I spent a marathon day yesterday chaperoning a field trip to Cleveland to visit the zoo and a quick stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  We only had about an hour, so I didn't get to spend nearly as much time as I would have liked, but it was still pretty cool.  My group consisted of seven 7th grade girls and needless to say, they were less than impressed with my vast knowledge of all things Rock and/or Roll. You try explaining The Wall to a bunch of 13 year olds!

First impression was the building is too modern for my tastes.  I know it's by I.M. Pei and all, but I like my institutions to have pillars and marble and all that jazz.

My doubts were gone when we walked in and the very first thing you see is this:

For those who aren't familiar, this is the hot dog that Phish has used several times in their famous New Year's Eve shows to fly over the crowd.  Yes, I realize I've just outed myself as a Phish fan to CBN, but it was a welcome sight.  Even the kid got excited. 

We made the decision to start at the top and work our way down, which sounded like a good idea at the time, but the lower level is where all the good stuff is located and we wasted a bunch of time in the Herb Ritts gallery.  Action shot of the girls in front of MJ.

I got us moving on down when we came across this:

Two of the original Les Pauls.  The one on the left has quite a CBG silhouette in the middle where he put the pickups.  The one on the right is what I would call "The Log" with the neck attached to a large block for the pickups and the sides just sort of bolted on for looks.  It looked like something we might see around here.  That was sort of mind blowing.

The clock was ticking so we continued on down only to end up in the fucking gift shop.  I knew at this point it was now or never, so I grabbed the kid and we broke ranks to see the good stuff.  We only had about 30 minutes at this point.

We started in the pioneers section and spent most of our time there.  Guitars from Muddy, the Alberts, Bo Diddley, Hank Williams and many, many more.  Now we were talking.  I actually said the CBN guys would love this to a slight eye-roll. I enjoyed the displays with the clothing and here are the suits of Hank, Muddy and Bill Monroe.

We breezed through the next section to get to the Beatles and the Stones.  I liked Lennon's Sgt. Pepper costume.

We were basically running at this point, but she slowed me down when we got to Michael Jackson's glove.  The kids still love him.  With about 10 minutes to go, I still hadn't seen any of Jerry Garcia's guitars, so I asked and was pointed to this display.  Another moving experience for Dad.

We completely skipped Hendrix and Paul Simon and a bunch of other things and ended up back at the Pioneer section to have another look and that's when I saw something that completely took my breath away and stopped me in my tracks.

Pete Seeger's Banjo head. I don't know exactly why, but I haven't cried like that in a long, long time.  I'm sure I've never shed a tear for any physical object of any kind, but there is something about this that shook me to my core.  The person who played it, the message itself and the thought of all of the songs that touched people for most of a century broke loose some big emotions.  It was like I was getting all of the music that he created in all in one dose.  Shit, I'm getting choked up right now.

The kid was sweet and was trying to comfort me as I gathered myself and headed back to the bus.  She's never seen me like that, but I'm glad she did and I got to tell her and her friend all about Pete Seeger on the 3.5 hour bus ride back home.  I think Pete would've liked that.