Most people in the music biz dislike NAMM in Anaheim – the hotels (or rather lack of rooms) and parking are beyond terrible, everyone gets sick, it’s insanely expensive, their noise control is a joke, they put cymbals next to guitar pedals, they charge insane amounts of money for crappy tables, you have to follow all of their rules designed to put money into other people’s pockets, and some years the biggest vendors just plain ignore it because it isn’t worth the money. Small up and coming companies who could really use the exposure have no hope of paying the over the top crazy fees. Yes, companies publicly pretend to love being at NAMM, but the only thing they actually love is the after parties.
But Summer NAMM in Nashville was different. It was less expensive, smaller, and most people enjoyed it more. It was slowly getting bigger and bigger, not necessarily a great thing, but it is what it is.
Except there IS no Summer NAMM in Nashville in 2022, because NAM cancelled it. Instead, they rescheduled Winter NAMM to June 3-5 in Anaheim.
It’s like two slaps in the face – oh, you like escaping the snow to come to California in January? SLAP! Now it’s in the summer. Oh, you liked going to the smaller Nashville event? SLAP! We cancelled it.
I get it. We still can’t have big events because hospitals are full of Covid patients (90% of which never got vaccinated) and the cases are through the roof if you actually look at the numbers. The NAMM folks are hopeful that by June, the pandemic will be mostly gone, and they can have in-person NAMM instead of virtual NAMM. But they did it at the expense of Summer NAMM, and people who love Summer NAMM (and Nashville) aren’t going to be happy. I was going to GO to Summer NAMM. No way am I going to NAMM in Anaheim in June. Or any other time.
Be honest – for a music convention, would you rather go to Nashville or Anaheim? C’mon, now. Anaheim has DisneyLand. Yeah. I live in Florida. I’ll see your DisneyLAND and raise you DisneyWORLD, smart ass. And the other three Disney Parks and the two Universal Parks. OMG, if they moved Winter NAMM to Orlando in January they’d do SO much better. Orlando knows how to handle conventions. They wouldn’t charge you $50 per sip at the drinking fountain.
The thought just occurred to me that eventually Summer NAMM might return, and if I want to get a press pass, I might consider toning down on the NAMM hate. Naw. My site is too small for a post like this to go viral, and if it did, well, you can attend Summer NAMM as a member of the public. Or at least you could… before those dickheads cancelled it. I was really looking forward to it.
