The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) trade show and convention took place in Anaheim, California this week. NAMM is as good a representation of America as anything I can think of. It is big, it is loud and it is over the top. It is commercialism run amok. It is about fashion and trends. It is about the latest and greatest. It is about celebrity idolatry. It is rock and roll. It is about the buzz. You put them all together in one big building and it makes a carnival midway at a state fair feel like a monastery. It’s a mega mall with Marshalls. It’s a tent revival with hookers. It’s like a world’s fair without the science exhibit. It’s like SXSW without the mosquitoes. It’s like the Comic-Con convention except with people who have had sex.

Here are some numbers:

90,000 registrants

1,400 companies exhibiting their products

800,000 square feet of floor space

Here is another fun fact.  NAMM is beneath me.

I don’t mean figuratively, but literally as I sit in my favorite spot at this enormous carnival of commerce. My third floor perch is in front of the Fender exhibition space where I can take a load off and actually hear myself think. I can even return a few phone calls and write this missive.  

The large windows that face east also have views to the north and south. From here I can actually look out and see my past. My childhood home is in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains and can be seen from this vantage point. That neighborhood is of course completely unrecognizable as orange groves, horse country and cattle ranches were replaced with suburban sprawl a long time ago.

Down the street, date palms that look like Doric columns, line the boulevard leading to the convention hall. The gladiators that are making their way to this cacophonous coliseum of culture are, believe it or not, dressed for success. This week the hotels aren’t populated with a bunch of folks wearing black mouse ears, but people with mousse in their black hair.

To my left is Disneyland and beyond it, just a few miles north, I can see the approximate spot where Leo Fender opened his first plant. They don’t make solid body guitars, basses and amps in Fullerton anymore. Guitars and amps are like a lot of products that used to be made in America; they are now made overseas. If NAMM is quintessentially an American experience, then this is part of the narrative as well. Over the years the amount of Asian manufacturers represented at NAMM has grown exponentially. It is easy to hear people speaking in many languages, dialects and various forms of regional gibberish. “That BLUES JUNCTION guy is like all.... I tried to put a sticker on his shirt and he was like no thank you.” 

The music industry sometimes seems just as foreign and distant to me as my own home town.

I like to start at the top, and since the Fender exhibit gets very crowded very fast, my strategy is similar to the plan of attack every savvy parent employs when taking the troops (kids) to Disneyland across the street. Get to the park early and make a bee line to Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean and then the Haunted Mansion. At NAMM you get to Fender, and on the same floor, the Gibson exhibition space first. It is also helpful to have a V.I.P. badge as Fender doesn’t open to the general NAMM populace until noon on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

I also like to start at the top because I can procrastinate and postpone my descent into the main exhibit hall as long as I like. That gets later and later every year.  I put this off as long as I can because experience tells me that the rest of the day will be a whirlwind of activity that is relentless. I have to admit, I enjoy it to some extent but at the same time, I always feel a little out of place.

What confuses a lot of folks about blues music, if they think about it at all, is the fact that the people who make it by and large just don’t care about trends, style, fashion, the latest and greatest in terms of technology. It is these things that drive NAMM and American culture at large. NAMM is about high tech and blues guys by and large are about low-fi. Rock is about something new and blues is timeless. 

It might be a scary proposition for some folks to jump off the ravenous beast of commercialism and listen to the roar disappear in the distance, as he races for his next prey. Blues guys left this world behind a long time ago. They live in this kind of parallel universe that is a part of, yet slightly removed from, the larger music industry. Maybe it is completely removed...I don’t know.

I do know that I ran into a fair amount of blues and roots musicians this week, taking a peak at the beast that is NAMM. The general consensus was, “This is nuts.... let’s get out of here Dave.” As tempting as that thought sounded, it always crossed my mind.  “What am I missing here? Shouldn’t we pay a little more attention to what’s new in the music world? Shouldn’t we check out what the next ‘buzz’ is going to be? Shouldn’t we be taking pictures of ourselves hanging out with rock stars and trade show hotties and post them on Facebook?”

There of course were several manufacturers who had terrific exhibits that some of these cats wanted to visit. One of my favorite aspects of the NAMM experience each year is learning from the musicians as they ask questions about some of the new products that are on display at the show. The almost always very knowledgeable reps answer the questions with laser beam precision. If you are hanging out with a working blues musician the conversation typically ends the same way. “That is cool... I just can’t afford it right now.”

As we walk away, I have heard many times, “Dave, I’ll pick that up for half price in two years when that rock and roller sells it on Craigslist and buys the next new thing.”

As always, the people who help facilitate this exposition are helpful, friendly and courteous to a fault. The NAMM employees acted like professional concierges whose utmost concern was that their guests could make the most of the experience. The employees of the Anaheim convention center itself also handled themselves with a great degree of professionalism. Many of these individuals have been around many years and they seemed genuinely happy to see a familiar face stop to visit with them for a   few moments each year.

On this Saturday at NAMM, the morning rain has subsided and I can see a rainbow in the sky. The pot of gold hopefully is that the 2012 winter NAMM show is a success. I can see folks still streaming into the hall and even my little slice of heaven is getting a little crowded. As the great photographer and raconteur Billy Wayne Turner told me a couple of days earlier. “There are just too many NAMM people.” Be that as it may, it is time to face the inevitable and descend into the belly of the beast.

- David Mac