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| - I haven't been to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in probably like 15 years, since it first opened. At that time, the collection was sparse and somewhat disappointing..... kind of like a Hard Rock Café with interesting architecture....but I decided it was time for another look. This time around, I was much more impressed. It's grown from an overhyped curiosity to a bona-fide attraction, worthy of my $22/person admission.
First of all, the inventory of "must-see" objects in the museum's collection has grown to an impressive number since my last visit. John Lennon's Sgt. Pepper outfit, The Michael Jackson "Thiller" video mask, and Bono's "The Fly" ensemble...just a few examples that come to mind. It doesn't matter if you worship these artists, or despise them with the full conviction of your soul, these are cultural artifacts that you simply must see. Unless you were raised by the Amish, your jaw will drop repeatedly at some of the iconic pieces of music history on display.
Although the assortment of paraphernalia includes lots of guitars, lyric sheets, photos, and concert posters, it's the definitely the outrageous clothes and stage costumes that command your attention. (I personally decided that I need to start wearing a lot more robes, capes, and sequin jumpsuits if my rock star ambitions are to be realized before I'm too old to leap off stage monitors.) As walked around the exhibits, I found myself surprisingly willing to forgive the musical crimes these artists committed against me and my generation, if for no other reason than they had enough balls to wear some of these outfits. (I have this pet theory about rock stars being modern day shaman, and close inspection of their clothes convinced to me that they were thinking the same thing. Lots of vague, quasi-mythological and religious symbols...with meanings known only to them and their roadies. Is that the ancient Egyptian symbol for "blow job" on Izzy Pop's leather jacket?) The exhibits heavily favor the 70's and 80's, the heyday of stadium shows, stage costumes, and "real" rock stars. Bowie, Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, ZZ Top....well-represented. Don't expect to find Jeff Tweedy's left sneaker or Connor Oberst's discarded Kleenex on display anywhere.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tries very hard to impress upon you how controversial and disruptive this music was. Although that may have been true at the time, the persecution of "the devil's music" by stiff, white conservatives now has the same sense of distant unreality as, oh let's say, the Salem witch trials. The suggestion that rock music is destroying the morality of youth just seems quaint and funny. I guess the obscene money-making machine of the music industry in the previous decades has finally accomplished their goal of turning their product into benign nostalgia, consumed and accepted by practically everyone on the planet. 'The Osbournes' reality show was the final pronouncement: rock and roll is dead.
So, yeah, a museum is exactly where this stuff belongs. The only item missing is a diorama of woolly mammoths in the act of mating.
Still, I must admit it was tons of fun to look at this stuff and reminisce, just as it's equally clear that a lot of people connected to rock music had themselves very good time while it lasted. The Rolling Stone magazine exhibit, featuring lots of whacked-out correspondence between R.S. editors and people like Mick Jagger, Charles Manson, Anne Lebovitz, and Hunter S. Thompson, was my final stop on the tour, and I walked away thinking how much fun it must have been, and if there's any chance to do it over again.
(Then I drove home listening to WCLV classical music. It's the only way to ensure that these rock and roll idiots don't have entrance into my head anymore.)
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