Om NAMMa Shiva (part N where N=1)

Greetings from the Los Angeles equivalent of a serious cold snap (which equates to an exceptionally nice respite from a Midwestern winter). Yes, it’s NAMM time again….

Reading a copy of David Foster Wallace's new collection of essays "Consider the Lobster" really puts one in the mind of doing something with extensive footnotes. I suspect that my writerly skills are such that I would be lucky to manage a whole article that mustered enough grace and style to fill a mere single Wallace footnote, so I'll hyperlink instead.

While I would love to fill these blog entries with exciting tales of attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion and C-beams glittering in the dark by the Tannhauser Gate, it's a little more day-to-day than that.

I flew into L.A. (no longer the City of Angels - this is Anaheim now, I think) to spend some time with my mate Andrew Pask, generally doing the kind of thing one does when you work in a distributed company and your never actually get to hang out with your workplace buddies. Those piquant New Zealand whites from Trader Joe’s, for example.

No, that means doing work you can’t do as easily when you’re not in the same room (in our case, radiaLization). We also had some pre-show tasks to do, too - we made a trip to Ed Shearmur's studio to vist with Brian Carraghan and do a little eyeballing/check out of the latest version of our new UpMix surround plug-ins on a ProTools system.

I was somewhat distracted when I realized that I had a finely restored ARP 2500 at the studio (the one you see in "Close Encounters.") to ooh and aah over.

Fortunately, Andrew’s laser-beam focus saved the day.This business also put me in town in time to pay a visit to a current Culver City hotspot to see Andrew performing with Jeff Kaiser, Stuart Liebig, and Steve Lawson at the Club Tropical.

Andrew's a longtime genius in terms of marrying his horns to MSP was an amazing thing to hear live, and it was interesting to hear Jeff Kaiser's almost brand new MSP-based horn rig – the boy’s a quick study. Wow.High-intensity enhanced free improv is one thing, but BACK TO WORK!. A fortifying breakfast on the Sunset Strip (no rockstar sightings. Too early in the day.), and it was off to Anaheim.

I know you all think that trade shows are exciting fun-filled days of meet and greet punctuated by wild nights of partying. Ah, would that were so. Here are some pictures of the process looks like, (sort of). We arrive to find several forlorn tables

and a whole pile of boxes which must be unpacked

The contents are arranged. Carpet tiles for snappy floor patterns

and the spectacular metal frame and spandex Wave Walls.

It's a day and a half of steady work to produce the apparently simple trade show booth where we spend our NAMMs, filled with software downloading and troubleshooting,

cleaning and logistics,

and general craziness. I never remember to actually take a picture of the real booth with real stuff in it before all the people come – I always remember when we’ve got half the boxes packed up at the end of the show. Maybe this year will be different.Here, Jill (or office manager) and an unnamed person attached to a hand) welcomes you to a Cycling ’74 NAMM booth already in progress.

If progress is the word for it.