Meat Loaf: The Press Conference

I attended the Meat Loaf press conference yesterday. It was held at Avalon, a former church turned into a nightclub. The rooms were dimly lit and candles were everywhere. A shill from VH1 and an editor at Billboard magazine were on stage, behaving more like publicists for the record label than members of the media. fter sitting through some video footage, Meat Loaf took the stage with Todd Rundgren, Desmond Child, some singer named Marion Raven and Nikki Six. The Billboard editor insisted Raven was going to be a big, big star in the US and that she'd put her album on hold to work on this project. (As if it were a sacrifice, rather than the profile-raising opportunity that any unknown artist like her would have to be crazy to ignore.) The Billboard editor also kept insisting that it was 14 years between each album, even as the video monitors flashed the years the albums came out: 1977, 1993 and 2006, which according to my poor math skills is 16 years and 13 years. But maybe those are Bat years. People referred to him as Meat, as in "Meat called me on the phone...." They announced the lawsuit between Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman was settled but didn't give details. And finally, the press conference almost ended without taking any questions from the press! (Meat Loaf insisted on taking one.) Crazy.