MI Pro

I’m not sure exactly how many NAMM shows I’ve covered but this year’s bash was distinctly odd, and a little unsettling. Okay, it was business as usual for the most part. Trillions of new products vie for our attention and as has been the case for as long as I can remember they’re split – not evenly – between ‘stand out’, ‘bread and butter’, and ‘don’t bother’.

Yet during a typical ‘what’s new?’ discussion, a well-known industry veteran had the audacity to call this writer cynical, and wondered if such a ‘cynic’ should be reviews editor on such a prestigious product-based magazine as Guitarist.

I’d prefer ‘realist’ to cynic, as one thing that covering so many NAMM shows has taught me is to think they’re all rubbish unless they can persuade me different. Yet actually, on reflection, I think I’m more of an optimist.

I was certainly optimistic that my bladder would hold out as, increasingly desperately I searched for a friggin’ restroom towards the end of NAMM’s second day. Dodging the queues of star-spotting trade visitors (yeah, right!) I sensed a bead of fear-induced sweat begin to prickle my forehead. What if I didn’t make it?

Thankfully, I spotted my destination and quickened my pace to what now resembled a lolloping gallop. I upped my pace to a full-on hurtle and knocking at least one be-tatted dude out of the way in the process I cut across the corner of a stand.

“Hey, man are you a drummer or a guitar player,” asked the rep. Holding on to my wedding vegetables, I winched out the word, guitarist, and really thought I’d piss myself. “Well you need these,” said the clean-cut rep. “Guitar picks that’ll bio-degrade in 90 days; they’re made of wheat.”

At this point I’d have believed anything just to get to the loo. I reached inside the concrete-filled bass enclosure hanging from my shoulder, gave the rep my card in return for aforementioned sample bag of wheat picks and said, in a rather high-pitched squeak, “Sorry, but I really must piss.”

I ran straight into the ladies, and bumped into the cushioned frontage of very frightened-looking surgically assisted dudette.
Having eventually found the right watering hole I absent-mindedly read the blurb about the wheat pick while Percy did his job. Not bad, I thought, this could be accessory of the show (the pick, not Percy).

Later that evening, over a well-earned Corona, I recounted the above story to a rapt audience of Guitarist editor Mick Taylor and Fender GBI’s Neil Whitcher and Alex Ballantyne. Handing around the picks, Neil wondered if he could eat it while Alex requested a thinner one to try.

Duly dispatched he held it between his thumb and forefinger and with slight pressure he flexed it and… snap! The pick had started to degrade in a lot less then 90 days. Needless to say, there were soon four grown men wiping tears from their eyes. See, it pays to be cynical doesn’t it?

While NAMM 2008 could have been known for a well-known journalist pissing himself, it will, of course, be known not for any standout product but acquisition-related news that had us all conjecting on the future of our business. In the guitar sector of course, the word ‘Fender’ must have been uttered millions of times.

It was enough that the corporation was taking on Taylor’s European distribution but when news broke that by the summer of this year it would be handling all the previously purchased Kaman brands there were some even more glum faces to be seen.

Still, things had perked up a bit by the last day. Korg’s Rob Castle wasn’t so much mourning the loss of Takamine as suggesting it’s probably for the best, before asking my opinion on a replacement brand. The king is dead, long live the king.

Earlier in the show I’d chatted to Hamer’s Jol Danzig who’s been making great guitars for more than a quarter of a century. He told me he, like the mass majority of Kaman staff, had woken to the news that they were now owned by Fender. “What can you do?” he mused. Nothing.

Cynically, I should be predicting doom and gloom; a brand monopoly and all the implications it has for those of us not partaking of the Fender shekel. But, realistically, what can most of us do?

Optimistically, I’m hoping those who’ve lost brands will replace them with the new Taylors, Takamines et al. More new brands to learn about, build and sell. But let’s hope we back the right horses. I’m not being cynical when I say I doubt they’ll be made of wheat.