NAMM 2009 - Greatest Weekend EVER!!!!!!!!!

Alright, this is gonna be a long one.....


Last week my good friend Larry made my decade when he called me up saying he had an extra ticket to the winter NAMM show (national association of music merchants) in Ahaheim. This is one of the largest music products trade shows in the world, if not the largest, and it is not open to the public. It's a very hot ticket and I have been trying to get my hands on one for five years now. So needless to say I was so stoked (still am) and we were able to go Friday and Saturday. The convention center is absolutely huge and there were thousands of booths and tens of thousands of people walking around, checking out the new music gear and checking out their favorite musicians who made appearances at the various booths throughout the 4 day show.

I took a lot of pictures and as you'll soon see, wasn't able to trim it down to only a select few. The highlights of the weekend were:

-Meeting Victor Wooten THE virtuoso bassist of the world and seeing him play a 30 minute solo set TWO FEET AWAY!!!
-Meeting P-Nut the bass player for my all-time favorite band 311 and seeing his 30 minute set again only a few feet away!
-Meeting Tim Mahoney the guitarist for 311 and chatting with him.
-Meeting Johnny Hiland and seeing his incredible set as Paul Reid Smith unveiled the new PRS line of amps. Johnny is an incredibly versatile guitarist and it was amazing to see him improvise and jam live!
-Seeing Steve Vai who is arguably the top virtuoso electric guitar player in the world.
-Seeing Dave Navarro the guitarist of Jane's Addiction and ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist.
-Watching Yngwie Malmsteen warm up for a few minutes before a solo set - the guy is so fast!!!
-Watching Steve Morse the guitarist of Deep Purple and The Dixie Dregs play a solo set.

With that, bring on the pictures.....



Here's Yngwie Malmsteen warming up.



Here's Victor Wooten playing his awesome Fodera Yin/Yang Signature Bass.





Check out this video of Vic:



The legendary Steve Vai signing autographs at the Ibanez booth.







P-Nut playing his Warwick Custom shop 10-string Streamer bass.







Check out this video of P-Nut:



So my friend Larry is an artist and designed a really cool ambigram of the words "play hard" which means that when you flip the words upside down, it looks exactly the same. Anyway, when we met Tim and got some autographs we were talking about how he always signs all of his autographs backwards. So then Larry shows him the play hard wristband he's wearing and Tim thought it was really cool so he took it off and gave it to Tim who proceeded to show everybody else in line his awesome new wristband w/play hard on it. It was pretty cool. Larry was on cloud nine! Here are some pics of the whole thing:










Steve Morse of Deep Purple and The Dixie Dregs


Mr. Seymour Duncan himself!


Mr. Paul Reid Smith himself! He was the emcee for the Johnny Hiland performance and it was really cool because it was the unveiling of the new PRS amps. Paul would switch Johnny's cable between the new clean, mid-gain, and the high-gain amps right in the middle of Johnny's playing. It was awesome! You could tell Paul was genuinely having a blast up there and it was such a cool performance by Johnny.




Johnny Hiland getting ready to tear it up at his PRS performance (notice the 3 brand spankin' new PRS amps behind him. Did I mention this was the world unveiling of the PRS amps??) Just another PRS product I'll never be able to afford...... :)





Johnny is THE MAN!!!!!



Check out these 4 videos of Johnny's performance. Especially the last one which has Paul Reid Smith asking Johnny if he can make his guitar sound like a train, pig, whale, horse, dirtbike, etc. It's pretty cool and it was hilarious to be there and see it live!













Dave Navarro was walking literally right in front of Larry and I and these two booth babes (the "Dean Girls" as everyone called them) stopped him to get a picture and she whipped around and threw her camera at me since I was the closest person standing there. I took a great picture w/her camera and Larry took this one of the whole exchange. Too bad his finger was covering up the top of the lens. Still, it's a pretty cool picture we thought.



Here's Dave at the PRS table.



The man, the myth, the legend at the Alvarez booth.....



Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro - he was shreddin'



Here is Dr. Lonnie Smith rocking out on the organ. He is a player of the Hammond B3 organ, and apparently he is considered by many to be the world's top jazz organist. Who knew???


Some dude slapping like crazy while holding the bass upside down. It was insane!!!


Yours truly hittin' on the sexy gold lady. She's pretty hot.


Wasn't this guy in Goonies???


Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains


The Bangles


Hovek Byuran playing a really cool 8 string bass by Armen Guitars


Here's the equipment section:

Amps

Biggest cabinet I've ever seen! Huge Ampeg Bass Cab.
























Basses













PRS Booth - or as Larry liked to call it, "The Temple of Guitars"

















The Fret Candy Car - these guys are from Georgia and do some incredibly intricate and beautiful fret inlays.



Some German dude from Digitech demo-ing a bunch of their pedals.




Fender Booth











Gibson Booth





The ugliest piano I've ever seen!


Gretsch Booth


Crazy Guitars





























The David and Goliath guitar - nice!




Discovered Manleylabs which specializes in tubes and other electronics and audio gear. Cool flag if I do say so myself.




Martin Guitars Booth





Check out the price of this bad boy....


But that's nothin' compared to this one!!!






We got to play with 3 moogerfoogers. Man, I want one.


There were tons of guitar picks everywhere and Larry and I collected our fair share throughout the weekend.






A pretty good band from Nashville (I think) playing at the Taylor Guitars Booth


Visual Sound pedals


Warwick Booth



P-Nut's giant poster at the Warwick Booth



Like I said it was probably the best weekend ever and I want to thank my sweet wife for "letting" me go back on Saturday after being there all day Friday. You're the best Meliss! And of course, thanks a million again to Larry, and to Jeff and Clay from Nashville. You guys rock!

Until next year.....