And then there were the legends, the stories about R.E.M. going to Memphis for the first time and Peter Buck going to look for Alex and being told to go to the big hotel, that he’d be there, and Peter thinking he lived there, only to be told, no, he drives a cab and would be waiting there for a fare. We thought we were on the verge of losing Alex back then, but then we didn’t, and he was out, playing with everyone. And we took it for granted, you know, at least I took it for granted, that he was just there and around and then we had the luxury of GOING TO SEE BIG STAR (or what he decided he was ready to call Big Star). Watching the happiness on Ken Stringfellow’s and Jon Auer’s faces getting to sing those songs. Watching the faces of people who thought they’d never get to hear Alex sing “September Gurls” live and in person.

The songs were dense and carefully layered and rich and rewarding, Alex’ voice a palette of multiple levels of longing. I always thought the timbre in the vocals was the reason for the layers and layers and layers, because it would have cut you like a knife otherwise. It still did, but the notes were there to cushion you.

Westerberg encapsulated the zeitgeist of everyone I knew when he wrote: “Never travel far / without a little Big Star”. Big Star was lingua franca. You looked for those records in someone’s collection the first time you went to their house to see if they were worth knowing. Those were some of the first records I bought with the advent of CD. Those were some of the first albums I loaded onto that gizmo called an iPod back in 2003. Those are some of the songs on the eternal soundtrack that rings in my head, now and forever.

Children by the million indeed.

When Iggy got onstage tonight, after greeting the ballroom with the double-fisted Detroit salute, he said, “Well, roll over Woodstock - we won.” And 20 minutes later, as the Stooges played “I Wanna Be Your Dog” in the Grand Ballroom in the Waldorf-Astoria, I had to agree. We won. As Billie Joe Armstrong read through an impressive, highly accurate, very meaningful list of 20 or 30 bands who owed their existence to the Stooges, I was already thinking that we’d won. As Josh Homme appeared in the tribute film and said, “As far as I’m concerned they’re the greatest rock and roll band ever,” I raised a fist in triumph from my lowly position on the couch in my living room. It only took us seven years, but they’re in. They couldn’t get them in while Ron Asheton was still alive, but - they’re in. It’s done.

We won.

And a double-fisted Detroit salute to every asshole in my senior year who beat me up for liking different bands than you did. Seriously.

The tribute show is an odd duck in some ways; who’s the audience supposed to be? Is it fans of the artists performing, or fans of the artist being feted? Fans of the artists performing don’t automatically have context or even knowledge of the music being played, while fans of the celebrated artist can be a tough audience. They can be terribly critical. And they can be outright demanding sons of bitches.

The latter statement would accurately describe your average Who fan. We were ridiculously demanding OF THE ACTUAL BAND. There was no way anyone coming on the Carnegie Hall stage was getting off easy tonight, not in front of this crowd.

The other thing that needs to be considered is that Townshend and Daltrey had a very specific dynamic. People have said things like “Well I like the songs I just wish Daltrey wasn’t singing them” and I point out that if Daltrey didn’t sing the songs, no one was going to be singing them. Pete wrote songs for Roger to sing, and Roger interpreted them in a very specific way. I’m sure someone will chime in about how this isn’t unique or special but I’ll assert here that in this case it absolutely is, and is part of what made the Who the Who.

The whole reason I’m giving this tiresome history lesson, boring old fart that I am, is to say by way of preface that these are hard songs to sing and even harder to sing well. I don’t go to these evenings needing straight interpretations of the song to enjoy myself - I loved Kimya Dawson’s modern dance interpretation of “World Leader Pretend” at the R.E.M. event, for example - there just is such a thing as a misguided interpretation, or one that means well but misses the mark. I say all of this so you don’t take my dismissal of your favorite artist’s performance as a condemnation of that artist’s entire body of work.

Now maybe I can get to the actual concert.

The evening opened with a reminder of why these concerts exists, as a choir of teenagers, led by Steven Bernstein (a slide trumpeter) took us through the Overture. I wondered what these teenagers in 2010 thought of the story of the deaf, dumb and blind boy. I wondered if they cared. I wondered if they just sang the words or if any of them went and found the record and listened to it and if it resonated with them. They seemed to be having a blast, and I once again felt lucky that I grew up in a time where I could get music as part of a public school education.

