As I mentioned in my previous posts, my wife and I had the opportunity to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH this past weekend. It's interesting that such a prolific museum would end up on the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio, but there is apparently a bit of history there. In fact, the induction ceremony for the Hall of Fame actually takes place in Las Vegas.
In case you can't read the sign in the photo above, back in 1951 or so, there was a disc jockey at WJW named Alan Freed. He coined the phrase Rock and Roll to describe the up tempo black rhythm and blues records that he was playing at the time. The name stuck and thus a whole new genre of music was born. Hence a big part of the reason the hall of fame was built in Cleveland.
It was absolutely pouring when we got to the hall of fame, so I dropped 
The cost for entry to the hall of fame was something like $42.50 per person which honestly I feel is a bit steep. I know they have to keep the lights on, but as you can see from the photo above, it's not like they were hurting for visitors. This place was absolutely packed! Believe it or not, it's not that big of a venue. I mentioned in my post yesterday that they are working on adding about 50,000 square feet to the museum, but even then as far as museums go, it will still be quite small.
The main level where you enter is filled with a food court, gift shop, and that's about it. The bulk of the exhibits are down in the basement level. After showing the lady our tickets and getting our entry wristbands, we made our way down to the lowest level.
One of the big exhibits while we were there was a tribute to Saturday Night Live and the influence music has had on that show. We kind of blew through that section because that is where a lot of people were congregating (since it was the first stop). There was some good stuff there, but we just wanted to get through the initial crowd.
The above photo is the suit and guitar that Prince used when he was on the show quite a long time ago.
Of course Wayne's World was one of the most famous skits on SNL and it along with the movies tied in with rock and roll, so they had the outfits the duo wore on display.
As we moved past the Saturday Night Live section, the journey really started. They begin where all good stories do (at the beginning), and moved on through the decades and genres of rock and roll from there. The photo above is the Les Paul Klunker guitar that he custom built himself and earned his spot in rock and roll history.
There was also a small section dedicated to the censorship of rock and roll dating all the way back to the early days and carrying us into the days of gangster rap and even today. As you walk through, the term rock and roll hall of fame is a bit of a misnomer as they clearly pay homage to a wide range of music in the museum.
Of course Elvis got his own section and the infamous Sun records in Memphis were highlighted was well. It only took us about an hour to walk through the entire museum, but if you stopped and watched all the videos, you could easily spend a whole day in here. Being a huge fan of music, I don't want to say it got boring, but personally, you can only see so many outfits or guitars that this person wore or that person used before it gets a bit repetitive.
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Another one of the special exhibits was a small room dedicated to the year 1984. It came complete with LL Cool J's Boom Box, Michael Jackson's Grammy for Thriller as album of the year, and whole bunch of other stuff. I took so many photos, I might have a problem. The lighting was really low in the exhibit hall, so many of them are quite dark.
The photos above are an Adidas shirt signed by the members of Run DMC, Tina Turner's dress, and an outfit and guitar used by a member of The Cars.
As much as I loved looking at Pat Benetar's dress and guitar in the first photo above, I think one of my favorite things about the rock and roll hall of fame was that they had the original hand written songs that various artists had created. For example, the second photo above is Jon Bon Jovi's working copy of the song Runaway which was their first hit and the song that launched their career. How cool is that?
They also had a separate section dedicated specifically to women in rock and roll. As you can see in the photos above, Ke$ha, Meg White from the White Stripes, and some items from the band Halestorm.
Of course as I mentioned yesterday, there was a large swath of the bottom level dedicated to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and their individual members. You can see the lyrics to John Lennon's "Starting Over" above.
They also had a nice little area dedicated to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin.
As I said, one of my favorite parts of the museum were the handwritten lyrics for songs by many of the artists. In the photo above you see the Gibb brothers original work for "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart". They also had a nice section dedicated to new wave music, and punk.
Finally, since this is already getting long, I will leave you with a photo of the Def Leppard exhibit and call it good for today. Stop back tomorrow when I take you through the rest of the exhibits!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or