“Who Is Meat Loaf?” could be an age test.

Answers ranging from youngest responder to oldest might include:

• Who?
• The crazy fat guy from The Apprentice
• The crazy fat guy from Fight Club
• The “I Would Do Anything For Love” guy
• Who?
• The Bat Out Of Hell guy
• Eddie from The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• You mean from Stoney and Meatloaf?

Some wise guy might throw in “the guy from the Los Angeles production of Hair” or “you mean the dude who subbed for Derek St. Holmes on Ted Nugent’s Free-For-All?” but he’d just be showing off (and I’d be impressed).

Most of the lovers of the Loaf bunch up around Bat Out Of Hell with a retroactive admiration for his appearance in Rocky Horror, but a few knew who Meat was during his brief time on Motown’s rock subsidiary, Rare Earth Records, established in 1969 and named for the band of the same name. In 1971, a label rep caught Meat Loaf and Shaun Murphy, aka Stoney, in a touring production of Hair and signed them to a contract. The partnership resulted in one album, the aptly titled Stoney & Meatloaf, before Meat was dropped (Rare Earth retained Murphy).

The album is an okay hodge podge of Hair-style funk rock, ably supported by the legendary Funk Brothers. Lead single “What You See Is What You Get” cracked the top 100, peaking at 71. That doesn’t sound like much, but I bet it was thrilling for a pre-Bat Meat:

This is a nice one to have in the stacks for a couple of reasons. It’s a conversation starter, at least when talking music with someone who doesn’t answer “Who?” to the Meat Loaf age test, and then there’s that cool Rare Earth record label and its related trivia. Expected to pay one to three dollars for this one. Happy hunting.