Living Color came out and set the tone with a masterful cover of “Eminence Front”. I had forgotten how good that band was. The Ox would have approved of the way that bass line just swang. I’m not a fan of Sondre Lerche but he was a perfect example of someone who brought his own interpretation of the song while still maintaining its essence. “I’m A Boy” was perfect. It wasn’t a straight cover, but he clearly *got* the song and invested it with appropriate angst.

Kaki King, on the other hand, offered an untethered “Pinball Wizard” which had no guts. Seriously, “Pinball Wizard”? Pete has fucked up on that song on more than one occasion. You can’t play “Pinball Wizard” with detached coolness or less than technical precision and expect the song to register. The Postelles were up next, and while everything about them screamed indier-than-thou, sonically, at least, they were faithful. The vocal delivery just didn’t fit. I’ve never seen them so I don’t know if that was their shtick, but it was like hearing ‘I Can’t Explain” sung by Mick Jagger - but Jagger circa 1971, kinda campy. So it didn’t really work, but at least there was some energy on the stage.

When Asaf Avadan opened his mouth and started to sing “Naked Eye,” I knew immediately that I was going to completely love it or violently hate it his version. His voice is not one that’s easily accepted by your ears, and I can’t say that I’d buy his records or go see him, but his interpretation of that song was absolutely brilliant. I am sure this was the most radical cover of “Naked Eye” that I will ever hear in my entire life, but it was also absolutely valid. It’s the one I could have seen Pete and Roger standing and applauding the hardest.

I have a confession to make: all of these years, I assumed that Mose Allison was 1) dead and 2) of African-American descent. I don’t know where I gathered that conclusion from, but boy was I wrong. It was helpful, in a meat-and-potatoes rock history basics sort of way, to hear “Young Man Blues” from the mouth of its creator, but it was also underwhelming. This statement may well position me as a savage.

Bob Mould brought the energy back with a version of “Can’t Reach You” that had every ounce of his being invested in it. The only thing that was missing was a windmill (something missing THE ENTIRE NIGHT. I could get that if Pete had actually been there - but seriously, people - no windmills?!). But it wasn’t a surprise that Bob Mould was going to knock his performance out of the park. My only complaint was that he was not loud enough.

Nicole Atkins, however, could have been hit or miss - but was definitely the former. I appreciated that she dressed for the occasion, and her version of “The Song Is Over” was completely and utterly beautiful. She infused it with flavor but didn’t ruin the essence of the song. Her voice also benefited more than anyone’s from the Carnegie Hall acoustics.

Rich Pagano & the Sugarcane Cups were the house band and they kicked ass. Everything about them was perfect for the music. They were faithful to the original arrangements and brought boatloads of energy to the table. Their solo contribution was an outtake from the Lifehouse Demos, the version of “Love Ain’t For Keeping” from that set. I appreciated that someone brought the obsessive fan element to the table, but that it wasn’t so obscure that no one knew what it was.

Bobby McFarrin got more applause than Bob Mould. I’m sorry, Bobby McFarrin? Again, maybe I’m just some kind of savage but I’m not even sure why he was there. He did a Bobby McFarrin-like interpretation of “My Generation” and I was just not impressed. Like, a Bobby McFarrin imitator could have pulled that off.

Luckily, the Smithereens came on next. And while this was another gimme - how many of you bought that live EP just so you could have that version of “The Seeker” - besides Living Color, they brought the unabashed ROCK to the evening. “The Seeker” was good, it was fine, it was even great - but then they went into a “Sparks” that was so incendiary I started to suspect that perhaps they had bogarted the spot and jammed in a song that they weren’t scheduled to play. (No dice, it was in the program.) It was raw. It was powerful. It was everything that was beautiful and perfect and earthshaking about the Who. That, in my book, earned a standing ovation, and they got one (but not from the same people who applauded Bobby McFarrin).

