So, Tuesday morning, January 15th, my wife Karen, and my son Alex, all pile into our old Dodge Caravan for a trip to the NAMM Show in Anaheim, California. We stopped in Roswell, NM - a very weird little town with streetlights in the shape of little alien heads (with huge black eyes), and a MacDonald’s in the shape of a flying saucer.

We spent the next night in Banning, waking up Thursday morning to a gorgeous Southern California day (while you were all freezing your collective asses off in North Texas).

We arrived at the NAMM Show and went to get our badges. After gettinng in, we went through most of Hall E. Most of the music exhibits are located in five different halls. Since each hall is about the size of a football field, there’s no way you can ever see the whole show. Plus add about 10,000 people going to the show each day, and you get the picture - mass chaos.

Punk rockers in full dress, pink hair and metal piercings that would never make it through an airport metal detector. Plus old mom and pop music dealers, salesmen trying to look hip and cool, and bored manufacturer’s reps, who’ve been doing this same show for decades.

We saw one guy in a full Gene Simmon’s “Kiss” outfit, complete with six-inch platform boots and makeup. We also ran into Stevie Wonder, Slash from Guns n Roses, and John Anderson, the lead singer in Yes. Nothing big in the way of showstoppers in equipment though, pretty much just slightly-improved versions of old models.

From Friday to Sunday, we checked out the other halls, found lots of knockoffs of Tele’s. Strat’s and Les Paul’s. Some really high-priced boutique guitar amps and heads and some decent players demoing stuff they were endorsing.

All in all, it was a pretty good show, but we were glad to be heading back to Texas. The following Tuesday, we went to the House Of Blues in Dallas to hear Robin Trower. Now for an old guy, he still plays pretty damn good. If you’re a fan of Jimi Hendrix, you’d like Robin, who gets pretty close to Hendrix in sound and phrases. No seats, just standing only, which was a drag. Again, an interesting mix of old people and young kids. (Harvey Gerst), ITR Studios, http://ITRstudio.com