Peoria Illinoisan

I’m sorry to report that I was somewhat disappointed with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. After getting past the anticipated excitement and the thrill of hearing David Bowie being blasted through loudspeakers inside and out, I plucked down $93 and we went in.

The main hall is in the basement with six floors above. As I walked through the main hall area, it was clear to me that this was a quick overview of R&R history to get people up to speed, with more in depth analysis to come. It consisted of 15ft spaces behind glass highlighting the likes of Detroit, Memphis Blues & Sun Records, San Francisco, L.A. Punk, and several others. Mostly it was album covers, 45 picture sleeves and some memorabilia sloshed all together with some video screens hanging from the ceiling playing documentaries. The Beatles, Stones, and Elvis exhibits were fairly interesting, as were Michael Jackson’s silly 80’s costumes and Madonna’s Bras, but bigger and better things awaited us!

(aside- The Beatles Butcher Cover was prominently displayed, but it was only a poster, not one of the originals)

As we ventured up the floors it became evident that the main hall was quite significant, as the other levels were small and relatively lame. They did not expand on the exhibits downstairs, or progress upwards through the years, as I thought they might. Infact, the upper floors had nothing to do with the main hall or build upon its foundation at all. We looked at a static exhibit of the Stax artists of which my beloved Otis Redding was only given a generous two square foot area area. Other exhibits were two large collages featuring mostly Rolling Stone Magazine, a nice Les Paul exhibit, and a Doors exhibit in the temporary section, along with less interesting things such as a circa late 60’s state of the art stereo/ tv/ reel to reel/ cassette/ turntable which took up most of an exhibit room.

Sadly, one of the highlights was watching 15 minutes worth of the Beatle’s movie HELP!

Maybe my expectations were set too high, but I found the entire experience to be cramped, with most artists lightly covered, if at all. B

On the bright side, it was fun to flip through their extensive CD store with Neil Young’s Cowboy in the Sand blasting out of the speakers, reminded me of my youth flipping through records at the Peoria Record Company… except the musty smell was replaced with spit-shined floors and the hippie behind the counter was replaced with 20 somethings who were instructed to help me.

“And in the end…” My kids had no expectations and quite enjoyed it, I’m glad I went, but it wasn’t near as cool as I thought it would be. I suppose I might feel differently if I didn’t have my family in tow, but I left with Public Enemy in my head… “Don’t Believe The Hype.”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.