Matt Nathanson was charming, he was clearly nervous, he was excited to be there. However, he also delivered a terrible version of “The Real Me”. There is no irony anywhere to be found on the Quadrophenia album. There is no irony in that song, and it is not a crowd participation number. (And I won’t even mention the guy on the ironic stand-up snare and kick drum, another thing that could not be more out of place on a song on which Keith Moon sounds like he has grown another 8 arms). I received a barrage of “omg he’s so nice and funny” messages on Twitter after I posted a brief summary of this - I’m sure he is, but he was just out of his element here. I’m sorry I do not like your dude.

Bettye LaVette was another artist that was worth the price of admission. And I know you’re going to tell me that you saw the Kennedy Center thing or you saw her on YouTube and so you know how awesome it is. No. This is where I tell you that you absolutely do not know how awesome it is until you sit there and listen to that woman with that voice and that presence sing “Love, Reign O’er Me” like the song was written for her. I had goosebumps.

Pulling on my flame retardant suit, I will offer that Jason Isbell’s cover of “Behind Blue Eyes” meant well but had no soul, no bite, no yearning. If you choose to play that song at a Who tribute you had better come armed for bear because that song is the essence of the Townshend-Daltrey relationship, and I know that Isbell’s smart enough to know that. I am not arguing that he’s not talented. I’m saying that he didn’t have what it takes to pull off that song.

Conan’s untimely demise means that we once again have Jimmy Vivino’s Fab Faux back in operation on the East Coast. They gave us a solid and competent Tommy medley. My only argument with that it that that interlude in the show was about transcendence and you don’t get transcendence or even close with a band of session guys, no matter how awesome they are. But it was good for someone to come in at that point of the show and play perfect copies of those songs.

Willie Nile. Willie Nile is the only artist - on a night where a very busy crew efficiently gets each artist on and off the stage as quickly as possible - who felt the need to try to talk, to try to rev the crowd up, and to dedicate his song to Pete and Roger - several times. He was also on a crutch, and I have a small suspicion that some pain meds might have been involved - or perhaps he was just loopy. His version of “The Kids Are Alright” I noted as “adequate”.

Robyn Hitchcock came out with Lenny Kaye and Sean Nelson (with whom he had just performed with this past Sunday) for a lovely version of “Substitute,” capped with an “A Quick One” intro (and why no one played THAT I still don’t know).

I have not been a Gaslight Anthem fan because I dislike being a bandwagon jumper, and there were too many people I knew that leapt onto moving vehicles the minute a Mr. B. Springsteen showed up to play with them at Glastonbury (nothing makes me less likely to do something or go somewhere than a bunch of Bruce fans embracing something as one). However, I have been coming around, and tonight definitely helped. I will say that while their version of “Baba O’Riley” (and I love that they basically are covering the Pearl Jam version of “Baba,” and not the Who’s - which is also okay), I thought they were surprisingly subdued for what I’ve seen and heard of them. The performance was a highlight but just a tiny bit underwhelming. It could also have been just the contrast to some of the other acts.

I knew Patti Smith was coming so I wasn’t surprised when Lenny and Tony Shanahan and Jay Dee came out onstage, but I was surprised that they were going to reprise “My Generation” when it had already been done. I had entertained fantasies of her covering “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. My significant other kept trying to lobby enthusiastically for “Magic Bus,” but I suspect that was mostly because he knows how much I hated the song when the Who played it (hell, Entwistle hated playing it). “Carnegie Hall, please forgive me,” Patti invoked with a smile, before crashing into “My Generation”. The tittering audience around me, and the two people (with whom I am personally acquainted) who were the only ones in the entire place standing up for this song indicated to me that most folks had no idea that this version was canon, but I will forgive them.

This is the part in the show where, if the artists being honored were in the building, that they would show their face. Unfortunately, there was no sign of the boys from Shepherd’s Bush as all of the artists from the evening came streaming onto the stage. The organ riff in the background made it clear (at least to anyone who actually knew even the smallest thing about the Who) what the next song was supposed to be. This is also the part where the problem of this being at Carnegie comes into play - people try to be well behaved (except for the friends of Rich Pagano who sat behind us all night, yakking) and the well-behaved means that people don’t stand up when they might want to stand up. Once the crowd was up and clapping, the song began.

