NAMM 2025
Explaining NAMM to friends outside of the music industry is like a physicist describing the complex interplay between magnetic fields and ionized gasses in solar flares to a cookbook editor. Because it’s no one thing. In fact, the essence of the convention is the stark dichotomy between its stated purpose — giving musical equipment manufacturers and retailers a place to do business — and its debauched reality, which is a four-day bacchanal in Anaheim, where musicians and industry folk from every genre, tier and country convert the Anaheim Convention Center into a cacophonous maelstrom powered by coffee, booze and bullshit.
It’s really, really fun.
Each year, vendors introduce their latest lines of basses, guitars, keyboards, drums, speakers, software, woodwinds, brass instruments, microphones, didgeridoos, kazoos and tiny, hand-carved scrimshaw tuners for mandolins. For every instrument and every part of an instrument, there is an entire goddamned wing of vendors. Business is, of course, conducted aggressively, though it seems like the highest volume of business takes place between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m.. Coincidentally, this is also the window of time in which vendors begin popping open the coolers packed with cold beers and other seductive intoxicants that they’ve stashed under their tables.
Serious men cut their deals in the morning. The well-rested, flint-eyed businessman ready to issue a ream of purchase orders will find himself at a considerable strategic advantage over the clammy-skinned, foggy-brained vendor who spent the previous night viciously abusing their liver at one of the many all-star jams that go off each evening in clubs around Anaheim.
There are, of course, thousands of people who have nothing do to with the music industry, other than a blood relation to or friendship with somebody with a connection for getting NAMM badges. It’s a massive draw for civilians due to the spectacle — picture one hundred thousand people, packed into four levels of a slick concrete monolith, all playing music instruments at once - the keyboard section is right next to the guitar and bass area, which is next to the drum area. Horns are across the hallway and dotting the perimeter is every kind of instrument that you can possibly imagine.
At each booth, several people are test driving the instruments, so at any single moment, you’re probably hearing ten thousand people, with a jaw-dropping range of talent, playing ten thousand different songs. Throw in the dazzling lights, presentations, speaker panels and scantily-clad sirens beckoning passersby to toss their business card into a fishbowl for a chance to win something like a guitar pedal, and you’re in the middle of a phenomenon that can only ever happen in that very place at that very time.
To drive activity to their booths, the big dogs flex by setting up meet-and-greets with artists that they endorse. Could be anybody from members of Black Sabbath or Guns N’ Roses to unknown singer-songwriters there to play some songs. The bigger the vendor, the bigger the name and in the course of a single lap around the joint, it would be all but impossible to not pass by an artist that you know and likely, a few who are on some of your Spotify playlists.
I arrived at 8 yesterday morning, had coffee with friends and walked the floor until 3. I caught up with a gang of pals, a few colleagues and made a number of new acquaintances. But that was all I needed. In previous years, when covering NAMM for a magazine, I’ve had meetings with vendors for three days straight. This year, my only To Do item was walk around. And that I did.
I flirted briefly with going up there again today but Saturday afternoon is the absolute craziest time to be there. And maybe it’s the inexorable push of the aging process, but the prospect of sitting home on my couch, dogs on either side of me and Netflix bumping on my TV sounded pretty damned good.