...a SUPER review by the guys over at 11points dot com.I first went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum when I was in high school. They were throwing some banquet there for nerds from different area schools and I snagged the invite to this one.
That was 1996, one year after the Hall opened. I distinctly remember my thoughts back then: "Meh. It's like a really big Hard Rock Cafe."
This week, while visiting my parents back here in Cleveland, I returned to the Hall for the first time in 14 years. My thoughts now: "They've had a decade and a half to improve this place and it's still like a really big Hard Rock Cafe. Only less crowded."
I don't think this list topic is particularly commercial... nor do I think this list will even crack my top 200 most viewed. But it's something I need to write for three reasons. One: On the outside chance that someone from the Hall reads this, takes it to heart, and saves the place and helps the city. Two: I need a cathartic outlet after going to that place with optimism in my heart. And three: They charge a jaw-dropping $22 for admission. I need to make a list about it so I can write that insanity off.
Here are 11 steps that need to be taken to fix (and, quite possibly, save) Cleveland's beloved Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. Because, quite frankly, it sucks worse than the Shitty Beatles. (Which isn't just a clever name.)
1. Allow people to take photos.
Normally, when I write a travel list -- like my 11 Points on the Jack Daniels distillery or Fenway or Wrigley -- every point is accompanied by a photo I took. That is not the case here. The Hall does not allow photos.
And they MEAN it. You have to check your camera at their coat check. There are signs every few feet reminding you. And I even passed a SNIPER as we went on the top floor... literally, an employee who stands there, from on high, radioing down to the guards below when he spots someone taking a photo.
They say this is because many of the artists (or their estates) agreed to donate their stuff under the condition that it not be photographed. That may be sporadically true, but seems suspect to me. My most cynical side says they don't want a ton of photos out there because, once people actually see the crapiness within for free, it will discourage anyone from actually coming to the Hall.
Fortunately, with the rest of my plan items below, the Hall would become so much more of a multimedia experience that a photo of John Lennon' Sgt. Pepper's jacket could hit the Internet and not push the Hall into the red for a quarter.
Let people take photos of their trip to the museum. They're paying $22 and seeing stuff they want to remember. And if the photos are of cool enough stuff, it might even... wait for it... make people want to actually travel to Cleveland to see the Hall.
2. Don't cluster everything on the ground floor.
So you enter the museum, head to the ground floor, and go into the main display area. You walk around for at least an hour, seeing memorabilia and such, and say to yourself, "Wow! This was just one floor! I can't wait to see the rest of the museum." Then you leave the ground floor and find... virtually nothing. A few random cases of more of the same memorabilia, a few exhibits that may or may not interest you... and that's about it.
For some reason, the Hall decided to put 99 percent of the museum in one huge room on the ground floor. It was like that in 1996, and it's like that today.
It's kind of like someone who decided to watch "The O.C." on DVD. You get about halfway through the first season and you think, "This show is amazing! There's a fight at a rich people's party every episode. Not to mention so many sexy results." Then, eventually, you find yourself halfway through the third season realizing the show used up everything it had in the first season and is now just presenting a meager shell of itself. That's a completely terrible metaphor for the basement of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Having everything on one floor creates all sorts of problems. One: Congestion. Everyone's in the main room. Two: It renders the rest of the museum useless. And three: It makes this giant building feel like an enormous waste of space.
So, here's what I propose: Split it up and use the full museum. Divide the main room into smaller rooms and take us on a tour through the history of rock and roll through those rooms.
You know how an art museum has an ancient Egyptian room, a Renaissance room, an Impressionism room and on and on until finally you're in a modern art room where the pièce de résistance is like a giant jar of fish heads with a Ziggy cartoon taped to it? Do that. Give us a Motown room, a '60s San Francisco room, a grunge room, a Beatles room, an Elvis room. Start with the roots of rock in the basement, then take us all the way up through today by the fifth floor. And when we get there, have it lead right into the Hall of Fame itself.
3. Break the displays up by performer.
Right now the displays are by era -- everyone from one era stuffed into one or two cases. It's OK, but it leaves them so incredibly jammed that you can't possibly examine everything. It really doesn't have the (I think) intended effect of making you see how these acts all contributed to these major musical epochs -- it just looks like a glass-encased thrift store.
Continue to the rest of this gem..
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