117th Annual NAMM Show

The NAMM Show (National Association of Music Merchants) jammed Anaheim January 24-28 with 7,000 music brands, 2,000 exhibiting companies, and 116,000 international attendees cruising the 3-story convention center, its new North building, and outdoor Grand Plaza concert stage. The NAMM University Education Center held 500 seminars at the Anaheim Hilton.

The major coup this year was a three-hour seminar with recording audio engineer legend and four-time Grammy winner, Geoff Emerick, (The Beatles, Cheap Trick, Billy Bob Thornton). Seated next to me in the first row were London’s Sensible Studios directors Jack Freegard and Jeff Allen, friends of Howard Massey, who emceed the presentation. Noted from Emerick’s talk: He started at age 6 listening to music on 78s, at 15 was hired as an intern at EMI through his school; on day two on the job, he was in The Beatles’s first recording session with George Martin and in three years their audio engineer. A pair of brass scissors to cut recording tape and speed control were all they had at the time; for the rest he would, “abuse the audio system” from mic’ing vocals through a Leslie for John Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows” to incorporating McCartney’s homemade tape loops. 

He played “Strawberry Fields” pointing out the edit point where it was made from the 2 takes Lennon wanted, “I like the beginning of the first one, and the end of the second one. Why don’t we just join them together?” The edit can be found at precisely one minute into the song, following the words “Let me take you down, ’cause I’m…” from the first cello note onward, the remake of take 26. “George Martin would always say to The Beatles, ‘We’ll sort it out,’ which meant, I would figure out how to do it.” 

The alarm clock heard on “A Day In the Life” was recorded by mistake. It was to signal to the band the end of a 24-bar orchestral crescendo, but Emerick couldn’t get it off the tape. “Ironically, the next line Paul sang was ‘got up got out of bed,’ so it worked out”. 

The Beatles represented the BBC and Britain, on Our World, the world’s first live television satellite link seen by 400 million people across five continents, on June 25 1967. Lennon wrote “All You Need Is Love” in fewer than three weeks for it. For “Revolution”, Lennon insisted on lying down to record it. Geoff admirably stated, “Lennon and McCartney had perfect pitch when they sang – there was never a need to correct it, as with everyone else.” He ended with a Q & A, signing autographs and photo ops.

Thumbs Up to:

D’Addario’s guitar string recycle program PLAYBACK, managed by TERRACYCLE, for 1.3 million strings recycled to date! 

Alastair Greene for his scorchin’ guitar demos of Seymor Duncan‘s new guitar pedal named after our famous restaurant, La Super Rica Fuzz, a hot tamale sound for sure!

Orange Amps is celebrating its50^thanniversary. I met with product rep James Garza of Santa Barbara formerly with Seymour Duncan, to spec their 2018 amps: a new lightweight 120-watt full sound PPC212V  vertical Guitar Cabinet weighing 45 pounds with vintage-voiced frequency response Celestion G12 Neo Creamback 12-inch speakers, an open back and 15-ml birch plywood cabinet [usually 18 ml]. For customers who wanted the Rocker 15 Combo in a head, get the Rocker 15 Terror, which goes from 15 to 0.5 watts, so “bedroom to headroom,” super-flexible and portable with the Orange DNA sound. Also released at NAMM is the Brent Hinds Terror 15-watt, two-channel Tube Head – the world’s first valve Acoustic PreAmp, and a Crush Miniamp with classic Orange tone.

Fender‘s Senior Product Development manager Allen Abbassi took time to go over the new electric guitars for 2018: “For the American Original Series, we made it more playable and kept it vintage to allow peeps to experience what it was like to own a guitar in a specific decade. They are lacquer in the cool vintage car colors that Leo borrowed with decade-matched hardware. The fingerboard radius is a flatter 9½” and the frets are higher, so it’s easier to play, bend the string, and give more life to the frets. We put five-way switches on the strats and removed the neck pick-up bass circuit on the teles in this series. The Eric Johnson Stratocaster® designed by Eric has the top belly-cut with all the strat contours and an f-hole for acoustic warmth. It’s an alder-wood top on bottom with chambers on the right and left, and an f-hole over one of the chambers. The Meteora from our Parallel Universe Series is a guitar the owner can customize neck and the pickguard easily with a screwdriver, with Jazzmaster black block inlays on the neck, a butterscotch-black-blonde tele body and pro-tele bridge. The guitars are being launched one per month, starting in February.”

Sabian’s Don’t Hold Back Frequency Reduction Cymbals –what?! Targeting churches, weddings, corporate gigs, small venues, schools, and the like, product rep Mark Love said, “FRX’s are not low-volume, they cut specific high-end frequencies by the cymbal’s decreased mass and critical areas. Made of professional B20 bronze in 14-inch hats [clear & crisp], 16-inch, 17-inch, and 18-inch Crash [fast shimmery] and 20-inch and 21-inch Ride [dark] cymbals, are to help drummers in compromising gigs. Priced as expected, sold out at NAMM.

D’Angelico Guitars NYCgave away a guitar and tickets to a private concert with Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, who won the 2018 NAMM Music for Life Award. Steve Pisani D’Angelico president unveiled their first solid-body electric guitars at NAMM, the Ludlow, the Bedford, and the Atlantic, in premier and deluxe models, and a Grateful Dead Bedford model, all using Seymour Duncan pickups, on sale in March.

Neumann is reissuing its U67 Tube Microphone in March, price yet to be announced. Theyclaim it’s sonically identical to the original 1960 mic, all hand-made in Germany using the same tube factory. The first 67 lost sales due to its focused midrange response, which didn’t cut high-end vocals when the song industry changed. For this, its 90^th year, Neumann is hoping it will boost revenues. 

Musiciansat NAMM included: Steve Lukather, Michael McDonald, Lindsey Stirling, Sam Moore, Marc Broussard, Butch Walker, Sheléa, Nicko McBrain, Jesse Hughes, Michael Anthony, Misha Mansoor, Keith Shocklee, Alice Cooper, Eric Johnson, Rex Brown, Flavor Flav, Geezer Butler, Hunter Hayes, Dave Kos, Bootsy Collins, Adrian Young, Frank Zummo, Billy Sheehan. and Lin Dong.

The 2018 Les Paul Award to musician Jackson Browne. NAMM 2018 TEC Award to Bruno Mars 24-Magic for Record Production/Album, single track and tour sound production. The Parnelli Lifetime Achievement Award to Bobby “Boomer” Thrasher [Billy Joel]. She Rocks 2018 Awards to Melissa Etheridge, Pat Benatar, the B52’s Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson.

411: www.namm.org