The Guitar Storage staff took a road trip to the 2011 Beatles Fest in the New Jersey Meadowlands. Our goal was to find some cool Beatles themed guitar cases.
The first thing we checked out was a Beatles trivia contest. The DJ would play ½ second snippets of different songs and the first person to call out the correct answer would get a raffle ticket. And at the end, they read off a bunch of winning raffle ticket numbers and gave away cool prizes to the winners. Abbey Road posters, Yellow Submarine DVDs. All sorts of schwag.
Speaking of Beatles schwag, we then made our way to the exhibitor area of the convention where different companies had booth spaces and were selling every sort of Beatles merchandise you could ever imagine. There was nowhere to turn without seeing something that was calling out to be purchased. First we picked up a great framed photo from the nice people at the Apple Frame Studio. They had an awesome collection of Beatles pictures and posters that we would adorn every wall of our offices with if we had the space.
Then we struck up a conversation with Ringo Starr….the puppet! Ventriloquist Bob Abdou (Mr. Puppet) had us in hysterics as he shared with us a lot of great material from his act. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that doll was constructed in Liverpool.
Then we met Judith Kristen, author of a great new book titled “A Date With a Beatle”. Judith was kind enough to autograph the book for us and gave us the lowdown on her epic journey to meet her favorite Beatle, George Harrison. The only problem was she had to outwit the other thousands of teenage females also trying to get his attention and outsmart his security teams. This book was a really funny read and brings back a lot of memories for the rest of us that were also caught up the hysterics of Beatlemania. If you’re interested, you can get a copy at JudithKristen.com.
Next, we popped our heads into the main concert area where Beatles cover band, Liverpool, had the audience twisting and shouting. But perhaps the coolest thing about the show was the musical entertainment in the hotel lobby where lots of musicians gathered with their instruments and created an impromptu jam session. The crowd was shouting out slightly obscure requests (Hey Bulldog, Fixing A Hole, Bungalow Bill), and these guys would nail it, note for note! The musicians really knew their stuff. And it was pretty funny to see most of them playing the same Rickenbacker guitars and Hofner basses as the Beatles.
So in the end, we struck out in our search for Beatles guitar cases. But who cares because the festival was a blast and we’re looking forward to going back next year!