Remarkable resilience! The stock market may have tanked, but it was a bull market at the...

Are the fortunes of the music industry closely linked to the rise and fall of the economy? To judge from the recently concluded Nashville NAMM show, the answer is a loud emphatic "no." In the months leading up to the show, corporate scandals spread like the plague, the stock market sank further and faster than Michael Jackson's last album, layoffs dominated the headlines, and nervous consumers began putting what spare cash they had left under the mattress. Music retailers apparently ignored this torrent of bad news and turned out in force for the July Nashville show. Even more sur