Thread January 28, 2012 editorial: comments

Dear Fellow Audiofanziners!

I landed in L.A. in the evening and immediately was swallowed up by the hugeness of America and Los Angeles.  The parking lot in LAX was so massive, we forgot where we parked our car, and walked around for an hour trying to find it.  We are reminded again, that in L.A. you don’t walk.  You drive.

The weather was ‘fresh’ we can say and sunny for NAMM 2012, except one day where it rained.  Sadly, the lovely dresses and summer blouses I packed remained hanging in my hotel closet.  It is too cold to look sexy, so I put my grandma sweater on.

I was a NAMM newbie, having heard and covered the event for the last several years virtually, now I am touching the real thing.  Walking the endless aisles and halls, it was great to finally meet the people behind the products.  The people with which I have been emailing with for so long.  The first day was extremely overwhelming.  In the all-you-can-eat buffet of musical gear, you don’t know where to start, but you know that your feet will run out of power sooner than later.  Everybody is excited, as the day was the culmination of months of planning and hard work- from the show organizers to the exhibitors, to us, the press, the visitors.  We all want to get our hands on the precious new shiny items on display, for which this was all created.  It is the biggest simultaneous launch party attended by over 95,000 people.

I remained objective and positive- everything is good, all products are great, this is the spirit of music making and instrument building.  My biggest enemy was my 10 hour jet lag.  As hard as I tried I could not sleep beyond 4am and on some days fell asleep before dinner time.  So unfortunately, the jet lag and the cold weather prevented me from experiencing NAMM at night.

So what are some of the personal highlights for me from the NAMM show (for pro highlights see our Top 13 list)?

• Dining and drinking with the fine folks at Harmony Central
• Finally meeting ‘competitors’ such as Music Radar and KVR.  We are all the same.
• Being spontaneous recruited by the Tone King to shoot Gus G. & Alexi Laiho autograph session.
• California Pinot Noir
• Meeting King Guitar from Rig-talk.com
• Realizing at the end, that I am happy to ‘just review, and not do’.  It is a lot more stressful to be a manufacturer.   It’s cool to be press!
• Watching the Giants game on Sunday from LAX.  Having to abandon it at overtime, due to flight boarding, and finding out a minute before takeoff by sms that we won :-) .  Whatta way to go!

Chater-La