Downstairs at the NAMM show they house the booths of the wannabes.\u00c2\u00a0 Selling guitars made out of composites, accessories one could see no use for, it was depressing to walk by and see the purveyors staring into space, or talking on their cell phones.<\/p>\n
Maybe some of the companies will break through.\u00c2\u00a0 One booth was selling folding guitars, for travel use.\u00c2\u00a0 They even had an endorsement from Brad Paisley.<\/p>\n
But I didn’t even recognize many of the endorsers plastered on the booths of the big companies on the main floor.\u00c2\u00a0 Remember when you used to geek out, at the equipment and the players, when they were stars?\u00c2\u00a0 If they’re featuring the drummer for David Cook, if they’re telling you what band the guy played in, how big a star could he be?<\/p>\n
Sure, I loved fingering the Marshalls.\u00c2\u00a0 And thought back to seeing Stevie Wonder open for the Stones when I saw a booth full of Orange amps.\u00c2\u00a0 But I was truly dazzled by Remo.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the way you make money, you’ve got to OWN the market!\u00c2\u00a0 I’m sure there’s another brand of drumhead, but I don’t know it.\u00c2\u00a0 And I can name four brands of drums off the top of my head.\u00c2\u00a0 Probably more!\u00c2\u00a0 Ludwig, Pearl, DW, Slingerland…do they still make Slingerland?<\/p>\n
And there are three companies in the cymbal world.\u00c2\u00a0 Zildjian, Sabian and Paiste.\u00c2\u00a0 I once worked at a camp with a couple of Zildjian kids.\u00c2\u00a0 This was before the split.\u00c2\u00a0 Their father was the caretaker of a storied empire.\u00c2\u00a0 God, it’s so hard to break through today.\u00c2\u00a0 How do you get recognized, how do you make your mark?\u00c2\u00a0 I guess most of these companies fail.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the American way.\u00c2\u00a0 They get investors who get a tax write-off.\u00c2\u00a0 No different from the Internet bubble.\u00c2\u00a0 But, some people work their whole lives just so their kids can be dilettantes, taking over the company and…<\/p>\n
Speaking of the younger generation, I had to laugh at all the piercings and tattoos.\u00c2\u00a0 Until I realized it was a badge of honor, it showed you were a member of the club.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that all those tattoos are permanent, and so few of the wannabes are ever going to make it.\u00c2\u00a0 But they believe they will, before they come to realize their day job is their real job.\u00c2\u00a0 Or, if they’re lucky, they’ll get to demonstrate the equipment.\u00c2\u00a0 I saw a guy with long hair and tattoos demonstrating a Roland amp for some Japanese who stood in rapt attention.\u00c2\u00a0 He was playing every style.\u00c2\u00a0 Every style but his own.<\/p>\n
I felt none of the rush I used to get on 48th Street, when they’d sell a $1,000 guitar in Manny’s in a minute.\u00c2\u00a0 When I’d see Gene Cornish in Sam Ash.\u00c2\u00a0 Somehow, the instruments were divorced from the music.\u00c2\u00a0 Until I got upstairs.<\/p>\n
Did you know Fender bought Guild?\u00c2\u00a0 And Jackson?\u00c2\u00a0 Seemingly every hip company in the field?\u00c2\u00a0 There were endless showcases.\u00c2\u00a0 You wondered why anybody bought anything else.<\/p>\n
And then I saw EVH.<\/p>\n
I noticed the logo on the amps when I’d seen Van Halen at Staples.\u00c2\u00a0 I thought it was a vanity play.\u00c2\u00a0 But now you can buy exactly what Eddie plays.\u00c2\u00a0 Or so he insists.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not enough of a geek, or a player, to know.\u00c2\u00a0 But I did get a rush.\u00c2\u00a0 I could feel the power just looking at those amps.\u00c2\u00a0 I had to run my fingers over the grille.\u00c2\u00a0 I could hear "Runnin’ With The Devil" in my mind.<\/p>\n
But where was Gibson?<\/p>\n
Gibson had a fraction of the floorspace of Fender.\u00c2\u00a0 And you never know if it’s all for show.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether Fender dominates in market share, in hipness, like they do in floorspace.<\/p>\n
But what Gibson had was a mini-museum.\u00c2\u00a0 Where they told the story of the Les Paul.<\/p>\n
Keith Richard played one first.\u00c2\u00a0 Then Clapton picked one up.\u00c2\u00a0 Which was stolen, I believe.\u00c2\u00a0 And then Peter Green saw Clapton with his and had to get one too. And Jeff Beck.\u00c2\u00a0 And one of these guys was so busy modifying his axe that he fucked it up, and had to get a new one and start all over.<\/p>\n
And then Beck quit the Yardbirds for a week and Page used his guitar.\u00c2\u00a0 But really, what hooked Page was when he met Joe Walsh at the Cow Palace and Joe gave him HIS Les Paul.\u00c2\u00a0 Which Jimmy went on to use to record "Led Zeppelin II".<\/p>\n
It was utterly astounding.\u00c2\u00a0 How the trend started, how they literally passed certain guitars from one to another.\u00c2\u00a0 All these legendary cats.\u00c2\u00a0 Who might not have been legendary then, but Clapton did play on that Bluesbreakers album.\u00c2\u00a0 They referenced that.\u00c2\u00a0 The hoi polloi might know "Tears In Heaven", but the cognoscenti know "Ramblin’ On My Mind".\u00c2\u00a0 It was this album that made Clapton God.<\/p>\n
And then Peter Green and Mick Taylor played Les Pauls with Mayall thereafter.\u00c2\u00a0 And Bloomfield came to the U.K. and saw everybody with the same axe.\u00c2\u00a0 And Billy Gibbons was in the Moving Sidewalks, and then he picked up his Les Paul and started ZZ Top.<\/p>\n
It was like a movie.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 One of those Hollywood fantasies where the same prop figures in so many lives.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was not a fantasy, this was real.\u00c2\u00a0 This was it.\u00c2\u00a0 Right here, in this exhibit, was the history of the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 It was these guys, so many of them still alive, that infected the audience, that got everybody to play. Because what they wrung out of their Les Pauls was better than anything but sex.\u00c2\u00a0 No video game or movie could compare.\u00c2\u00a0 Sometimes the music was as good as sex.\u00c2\u00a0 And they didn’t do it for fame, they didn’t know you could get that rich, they were doing it for the sound.\u00c2\u00a0 The way you felt it inside when you hit the right note.<\/p>\n
By time I was through mining the Gibson exhibit, with Duane Allman’s opening riff of "Statesboro Blues" whipping through my brain, I realized my long hair might be gone, I might be absent piercings and tattoos, but I too was one of the flock.\u00c2\u00a0 Music brought me here.\u00c2\u00a0 I had no choice.<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Downstairs at the NAMM show they house the booths of the wannabes.\u00c2\u00a0 Selling guitars made out of composites, accessories one could see no use for, it was depressing to walk by and see the purveyors staring into space, or talking on their cell phones. Maybe some of the companies will break through.\u00c2\u00a0 One booth was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-namm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}