Went to the Grand Opening of the new Guitar Center last night. My main draw was they had a great deal on some condenser mics that I wanted. The store was set to open at 7:00 PM and I got there about 5:45 and there was already a fairly long line of people waiting. The worst part of the wait was listening to some local radio station’s non-stop hip-hop booming pimped out van parked in front of the store.

Doors opened and the line started moving. Got the obligatory free Tee and I was able to get in with the first crowd. I picked up the microphones and then started checking out the store. I was really happy to see a separate closed acoustic area. They had plenty of guitar models to choose from. They even had the Line 6 Variax, electric and acoustic models set up with the PODxt Live.

Some idiot in management or marketing (probably marketing) thought it would be cool to have an Elvis impersonator. NOT COOL! You don’t have live performers in a music store when you are trying to sell instruments that people want to test drive, especially when the sound of your instrument is being over powered by the live performance.

But granted is was grand opening and from what I could see a very successful one. It was loud, crowded and hectic - but for the 20 minutes that I was there, I enjoyed it. It is always good to have another music store in town.