hello again,

like in previous years, we are again going to have our soundproof performance cabine built in our booth in which several of our endorsers will be performing for you during the upcoming international musikmesse in frankfurt, germany.

ok, so here is the official line-up:

oli rubow / wednesday march 12

jost nickel / thursday march 13

felix lehrmann / friday march 14

benny greb / saturday march 15

 
so we are going to have one artist per day playing several shows throughout that specific day. i will announce the exact daily performance times at our booth.

for those of you who don't know the one or the other of those guys, check out our artist section for more details and video footage. i am especially looking forward to seeing oli rubow (who has never done a show for us at all), and one of my favourites, felix lehrmann, who's drumming simply blows me away. his pocket is deeper than that of most others.

we are trying to set up some more artist signing sessions and meet'n greets at our booth which i will announce as soon as they are confirmed.

originally, we have planned to have thomas lang play for us at this's years messe. however, thomas will be busy touring with gianna naninni in italy and cant make it to frankfurt. but: on march 16 thomas will be playing at the adams drummerfestival in diest, belgium. so if you can make it there, you're gonna be in for a treat. adams is going to have a great line-up with lots of outstanding players.

we are also brainstorming about the actual design for our booth in frankfurt right now. it looks like as if its gonna be a little bit different then in the years before. i hope you guys will like it and i am looking forward to seeing some of you in frankfurt in a couple of weeks. as always, if you have any questions about anything, feel free to comment here. i will respond to you personally.

more to come.........thanks for reading, stay tuned and be safe.....

- norbert

hello all you drummers out there,

i got back from NAMM yesterday after a 10hrs nonstop flight from los angeles to frankfurt, germany. the flight was without problems and i actually got a good amount of sleep. we had the choice between chicken or pasta (what else). i chose pasta :-) with some quite OK red wine which put me to sleep right away. funny enough though, as soon as i put my seat back the passenger sitting behind me started to complain about it. a lovely lufthansa flight attendant however clarified the situation professionally. hey, i am two meters tall, so i can not deal with that at all :-)

okay, let's recap. NAMM show 2008 is over and we had a really really good time. i met with many of our artists, journalists, buddies from other companies, people who you never see throughout the year until namm. of course, finally the time you spend with them then is very intense and full of input. NAMM sort of dictates the direction we are heading to for the rest of the year. i talked and met with millions of people discussion all kinds of ideas. too many to mention them all here. i am going to post a lot (!!) of pictures here for you guys which i took at NAMM. it's gonna give you an impression of the vibe at our booth and the people hanging out there. i wrote a brief description for every picture which you can read underneath it. hope you like'em :-)

nevertheless, i would like to tell you about a few impressions i had which stand out from all others:

for the first time, meinl has been an official sponsor of the YAMAHA GROOVE NIGHT. it took place at a beatiful theater in cerritos. i am not sure if you are familiar with the concept of the event: a house-band of l.a. studio cracks is put together and stays the same for the whole night. various drummers (yamaha endorsers to be precise) choose a song each and perform it with the band. this way you get many kind of different drummers to play one song each on the same stage. no drum solos are allowed :-) just one song per drummer. i dont remember them all, but some of the guys who played were dave weckl, keith carlock, tommy aldridge, oscar seaton, ndugu chancler, teddy campbell, dafnis prieto, russ miller, michael bland, and many others. of course it makes me proud that yamaha also invited WOLFGANG HAFFNER to play an al jarreau song. the whole event has been put together in an extremely professional way and - to me - it was one of the highlights of namm. great music with some of the best drumming i have heard in a long long time. yamaha did film the whole show and i hope they are going to release a dvd of the event. congratulations to yamaha !!

i heard that they will move the GROOVE NIGHT over to frankfurt to take place at the festhalle during musik-messe 2008. from what i understood is that they will make tickets available to everyone. so guys, if you have time that day i recommend that you check it out.

friday night we invited our artists to join THE MEINL ARTIST DINNER at the "bucca di beppo" restaurant in anaheim. we were a total of like 30 people there all of them being very different from each other as far as characters and musicstyles. some of the guys actually havent met before. the one thing they all have in common is the fact that they are all meinl artists. check out the picture from that dinner :-) the food and drinks were excellent and plenty. the artists who were there were: jon rice, jon wilkes, chris adler with his wife, derek roddy with his wife, jason bittner with his wife, mike terrana, benny greb, nick d'virgilio, ray yslas, johnny rabb, derek youngsma with his wife, barry kerch, kenny bozich, and some of my colleages. it was a great hang and i am already looking forward to next year's artist dinner.

last but not least, we have officially introduced our new mb8 series at namm. the reactions from everyone about them have been fantastic. i have already set up various magazine reviews all over the world. we have recorded the mb8 sound-files already. i just need to edit them and get them online for you guys to listen to them (please bear with me for a few more days until i have found the time to do it :-)) i also hope that soon you will be able to check them out in a store near you.

on a very final note, i have shot a lot of new video footage. there seem to be a lot of requests from drummers for the "10 questions with" interviews. i have actually filmed a lot of these short interviews with many different meinl artist. our video-guy and co-webmaster armin will now start editing and posting them. so stay tuned for those videos and the new video podcast straight from namm.

alright, i hope you are going to enjoy all the different pictures i took for you. if you have any comments or questions about anything, please post them here. i will answer all of them personally.

thanks for reading, stay tuned and be safe........

- norbert

What's up everyone?

