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Welcome to the 2017 edition of the NAMM Oddities.

This is the 20th edition of the NAMM Oddities. What started out as an idle thought has become a historical archive spanning two decades.

The joke is that NAMM is an acronym that means: "Not Available, Maybe May." I'd be happy if I had these pages up in May but in my case December is starting to become my delivery date. I had hoped to get this knocked out much earlier in the year but again that didn't happen. I ought to set a realistic goal of getting the 2018 Oddities done by November.

Oh, and for the love of all that is holy, please make man buns a short-lived fashion crime. I saw so many of these atrocities at NAMM that it made me pine for the fedora days.

-Barry

A brief history of the NAMM Oddities…

After attending the Winter NAMM show for a number of years, I'd noticed that the exhibitors seem to fall into two categories: the established company showing its new (and sometimes vaporous) products and the independent start-up company looking to be noticed by distributors, music stores, potential investors and the music press.

It seemed that every year I spent more of my NAMM time checking out the various small companies that got stashed in some dark corner of the show. Many of the products from these companies were never seen by the average visitor, sometimes because they only appealed to a small market, or because most people simply couldn't figure out what the hell they were supposed to do.

That isn't to say that these products are ill-conceived or poorly executed. It's just that sometimes they're, well, a little odd. This situation made me think that there ought to be a place for people to come to marvel and wonder at all of these products. Thus, the NAMM Oddities were born.