A travel blog
Hey Kids,
JT here with an actual blog this time, and not just a picture gallery of records, playlists, bizarre You Tube clips or funny stuff Fuzzco sent me that I claim as my own discovery. Nope, a real, honest to goodness blog about something I actually did.
Earlier this month Heidi and I took a trip down to Cleveland to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, then travel across part of the Midwest to visit the city of where she flowered into womanhood, Rockford, Illinois.
Heidi had vacation time she had to "use or lose", my friends Rich and Jess were going to be in Stow, Ohio for a wedding and I wasn't doing anything because they don't hire people from New Jersey in Northern Michigan (the bastards) so the stage was set for a winter roadtrip to points South (of Traverse City)
Day One: We drove from TC straight through to Cleveland with minimal stops for gas, food and bathroom breaks. I am usually terrified of driving into big cities (ask Rich, he always did the driving whenever we went into NYC) but motoring into Cleveland was a breeze. Our hotel was just a few blocks in from the highway and traffic was almost non-existant. The area around our hotel was almost devoid of other human life. The majority of the other businesses nearby seemed to be small industry of some sorts. No restaurants, no other hotels, a local TV station and a Red Cross building were the only other establishments with any activity going on near them. The streets were pretty much deserted except for a lone pedestrian every hour on the half hour. They usually got off a bus.
Our hotel fell below our expectations. We chose a Days Inn as our past experiences with them have always made for a pleasant lodging stay but this one brought to mind the motels Fred Sanford would describe as being in El Segundo. It looked like it had once been an independent hotel that has now been taken over by Days Inn but they're still in the process of bringing it up to Days Inn quality. Our room to looked to have suffered some kind of water damage at one point as the phone was sticky, the phone books were crunchy and Heidi found some kind of unidentifiable brown stain on the bathroom counter. We unpacked our things, threw the bed's blankets in the corner as they had cigarette burns on them then headed downstairs in search of dinner.
The lobby level had a shabby bar/Chinese restaurant with the World's Oldest Fish in a tank by the door where we had quite possibly the worst Chinese food meal ever. It was like the Chinese food you find in the back of your fridge a week after you remembering buying it on your way home from the Lakeside Lounge at 3 in the morning and you warm it up and eat it anyway. It tasted lukewarm and burnt. We had a few small bites, moved it about our plates then decided the vending machines offered a better culinary experience.
The following morning we arose early and went back downstairs for the Continental breakfast, which was just that. It had been in the trunk of someone's Continental. No, it wasn't that bad but could have been better. Ten bags of bagels and they're all onion??? Variety people! That's what the public wants.
After breakfast we went back to our room on the 7th floor to get our coats and whatnot then back down to the lobby to meet Rich and Jess. We get down there and what is Rich doing? He's at the payphones looking through the Yellow Pages for record stores. LOL. After the "Good to see ya"'s and everything we caught a cab over to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Again, it felt weird that the streets were so...free of human life. Some buses, a few cabs and an occasional pedestrian.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was both interesting/cool but at the same time it felt like we were experiencing only one man's vision of what rock'n'roll consists of. Mainly, Jann Wenner's vision. On the third or fourth floor there is a two- case display chronicling Rolling Stone magazine, as if that is the only rock'n'roll magazine there ever was. To top it off, somewhere in the hall was a photo of Wenner playing guitar onstage sometime in the 70s.
As soon as we walked in we were buffaloed over to a green sheet hanging on a wall, handed instruments and had our picture taken. I thought "Cool, we get a free picture" but after it was taken (twice, because according to the miserable woman running the stand I didn't hold the Stratocaster so it could be seen) we were handed cards with a number on it so we could purchase the photo when we left the hall. I felt kind of mad. We relaly didn't want our picture taken in the first place and now you're going to try and sell it back to us? We declined the oppourtunity when we left.
We saw and were in awe of the majority of the items there. Photography was strictly forbidden so I'll just list a few of the things that stood out to me for various reasons.
An acoustic guitar owned by Dave Davies from the early 70s. This is where Heidi and I were most disappointed in the Hall of Fame. Seriously lacking in Kinks Kontent. One lousy guitar? And an acoustic one from the early 70s at that?? Where are the red hutning jackets??? Dave couldn't loan his Flying V out? Mick doesn't have an old drumhead somewhere he could've give them? Doesn't Ray have some old lyric sheets he could dig out?
Jeff Beck's Fender Telecaster from his Yardbirds days. HOLY FCCING SHIT. There it was. THE guitar that is on all those records that were so mythical to guys like me and Branigin in high school. And there it was, very well-worn, looking me right in the face. I flet like I should have offered up some kind of burnt offering right there in the hall, to say thanks for accompanying me on my 9th grade paper route on my Walkman all those years ago. Other Yardbirds items in the British Invasion case were a drumhead autographed by Jim McCarty (don't know if it was an original though) and a jacket also owned by him that he wore during the Page-era 'birds.
The Who display- A little underwhelming but cool nonetheless. You'd think after all these years Roger Daltrey would have more in his closet than his Rock and Roll Circus buckskin suit, a football helmet from the Odds and Sods album cover and a white suit from the Tommy movie. Representing Keith Moon were several articles of clothing, a pair of shoes and one of the bass drumheads from the "Pictures of Lily" kit. For the Ox they had (if I remember correctly) one or two bass guitars and maybe a stage worn suit. Townshend had a Hiwatt amp and head (from the collection of Joe Walsh the ID card read) and a jumbo acoustic he used in the late 60s that might have been used on "Pinball Wizard" The ID card didn't make it exactly clear. Pete also had a Les Paul from the 1973 tour in the Les Paul exhibit.
