By Pandie Suicide

The NAMM show is an annual music product convention held in Anaheim, California each January that I myself was fortunate enough to attend in January this year, for the third time in a row. ‘NAMM’ itself stands for ‘National Association of Music Merchants’ though the convention draws international crowds from the music industry, music instrument and merchandising industries and of course musicians themselves, recording engineers, producers, sound mixers and music press like myself.

The convention takes place over a weekend from the Thursday through to the Sunday with Saturday typically being the most crowded day of them all and this year was no exception.  It’s also the day where the most happens. During the four day industry extravaganza you can expect to see well-known musicians and industry legends everywhere at NAMM demoing new products, performing and doing signings. This year everyone from Kerry King, Dave Lombardo and Jeff Hanneman of Slayer to Dave Navarro to Vampires Everywhere to members of Megadeth to Mick Mars to Mick (#7) of Slipknot to Henry Rollins (whose birthday it happened to have just been) to Dino Cazares (Fear Factory, Divine Heresy) to Wayne Static, Herman from Dragonforce, Zoltan from Five Finger Death Punch, members of Shadows Fall, Travis Neal of Divine Heresy and even Bootsy Collins were in attendance and every larger music merchandising company on earth and probably every small one were there – from Gibson to Marshall to Warwick to Krank Amps, Shure, Dean, AKG and everything in between there were a lot of booths and a lot of new things to see.

It was hard to narrow it down to just one, but really my favorite new product at NAMM this year had to be the KITARA, a digital guitar/synthesizer type hybrid. It was just so damn amazing. It reminded me of something from Jem and the Holograms, perhaps that was why I was so partial to it, but the thing also has so many future practical applications that I can think of.  There were also some fun things like drummer shoes, guitar strings that change to neon colors under black light and other good stuff that caught my eye. But the thing with NAMM is, while the convention itself is great and has so much to offer in terms of new products and more, whether you were at the show, or not – a big part of NAMM is really all about the parties!

From  the impromptu piano karaoke jam out at  the Hilton's EMG pickups party in the back ballroom featuring Dave Lombardo from Slayer as conductor with everyone from him to Doc Coyle of God Forbid to executives and partygoers crowded around to join in singing songs by Queen and other historic rockers to walk through hotel lobby parties at the Hilton and the Marriott to Megadeth and Hellyeah performing at the Grove Friday for Dean Guitars and Cheap Trick, still going strong, performing at the Schecter party also at The Grove of Anaheim, on Saturday, nothing else even comes close.

Now most of these parties/shows are free to get into – that is if you have a pass (unless it’s in a hotel lobby – those are a big free for all) and therein lies the rub. The passes can only be obtained from those who run the party such as Schecter guitars etc, thereby keeping out a majority of ‘NAMM tourists’ as the convention itself is not open to the public, you must have a pass to get in, and it must match your name on your driver’s license or other form of identification, and the barcode on the pass gets scanned every time you enter the convention, to prevent fraudulent passes from being used. As far as music events go, NAMM is the industry event of the year but it is next to impossible to sneak into, so I wouldn’t recommend trying! If you ever get the opportunity to go to NAMM take it, because I think everybody who’s interested in the music industry needs to go just once, even if you tell everybody it’s just for the parties.

For more info please visit:

www.namm.org