It's my first blog on meinlcymbals.com and the first day of the 2008 Winter NAMM show in sunny Anaheim, California! You know...I live back in my home state of Tennessee now (love the American South...), but after having lived in Southern California for almost 8 years of my life, it's beautiful days like today that make me wonder why I ever left...

Anyway, today was mighty busy for a Thursday, but I'd really have it no other way. I had a great time visiting with all of the MEINL artists and various assorted friends that came by the booth. I had a chance to hang with artists Felix Pollard, Chris Coleman, Jon "The Charn" Rice, Kent Aberle, Jason Bittner,  Shauney Baby, Kenny Bozich and industry friends like Ron Pak from SIR LA and many more.

The show will only get crazier and busier, with many people from the music industry descending upon the Convention Center. That being said, I should probably mention that we are going to have a killer artist signing on Saturday! Here's the lineup - from 2pm to 3pm, one signing only -

 - Jason Bittner (Shadows Fall)

 - Chris Adler (Lamb of God)

 - Brann Dailor (Mastodon)

 - Benny Greb (Jerobeam)

 - Wolfgang Haffner (Till Broenner )

 - Jon Rice (Job For a Cowboy)

 - Derek Roddy (Serpents Rise)

 - Jon Wilkes (The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus)

 - Thomas Lang (Drumming Superstar)

If you're at the NAMM show, this would be a great time to say "hey" to these super cool and down to earth folks.

Alright then, gotta boogie down to the bar for a scotch and cigar with my colleague, Norbert Saemann. Hope you're all well wherever you. Take care.

Chris Brewer

MEINL USA

hello everybody,

every january, one of the things i am really looking forward to when going to namm is the nice weather. usually back home in germany the weather during that time of the year is bad. i wasnt dissapointed when i left the airport terminal: approx. 25° celcius and lots of sun....just check out the first picture :-) its a nice and welcome change....

we got to the anaheim convention center and set up our booth. this normally takes us three days, especially this year since we have moved to a bigger booth location. setting up is nothing really special. it is as exciting as you think it is :-) for us its a routine which we have to deal with at every convention regardless if its namm, frankfurt or pasic. the booth is actually being designed before we go to namm. that limits setting up to pure physical work. all the creative tasks and challenges of designing the booth have been done much earlier already back in our office.

one of our artists, trevor lawrence jr., has organized the "pre-namm drum jam" at the temple bar in santa monica last night (check out trevor's artist site and videos here on meinlcymbals.com). we all went there and had a blast. three drum-sets and a killer house band including keith eaddy on bass (what a monster player), nigel williams on guitar, and kenneth crouch on keys. trevor himself played the drums. i was curious to hear trevor play in a kind of loose jam situation and i have to say he did not dissapoint me at all. his pocket is incredibly deep (as it always is) and he played some cool beatz with a jazzy hip-hop feel to it. i guess this describes it best. the band, especially keith eaddy and kenneth crouch, blew me away too. its that kind of a thing when a bunch of guys get together to play and you know right away that there is that magical connection between them. later on one of our other artists, felix "d-kat" pollard sat in with the band too. d-kat is now gonna go out with lionel richie again for a couple of shows.

other than that i saw a really interesting book today called "myspace for musicians". it amazes me more and more how essential myspace has become in our industry now. it is almost as valuable as a personal website. maybe i am going to buy that book, lets see. at some point i will write a blog about myspace exclusively i think. there is so much to talk about as far as myspace.

last but not least, i met my good friend johnny rabb again after, lets see, ten months or so? johnny and i have a long history together and are very close personal friends. so it was good to see him today. johnny is doing demonstrations for ROLAND v-drums here at namm. i have filmed the "10 questions with johnny rabb" already (boris, there you go) and will post that video very soon. it turned out really cool. since 2008 is a leap year, johnnys birthday this year is on feb29 :-)

alright, tomorrow is the first day of the show. i have tons of meetings and other obligations throughout the next four days, but will try to blog if i feel i have something to say. lots of events and after-show concerts going on. i will attend as many as i can. you get some good drumming here :-)

thanks for reading, be safe & stay tuned.........

hello again,

its that time of the year again when the drum business meets at the NAMM show in sunny california to display their latest in product news and to have a good time after show hours at the various bars around the convention center. great music and drumming is always going on everywhere. it's been some incredibly busy last few weeks preparing everything for NAMM, but now everything is ready to go. it all looks promising, so i am excited to go.

our team including myself will fly to los angeles this coming sunday to prepare our booth. show days are jan 17 - 20 and if you happen to be at the show yourself, please make sure to stop by our booth to say hello.

i will report and post some NAMM pictures for you here next week. video footage and the next video-podcast will also be filmed there which we gonna post online after NAMM is over.

so all you guys out there, enjoy your weekend and stay tuned until the next blog reporting straight from NAMM.

hello and welcome to the first meinl cymbals blog entry. i am proud to be the one to kick it off. at the same time i am excited and a little bit nervous, because this is all new to us. we don't have any experience yet as far as blogging. we are curious how this will develop.

the goal of our blog is to give you a survey of all the things which actually happen at and around meinl. we'll guide you through some of our product developments and marketing ideas. we'll talk about music and a lot about drums and cymbals in general. since we are travelling quite a bit to lots of drum events, concerts and other music conventions, we'll share our first-hand experiences and discoveries with you. after all, for us it's about drums and drumming. from drummers, for drummers.

we encourge you to come back often and actively take part in the meinl blog. comment and share your ideas with us.

all of our blogs are uncensored and non filtered the records are not prepared by any marketing experts or agencies. we want you to get a closer insight on what is really going on at meinl. stay tuned and have fun with it.