The NAMM Experience As It Happened - Part 1

This is going to take a several days to chronicle. This is part 1 of I don't know how many parts. I hope it gives you a pretty good insight into what goes on with myself and the Rock House gang at NAMM.

The NAMM experience is like no other. The massive musical industry trade show is the cream of the crop with over 1800 exhibitors there to show their wares.

After spending the previous night with our friends from Rock House, my wife and I hit the floor running after getting some breakfast and visiting with the gang for a bit. Taking off from the hotel in the rockmobile with Brian at the controls I learned that it truly is a small world. As we were getting ready to pull into traffic someone says “hey isn’t that Marc Rizzo?’ Sure enough walking down the sidewalk was Marc. After yelling at him and convincing him we weren't a group of lunatic fans he recognized everyone and jumped in for the ride to the Hilton where the trade show was being held.

The ride is about 2 blocks but takes about 10 minutes to drive. On the way Marc told us that everything was going great in his world. He has a couple of tours coming this spring and summer with INPSYCHOBLEEDIA and SOULFLY and will be working on some albums. I have to say Marc is a personable guy with a big smile on his face at all times.

We arrived at the Hilton, as I stepped out into the world of NAMM I have to admit I was a little shocked at the number of people I saw. When entering the convention center it was sort of like watching cattle getting herded in to a loading chute. The folks running the show did a nice job moving the lines along and we were inside in no time after showing passes and id’s.

John and Joe had gone a little earlier than the rest of and would not be seen until the end of the day. They are 2 busy guys and had meetings with potential artists and instrument manufacturers set all day. Our mission for the morning was to get WimBash invitations to the Rock House partner companies. There are a bunch of partner companies so everyone took a couple and split up to deliver them. As Karen and I were delivering them we realized that WimBash was a huge, huge deal. We had a ton of passes to hand out to people as we just walked around, it was incredible the amount of people that saw we had passes to the show and ask if they could have a couple. Of course we gave them out to anyone that asked for them.

Karen and I had a little time before we had to meet up with the Rock House Crew so I started looking around. Some displayers have a small space like a 10’ by 20’ booth and others have booths of about 1,000 square feet, a couple are bigger than that.

The Peavey booth sticks out like a sore thumb, you just can’t miss it. As I stood and looked at it that “kid in a candy store” feeling started. With their entire line of guitar, basses, amps and accessories on display I started mentally making a list of what I would like. I walked around saying “I want one of those and one of these and ooh……one of those. Karen stood there laughing at me as I drooled over about everything I saw. Cool thing about the Peavey booth, as well as with others, if you liked it and wanted to try it, then just pick it up and try it. No hassles, no problems. You could even take the guitars into sound rooms, plug ‘em in and play until your heart was content.

Leaving there we walked the aisles and took in as much as we could in as short of a period of time as we could. We had to meet the crew back at the Peavey booth to pick up prizes for drawings that would he held at WimBash.

Now, when I talk about prizes I’m not talking about picks and strings here. I’m talking stuff that if you won would knock you out. Peavey gave 4 guitars. Not their low end stuff either. These were customs, a real special treat for someone to win. Others that we picked prizes up from were Spector who donated a Doug Wimbish signature bass, EMG Pickups gave some autographed Zack Wilde pickups, Intellitouch tuners from Intellitouch and added to the mix was about 100 WimBash t-shirts that Rock House brought along.

With all that done it was time for me to go to work. I spent the afternoon introducing myself to more Rock House partners and gathering information that will be of good use to the Rock House Blog, The Rock House Method web site and to the readers. I won’t go into details about all that but the contacts are the reason for the slew of Ibanez announcements you have seen recently on the blog.

The end of the work day ended with me setting in my hotel room with tears in my eyes because my feet were killing me. Setting on the chair with my feet up on the bed looking at my Nike Shockz and cursing them, then looking at my watch and cursing it. I only had about an hour before we were all going out to eat.

And that my friend is another story. So as the old saying goes, to be continued……..