| A Grand Day Out at Music Live 2006 |
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David Taylor forsakes the office fireworks party for a fun trip to the NEC, Birmingham. It isn’t often that we at amateurmusician are allowed out of our cages and sent out to explore the world in general, but so it was on a cold but bright Saturday morning early in November that we ventured outside into the sunshine to make our way to the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham for ‘Music Live 2006’. Armed only with press passes and digital cameras we set off blinking through the sharp overnight frost, excited at what delights lay ahead that day. Okay, that’s a load of rubbish, not the overnight frost bit, it sure was cold, I mean the excitement part. The previous night I’d found myself in the old upstairs room of a local tavern listening to an excellent blues band, and overindulging in the tasting of fine ales! I felt awful, and was glad that the chore of driving was not mine.  For the uninitiated, ‘Music Live’ is one of the UK’s leading trade show events for the musical instrument industry. It presents an opportunity for all of the top brand leaders, manufacturers, distributors and vendors to display and demonstrate their range of products. With so many dealers exhibiting (120+), add in a couple of famous faces (Rick Parfitt?) and some clever marketing by the organisers, the event attracts a lot of interest from the public and effectively becomes a huge shop window for the musical instrument industry. Well, at least, that’s the plan. Anyway, after two hours of trouble free motoring, (and a greasy fry up pit stop at motorway services en route) we arrived at the venue recovered and revitalised. And what a size this venue is, we are talking big. So big in fact, there’s a shuttle bus to transfer you from the car park sectors to the exhibition halls. That was a nice touch, trouble was, I was dead beat just walking from the car park to the shuttle bus stop. A golf buggy would have been ideal! ‘Music Live’ was located in Atrium 3, Hall 6 of the NEC’s 21 halls totalling over 2 million square feet. In the next atrium was the International Motorcycle and Scooter show so there was a load of bikers down too. Actually, it was a bit difficult to distinguish between folks going to the music, and folks going to the bikes. Once inside, we had a quick peek inside the press office, and a quick chat with our hostess Alison Clarke, who informed us that some eight thousand visitors had attended the show on the first day. That’s a good turnout I can tell you. So, without further ado we set off down the corridor toward the exhibition hall like a pack of hungry puppies at dinnertime. And wow, what a sight. It was like the organisers had said, “let’s not use wallpaper this year, let’s decorate the walls with guitars instead!” There were guitars of all shapes, colours, makes, sizes as far as the eye could see. Well that was at least until you turned a corner and all shapes and sizes of drum kits could be seen as far as the eye could see. Fender had a stand, Hammond organs were there, Zildjian cymbals, Mapex drum and Peavey to name but a few. What’s especially good about this sort of show is that you are allowed to grab the instruments and get playing. So you can imagine, we spent the first hour or so playing guitars, drums, keyboards, the works. That was worth the early start on its own! Then it was time to do some work. We toured around the stands chatting with the exhibitors and gathering  product information, and then we took in the live stage. As a key component of the show the organisers had set aside an entire adjoining hall complete with stage and concert lighting for live performance. A group of hopefuls called ‘Josh Weller and the Availables’ were on stage when we got in. Unfortunately, there were more people in the band than were in the audience. It wasn’t that they were no good, I think it was just too early in the day. Not even the Phil Lynett look-alike on guitar and vocals could stir up interest. We watched for ten minutes then went for lunch.A real highlight of the show as far as I was concerned was a personal appearance by Dr. Jim Marshall OBE at the Marshall Amps stand. I shook his hand, and got his autograph. The amazing thing about it was this, I already knew what his signature was going to look like before he wrote it. I realised that I have grown up with this guy’s signature. It was in the background of posters of Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin I had on my bedroom wall as a kid, and now it is on my own amplifier in the room next door to me now. And there it was, being written out in front of me. That gave me a shiver! And so feeling thrilled, we headed back to the live stage. What a difference now, it looked like Piccadilly Circus at rush hour. The Chris George Band was on stage pumping out some hard rock classics, whilst advertising Marshall Amps between songs. Great fun was had as they knocked out standards by Zeppelin, Sabbath, AC/DC and Hendrix, and their set culminated in the most extraordinary drum solo ever witnessed. French skin beater, Farid Medjane, started out playing the drums, then the drum stands, and then by the virtue wearing a microphone, he played the stage floor and then the auditorium floor, this on safari solo culminated in playing the peak of some guy’s baseball cap while the incumbent owner had his head pressed against another mike! Fantastic!!! After one last loop around the exhibitors we headed for home before the rush to get out of the car park kicked in. All in all an excellent day was had. There were, of course, a couple of criticisms. For example, this isn’t so much a ‘Music Live’ exhibition, as much as it is a ‘Rock Fest’, even Kerrang! magazine had a stand! True enough there were a few stands exhibiting orchestral instruments, mainly brass and woodwind, and as far as I could make out the only exhibitors with a selection of violins and cellos and grand pianos was Yamaha and Stentor. Apart from my cohorts and I, it was difficult to see who was going to be interested in this display as everyone else there was a rocker. And if perhaps somebody came to look at orchestral instruments, then what would they have done for the other six hours! I think the show would have been much better if there had been more of a leaning from the orchestral end of the  market. And instead of endless guitar/drums demonstrations, there could have been the odd piano recital, perhaps a bit of jazz trumpet, or possibly a string quartet. Last month, at the Yamaha Kemble open day at Milton Keynes we were treated to an all female string quartet called ‘String Mania’, the place was rockin’ without the rock!I have one last observation to make about walking around exhibitions like this. Everybody knows it is against the law to walk into a guitar shop and play ‘Smoke on the Water’ or ‘Stairway to heaven’ or ‘Money for Nothing’ and this is well observed. However times change, and its about time Parliament introduced legislation to stop people from playing the guitar in the style of Eddie Van Halen. I swear to you, if I’d heard one more Van Halen style guitar break I would have garrotted the guitarist with his own strings. I’m happy to say that this nerve jangling unpleasantness was pacified by the Hammond organ demonstrator who put on the most entertaining set since I last heard an excerpt from ‘The Sound of Music’ played on the mighty Wurlitzer in the Tower Ballroom Blackpool! The trip home was as uneventful as the journey there. I’m still looking forward to next year though. I just hope the show can diversify a little bit. After all, you can’t have to wide a brief in music. David Taylor www.musiclive.co.uk November 2006 |
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