is today'. So is the British public's re-embrace of Meat Loaf just a nostalgia trip? This song was always nostalgic, and its message - that pleasure is fleeting and growing up is difficult - is as true as it's always been.

In a bizarre parallel redevelopment - 15 years on, 1978 lives] - the 100 Club plays host to The New Wave of New Wave. This alarming notion is actually just a marketing ploy, but tell that to the DJ playing Blondie and Adam & The Ants between sets. The night's highest energy performers are a fiery, Jam-flavoured trio called S*M*A*S*H. What kind of a name is that? It's meant to make an impact but suggests fluffy potato. The band it refers to have been pluckily working their way round the Nissen huts and outside toilets of the nation - what else can you do if you come from Welwyn Garden City? - building up enough momentum to steamroller sceptics. At the end of a short, sharp set, they bundle off stage and through the crowd, their faces still taut with intensity. Two phrases hang in the air behind them: 'I feel effervescent' and 'I wanna kill somebody'. Well, I suppose that just about covers it.

Next on the bill are Echobelly, who set out to prove that the youth of today are easily Suede. The format is similar - pirouetting mike-twirler and guitar-toting mannequins - but they've yet to break out as Brett & Co have done from the shadow of The Smiths. Diminutive, kick-boxing vocalist Sonya Madan is not joking when she says she 'admires Morrissey as a singer'. She's got his swoops and flukes down more or less pat on a song like 'Sleeping Hitler', but what is the point of that? The Smiths re-issues, for all the universal rapture with which they have been greeted, actually sound more dated than, say, Led Zeppelin's, and might actually be a blind alley for today's pop-kids.

At Heaven's second Trance-Europe Express function, all ears might appear to be turned towards tomorrow, but it's not as simple as that. Space- age electronica is as bound up with its past as any other form of music. In the ambient room, the Orb's Alex Patterson is playing Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' a speed too fast (it sounds fantastic). In an upstairs bar West Country medium-mixers Reload are pounding and whooshing out their seductive 'soundtracks without films' (come in Mr Eno, your time is here), and in the main hall, aspiring Rochdale clank-disco meisters Autechre are grappling with the challenge of cutting it live. Some things never change.

(Photograph omitted)