Other items that made me gaze in wide-eyed wonderment:
The actual guitar used to play the solo on "Rock Around the Clock"
Eddie Cochran's Gretsch Country Gentleman
Muddy Waters' Guild electric guitar
Two drumheads from the kit of Bobby Elliott of the Hollies
An early homemade bass belonging to Chris White of the Zombies
John Lennon's leather jacket from his Hamburg days
Lennon's Sgt. Pepper jacket
Collarless suits belonging to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr
Shoes and jacket as worn by Handsome Dick Manitoba on the cover of Go Girl Crazy!!! by the Dictators
Joey Ramone's leather jacket and one of the original "Gabba Gabba Hey!" signs
The case on the third floor devoted to the Ramones that held the Mosrite Johnny used from 1977 all the way up to the end of their career. There were also several of Dee Dee's handwritten lyrics, his bass and a few show flyers from the very early days.
The bass Paul Simonon is shown smashing on the cover of the Clash's London Calling
What seemed to be most of Jimi Hendrix' stagewear
Kind of creepy items: Alan Freed's ashes and part of the fuselage from the plane Otis Redding died in. One piece said "Otis", the other "Redding"
The fifth and sixth floors hold rotating exhibits and when we visited they were The Making of HELP! and the Legacy of the Doors
The HELP! exhibit was really cool with lots of paper memorabilia like scripts and lobby cards but the best things were John's cape from the Austria scenes and George's corduroy suit from the "I Need You" sequence. Heidi made a beeline for the latter as soon as she saw it.
The Doors exhibit felt less like an exhibit and more like a store. Why do they need a display case for current Doors merchandise? You can see that crap anywhere! When we first started walking around the exhibit I was finding all the paper items fascinating until I read the fine print and saw they were almost all reproductions. Kind of ruined the mystery. No surprise there wasn't much of Jim Morrison's personal belongings. The leather pants ended up in Iggy Pop's possession in the early 70s and are probably long gone. They had a few instruments of theirs on display but not much. A broken sitar and a broken tabla which wasn't impressive but they did have Krieger's guitar and some of the amps from the 1967 Hollywood Bowl concert.
The funniest thing about the Doors exhibit, and I think Branigin is going to laugh himself silly if he ever sees this stuff, was a large framed poster of Ray Manzarek pre-Doors as "Ray Daniels, R&B Soul Swinger!" Pompadour, goatee-like beard, sunglasses, emoting into one of those old-time microphones. Rich and I were laughing at it hysterically, goofing on it while all these serious, po-faced Doors fans in the exhibit looked at us like we were committing the most unholy of crimes. I stood right in front of the thing and said "What a douchebag!" while Rich recounted the tale of WFMU's Glen Jones hanging up on Manzarek after calling him an asshole.
Then we went downstairs and loudly asked around for the Dave Clark Five exhibit. And what happens when we get home? The DC5 finally get inducted.
We browsed around the FYE store in the lobby for a while reading books we had no intention of buying then caught cab abck to the hotel, where we said goodbye to Rich and Jess until next time.
We checked out in the morning ( but not before encountering a homeless guy in the elevator) then hit the road for Illinois.
Branigin had warned me about Northern Indiana and I should've listened. It's a bleak, desolate landscape. Maybe it looks better in the summer with all the farms but in the winter it's depressing. I can see a teenage Branigin walking the snowy streets much like teenage me in NJ with only his Walkman and Memorex tapes of Zeppelin to transport him away from this gray existence.
We made good time across Indiana and got to Joliet, Illinois before the sun went down. In Joliet I was finally able to meet Heidi's friend Metty and her husband Chris. Nice people but I was more excited to go to a White Castle again! Chris and I bonded over those little burgers, bragging about how many we can eat. I also told him the other nicknames for them as he was only familar with "sliders" I gave him "bellysinkers" and "ratburgers"
After Joliet, Heidi took me to Rockford which almost made parts of New Jersey look like a vacation paradise. Rockford is split into two parts, much like most big cities. The good part and the bad part. Heidi wasn't having any of the bad side of town so she showed me around Loves Park, Rockton and MacChesney Park. Rockton I liked the most because it looked like an actual town with lots of history.The area around our hotel was nothing but big box retailer after big box retailer so it looked like Anytown USA. You couldn't look at it and say "That's Rockford" Rockford is COLD too. That town needs to plant some big trees or build some big skyscrapers to divert the wind around people.
Later that night we meet up with Metty and her husband again at the Rock'n'Roll Beef A Roo where I was finally able to meet the infamous Andrea and her significant other, also named Chris. I was disappointed she left her Squirrel Army at home but I suspect they were out doing her evil bidding. She's a lot more quiet than I expected but seems nice. Her boyfriend regaled us with tales of being behind Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick at the grocery store at 6:30 in the morning. After Beef-A-Roo we all went back to Chris and Metty's luxury suite at Cliffbreakers and played Cranium before we all bid each other farewell.
I wanted to stay longer because there was an interesting documentary about Don Rickles on the motel TV but there was an impending ice storm so we left a day early. The drive back to Traverse City was pretty uneventful except for when we stopped to eat a Wendy's and there was this woman a few tables away from us who talked in a Fozzy Bear/Rolf the Dog kind of voice that made Heidi giggle when I imitated it.
Summing up, I would suggest a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for anyone who calls himself a rock and roll fan but I wouldn't suggest a trip through Gary, Indiana let alone TO IT.
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