Dinner with Martina

I've gotten some requests for details on my dinner with Martina. I'm too lazy (after all, it IS my day off!) to dig up the audio and provide quotes, so here's just an overview.

We were in a private room at a really nice restaurant on West End Avenue that I'd never been to before. There were 10 of us from national radio, John & Martina, and a handful of her "people" - publicist, a couple of marketing folks, a couple of label folks. We were all around this big square table, which made it really nice. Lorianne Crook was there, but otherwise it wasn't names you'd know -- it was Lon Helton's producer, Bob Kingsley's producer, several radio prep site producers, etc.

Before we sat down though it was more cocktail hour... Martina came around the room and socialized. She's rockin' a Pat Benatar style haircut these days. Conversation was more about kids (her Delaney just got her learner's permit)and hair and shopping than it was anything business related.

Dinner was really good... although somehow at dinner the conversation turned to these "cleanse" diets that her marketing person was on. Martina does a similar one, and they wound up telling us a bunch of things about that - as we stuffed ourselves with red meat and ravioli and plenty of wine.

After dinner her label guy set up a microphone and we did a little "round robin" at the dinner table. You'll be hearing audio from that in upcoming editions of The Nashville Flash as well as our new countdown show - The Highway Hot 30 LiVE!

I almost didn't go because Wednesday nights I'm usually up at church, but I'm glad I went. It was a four hour extravaganza -- plenty of wine, good conversation, good company.