Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio

I saw a documentary movie at the R&R Hall of Fame tonight: Free to Rock: How Rock & Roll Helped End the Cold War.  This should be shown to all history students in High School.  It covers the yearning for rock music in the USSR during the end of the cold war.  They interviewed Jimmy Carter, Gorbachev, retired KGB, several musicians both from the USSR and from the states.  It was so inspiring to see how music made it's way behind the iron curtain and expanded its reach while being banned by the government in the USSR.  Below is the description from the rockfall.com website.  I don't know if this movie will ever play on PBS or cable, perhaps it will be on YouTube.  I highly recommend watching it if you can.  The website has a movie trailer of the film.    

"Directed by four time Emmy winning filmmaker Jim Brown and narrated y Kiefer Sutherland, the film explores the soft power of Rock and Roll music to open hearts and minds and to plant dreams in the imagination of youth behind the Iron Curtain.  It covers the years 1955 to 1991, and rock and roll music's contribution to the collapse of the Soviet Union and to ending the Cold War...See more at: http://rockhall.com/film-series-free-to-rick/#sthash.rBCUrle8.dpuf"

The Hall of Fame also included an exhibit on Gram Nash, the singer/songwriter, photographer, artist and collector of "close to the flame" items.  The "close to the flame" items are varied.  The thing they all have in common are their proximity to the inception of either creative ideas or moments in time.  For example, a pen from JFKs desk in the Whitehouse the afternoon he was shot.

There is also an exhibit on the politics of music which included songs used to rally presidential campaigns, music when our nation morned the death of JFK, the anti war music written during the late 1960s-1970s, Give Peace a Chance in 1969 and the healing music during the aftermath of 911, then the music that bespoke the fight against racial disparity and gender equality.  Timeless issues that divide us and then the music that calls for us to do the right thing.

I enjoyed the interactive kiosks with search features of Hall of Fame winning songs and the ability to search for One Hit Wonders.  I found some oldies that I haven't heard in years that I will be searching for in iTunes - Classical Gas!

The exhibit on Les Paul was great showing some of his early inventions and of course his guitars.  Loved the Beatles exhibit - a couple things I learned: Paul was recorded saying that Ringo often misspoke and one day he walked into the recording studio and they mentioned that he looked a little hungover from the night be before and he said he had had a "hard days night."  Then Paul spoke about loosing his drivers license and having to hire a driver to take him to the studio and one day they were talking and the driver said he works "eight days a week."  You never know where creative inspiration is going to come from, you just need to be open to hearing it.  

I spent the entire day at the museum 10am-9pm and saw as much as I could.  I certainly could have spent another day reading all the content.  Here are some of the photos I took.

Janis Joplin

Bob Dylan

Les Paul

The Wall

Lady Gaga's dress

U2 exhibit

The Doors exhibit

Jimi Hendrix suit

Elvis 

Roy Orbison

Marvin Gaye

Rolling Stones' Road Case

Alan Jackson's guitar used to write and record Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)

John Lennon's Gibson - used to write and record Give Peace a  Chance

John Lennon's Sargent Pepper's suit

John Lennon suits

Ringo's Drums

I was often listening to NPR on my trip and during one of the Fresh Air segments they were talking about Ringo's drums.  They said that he needed to buy some drums when he came to the US and liked the Ludwig black and white drum set for the color.  When he used them on the Ed Sullivan Show, sales of Ludwig went through the roof and they were manufacturing 24 hours a day to keep up with the orders.