Musikmesse: First Impressions
By Brett Ratnerratocaster@yahoo.com
First and foremost, jet lag is a very real thing.
My day started around 8:30am as normal, and my plane left Chicago around 5:00pm. I flew about eight and a half hours East. In the process, I lost six hours of my life (which will be reclaimed upon my return... in theory).
It's hard to sleep on a plane, especially with a movie, free drinks (yeah buddy! :-), two meals, and an endless cavalcade of snacks goin' on (Lufthansa rocks!). Therefore, I land at 8:00am in Frankfurt having not slept a wink. It's morning, it's light out, and I was served "breakfast" only an hour prior to landing. The stewardesses keep saying "good morning" to me, even though it's 2:00 in the morning for me... that's technically still night as far as I'm concerned.
Worse yet, Scott and Wilson (your friendly neighborhood Harmony Central guys) had a ten hour plane ride that was supposed to land at 10:00 but doesn't touch ground until after noon. Unfortunately, the subsequent four hour wait at the airport yielded no sleep for myself either. Once bags were reclaimed and a ride to the hotel to the hotel was procured (compliments of Rudolf the cabbie) it was about 2:30. For those of you keeping score, that was 24 hours straight that I've been awake so far.
Though equally exhausted, Wilson and Scott hit the ground running and we head straight to the event. While they embarked on an endless procession of meetings, I hung out, checked out the place for about two hours and then felt a VERY strong need to grab a shower and a nap.
We reconvened for dinner (at an Italian restaurant, interestingly). Then, back at the hotel, we laughed hysterically at the tail-end of a German version of Beavis and Butthead Do America ("Das eeez pretty cool Butthead, no?"). It was then time to crash for real... or so I thought.
Unfortunately, 2:00am hit and I woke right up. Since my poor, tortured internal clock doesn't know what the hell is going on, I figured I'd take the opportunity to set the mood for this weekÕs series of articles. As I write this very sentence, it's 3:00am and I sit in the hotel lobby, having just procured a very odd-looking electrical adapter. Four chain-smoking drunk guys are playing extremely sloppy versions of various blues tunes on the piano and drinks are still flowin'. An attractive, German-speaking couple... who I'm guessing just met... finally disappeared into the elevator after a long conversation. And for being so late, there is an amazing amount of foot traffic and ambient noise in this lobby. These guys definitely know how to party.
In Frankfurt, most things look similar to the way they do in the States, but there is a subtle, yet real difference... a strong "vibe," you could say. The signage is an obvious example. Right now, I'm looking at an exit sign, which depicts a stick figure running on a green background towards a rectangle (why he's running, I don't know). In between him and the door is an arrow pointing down. This was trippin' me up at the airport because I was looking for stairs and that's what I hoped this sign meant. I also wondered if it meant emergency exit, thus explaining why the guy was in such a hurry.
Cars are a more obvious example. Americans favor wide, long vehicles that sit high off the ground on huge tires (read SUVs). Germans (who seem more interested in function, utility, and practicality and less interested in a Freudian contest as to who has the biggest tires and/or engine), drive compact station wagons, ultra compact hatchbacks, and cargo vans that are tall and narrow. Most cars in Frankfurt have very smalls tires, which makes sense cuz the car has lower unsprung weight for better handling and the tires cost less too. I have seen an occasional Jeep Cherokee or Nissan Pathfinder, though the Pathfinder is called something different here. Regardless, VW, Audi, Volvo, Opel, Ford, BMW, and especially Mercedes rule the roads (even the cabs are Mercedes). However, many Mercedes models are small hatchbacks, practical cargo vans, or sedans with no flashy options (like hubcaps). This mentality translates to motorcycles, which are of smaller displacement, light, tall and narrow. Compare this to American "cruisers" which are long, low and have huge, heavy engines.
The bathroom is another weird thing to me. It's familiar enough that you know it's a bathroom, but different enough that you still need to figure things out. First off, the light switch was located outside the bathroom, so I spent a good two minutes searching in the dark for some nonexistent switch. The flush "button" is built into the wall instead of on the unit, and the tub is set a good two inches off the floor (I nearly killed myself when I absentmindedly stepped out of it). Even the controls were weird. One knob controlled water pressure while the other one had this strange red plastic button on it (its purpose, I don't know). In addition to the red button, the second knob had numbers on it indicating temperatures (I guess), but the knob seemed to control temperature AND water pressure. All in all, the controls worked (i.e. I got a nice warm shower), but struck me as odd since it seemed to add confusion to whatÕs normally a simple task (turning water on and setting the temperature).
The more that I think about it, the mentality behind the shower controls explains a lot about the musical instrument industry which I never quite understood.
This America-centric writer's first observation is that the European market is HUGE. I mean, Musikmesse takes up two city blocks (I'm not exaggerating). In fact, the endless procession of exhibitors showing stage, light, recording, pro audio, DJ, and instruments is so big that a shuttle bus takes you from one end of the festivities to the other. Summer NAMM in Nashville, by comparison, fits nicely in three large convention rooms. What this means to me is that there are a whole lot of people in the world who have needs and tastes which may or may not be different than mine.
The second, and more important epiphany pertains to all the MIDI racks, multi-effects guitar processors/preamps and amps with a million knobs. Just like the shower controls, my general feeling is that this stuff complicates the simple task of controlling volume, tone, and distortion. I typically see this equipment as gimmicky and wonder why it was even built in the first place. I also always wondered who actually buys this stuff.
Well, it's the Germans! In fact, these guys have amps you can't even get in the States. These things have four channels, each with separate EQ and gain controls, and all kinds of features most of us never dreamed could be put into an amp (not that I ever dreamed they NEEDED to be put in an amp). It seems ironic that the Teutonic minds who engineer cars which embody functional simplicity possess this inner mad scientist that yearns for guitar equipment with infinite parameter control.
To put it another way, Summer NAMM seemed a showcase for handmade boutique pedals and reissues of single-channel, simple, vintage-style guitar amps. In stark contrast, Musikmesse is virtually devoid of pedals and simple amps, but does not lack a single piece of high-tech engineering.
Therefore, my self proclaimed goal this week is to open my closed mind and dig deeper into this stuff to see if it's all hype... or if that elusive sonic Nirvana lies beneath the faceplate of an amp with 25 switches on it.
Oh yeah, I'll be checking out the recording stuff, bass stuff, guitars, keyboards, and whatever else catches my eye. But for now, I think it's time to go back to sleep.
Brett
Brett Ratner is a contributor to Guitar Player, Musician, Electronic Musician and Music & Computers. He also spent two years as the Creative Writer for www.gibson.com. Currently, Brett plays sessions and performs regularly around Nashville with the band Katoorah Jayne. Please email Brett at ratocaster@harmony-central.com with any questions, comments.
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