Overwrought and undeniable, Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell remains both one of rock's biggest - and least likely - hit albums. The by-product of a partnership between beefy singer Marvin Lee "Meat Loaf" Aday and fellow journeyman/National Lampoon Road Show cast member Jim Steinman, Bat out of Hell met 1977's vaunted Year of Punk with a blast of neo-operatic, Wagnerian-scaled bombast that was as reactionary as anything the spiked set and their supporters could possibly imagine - 40 million units worth, and counting.

Bat Out of Hell seems to have thrived on the same formula that's made Andrew Lloyd Webber a multi-millionaire knight: if you do kitsch, do it big. And what could be more kitschy and emblematic of the '70s than the ubiquitous "classic rock" (an overused adjective that applies all too well here) of "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" or the breathless nookie-quest, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," replete with Phil Rizzuto calling the play-by-play?

The who's who list of first-rate musicians here is also second to none, with producer Todd Rundren and Utopia, Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, Edgar Winter, Ellen Foley, Jim Steinman, and even The New York Philharmonic.