Monster Music

Best in Show; This Year’s Hottest Products

I had the pleasure to serve on the Best in Show panel at two recent NAMM conferences. NAMM is the National Association of Music Merchants and usually 90,000+ people attend the conferences. Most all of the industries companies, both large and small, present their products to the attendees. As part of the Best in Show panel, I selected my favorite products, and made a presentation of my selections, to a large gathering of NAMM members on the final morning of the show.

namm best in show panel

Brian Reardon with Les Paul

Brian Reardon, owner of Monster Music in Rockville Centre, recently met with legendary Guitarist Les Paul, who personally signed a Vintage Original Specs 1958 Gibson Les Paul Standard.

Les personally signed a Vintage Original Specs 1958 Gibson Les Paul Standard and Brianthen. Les Paul, 92, is an iconic figure and universally considered the father of the modern electric guitar. Reardon, who grew up in Rockville Centre, is seen here with Les Paul after a recent performance in New York City. Monster Music has donated the signed guitar to “New Ground”, a Long Island based charity whose mission is to aid the homeless on the path to self sufficiency.

Carlsbad, Ca June 1 -The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) announced today that it will be presenting Monster Music with a “Top 100 Dealer Award” at the organization’s annual summer music product trade show called Summer NAMM held in Nashville, Tenn. The company is also in the running to receive NAMM’s “Dealer of the Year Award” at the presentation.

The retail music product stores that received this distinction were judged by a panel of industry experts on criteria including:

•    Displaying a consistent and clear understanding that the success of the store is directly related to the level of customer satisfaction
•    Providing customers with an experience worth returning for and recommending     to others
•    Preparing for future success with sound planning, marketing and training initiatives.
•    Ensuring an exceptional floor plan, merchandising and marketing to encourage repeat sales
•    Using the web and social media in interesting and engaging ways.

The “Top 100 Dealer Award” recipients will be acknowledged at a special award ceremony to be held at the 2011 Summer NAMM Show in Nashville on July 22. Each of the recipients will also be in the running to receive the “Dealer of the Year” designation at the award presentation.

“We are proud to recognize these outstanding national retail music product stores for maintaining high standards in their businesses, and for encouraging more people in their communities to experience the joys and benefits of making music,” said NAMM President and CEO Joe Lamond.

About NAMM
The National Association of Music Merchants, commonly called NAMM in reference to the organization’s popular NAMM trade shows, is the not-for-profit association that unifies, leads and strengthens the $17 billion global musical instruments and products industry. NAMM’s activities and programs are designed to promote music making to people of all ages. NAMM is comprised of more than 9,000 Member companies. For more information about NAMM, interested parties can visit www.namm.org or call 800-767-NAMM (6266).

Somehow our industry has this ability to amaze.

As an avid, lifelong Yankee fan I could cheer for almost anyone who donned the pinstripes. Sometimes this was a challenge, as when the snarling Randy Johnson signed on late in his career. Sometimes this was impossible, as Roger Clemens (long before the steroid allegations) could only ever be a hated Red Sox bully. Yet sometimes the player possessed such a rare combination of talent and humility that I would have rooted hard for him irrespective of the team that he played for. Bernie Williams was such a player.

Despite his athletic gifts, he was never the perfect fit for New York. They called him Bambi early in his career. He was skinny – close to awkward – and he wore eyeglasses that were so enormous that I always assumed he visited a very sadistic optometrist. He was soft spoken and unassuming – to the point where many a lesser man would have been steamrolled by the New York media. He had a companion, however, and it went everywhere Bernie went. His companion was his guitar. He’d play it after every game in the locker room and it would often help keep the rabid media at bay.
His bat did much of the talking as well, and he developed into the centerpiece of a squad that played in Six World Series, winning four of them. Throughout this run, he experienced the thrill of parades through the Canyon of Heroes. Late in his career, his legacy secure, he would be serenaded late in games, with 50,000+ Yankee stadium fans chanting, in unison as song, “Ber-nie Wil-liams…Ber-nie Wil-liams”.  And while hanging up the pinstripes he never put down his guitar, and now his resume lists a Latin grammy nomination from his 2009 album “Moving Forward”.

Bernie was part of another team this past week. He joined, as did I, a group of 40 or so NAMM members and advocates for the cause to fight for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (previously known as “No Child Left Behind”) and to ensure changes in the language of the bill to keep school districts from cutting local music programs.

Unlike many celebrities who prefer to either lend their name to a cause, or parachute in for a photo-op, not Bernie. He was at every briefing, every training session, and every publicity event earlier in the week, followed by a full day of congressional visits on Wednesday to advocate on behalf of music education.
We were fortunate enough, on Wednesday night, to participate in an intimate gathering that NAMM put together on Capitol Hill, in conjunction with VH-1 and the Support Music Coalition. We had tremendous visits and speeches with Gavin DeGraw and Tony Bennett, who movingly lent their weight to our advocacy goals. But when Bernie took to the podium – no bat, no guitar this time – just his words, and they will never leave me.

As he stood before this room of NAMM delegates, Congressional staffers, Members of Congress, etc., Bernie was reflecting on the day we had just completed. He adjusted the microphone and said “Today I have just spent one of the coolest days of my entire life”. This four time World Series champ and Grammy nominee expressing with complete sincerity that this experience of advocating on behalf of Music Education might very well have been his most meaningful life experience of all.