And no one onstage knew the words.

When I say “no one knew the words” I really do mean, no one - except the guys in the house band, the Smithereens, and a guy wearing a watch cap that I think might have been Matt Nathanson (but he had lyrics for his number, so that doesn’t necessarily redeem him), and Willie Nile (maybe) - knew the words to “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. Everyone was standing there with lyric sheets - and even then no one would come up and take a verse or even a line. And I mean, I get it, it’s Carnegie Hall and stuff, but the only conclusion I could draw was that NO ONE KNEW THE FUCKING LYRICS TO WON’T GET FOOLED AGAIN, and before you make any sort of excuses, NO ONE NEEDED A FUCKING LYRIC SHEET FOR FUCKING ROSALITA at the Springsteen tribute, AND there was the added nerve case of the actual artist being onstage at the same time which would be a legitimate reason for being intimidated and hanging back a little.

[Addendum: Sean Nelson was singing but for some reason refused to commandeer a mic.]

( I could go off on a tirade here about people not having any business being in the business of rock and roll if they don’t know the fucking canon, but that is me likely making too much of something that is not there, and it will become too much “old man hollers at cloud” so I will stop.)

Suffice it to say that the encore was a trainwreck and while I videotaped it, there’s no point in me putting it up because all you will hear is 1) me singing when I realize no one there is singing to illustrate the point that it’s not a difficult song to sing and 2) me talking about how no one is singing and 3) more of #1. Props go to Nicole Atkins for knowing where the power scream was supposed to be and running to the mic to nail it.

While the evening was mostly solid, I was glad Pete and Roger were not there for this encore. We needed a star, we needed a musical director, we needed someone other than Willie Nile waving his crutch around and trying to be elder statesman. The people in front of me who got up as soon as Patti was done were, in hindsight, very smart.

All of that said, I still love these shows and love the causes they benefit. I’ll be back.

It is always hard for me to try to explain what is it, exactly, that moves me so hard with the old soul singers. It was the stuff I was the most drawn to back when I first turned on the radio and listened to the signals floating in from Chicago or Detroit. The stuff I love the most has its heart, its roots, in it. I would kill or die for a good horn section. I could not have fallen in love with someone who didn’t adore Otis Redding. I am closest to people whose idea of dance music is Stax or Motown. It is why I find it hard to resonate with most anything new, and have come to terms with that fact. It is why Greg Dulli can almost do no wrong (if you’ve never heard him singing “Having A Party” solo piano, go find it on the internet now).

And then there is Sam Moore. Sam Moore who got me on a plane 7 years ago to fly 3000 miles with no ticket, Sam Moore who still sings those songs in a way that will break your heart, will make it sing, will give you hope, will take you to church even if you have no religion. It fills you from the feet up, it pulls your head into the clouds. It helped that he had an impeccable band. It helps that the voice is still there, and there are moments when he is at the microphone that you can see the younger version of him (if you’ve seen the old footage), some of the same gestures, traces of the same moves. At the beginning of the show, he was trading vocals with various backing singers and my heart sank a little, thinking that at 74 he couldn’t get through an entire number, but he was just having fun - later in the show, he did that, again and again.

Tell me that this isn’t magic. Tell me that this isn’t something timeless. Watch this bad video of a snippet of “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” and tell me if it doesn’t melt your icy heart, if it doesn’t give you hope, if it doesn’t make you cry, make you yearn, make you pray. This music is something other, and there is nothing else like it.

The exhibit is arranged chronologically. It leads you in gently, it’s all about telling the story and giving context. It begins with the Castiles, and Bruce’s early history. Remember those photos in the Kennedy Center tribute, the ones you had never seen before? Well, when HOF VP Jim Henke went out to interview Bruce for the exhibit, as he was leaving, Bruce handed him a CD. What was on it? Those photographs, now printed out and in a case where you can sit and stare at them for a good 20 minutes.

On the left is a surfboard, one of Bruce’s old surfboards, back when they lived in the surfboard factory. Pieces of Asbury are here, too, like a brass ring from the carousel at the Palace. There’s an address book with Clarence’s phone number in it, and on the opposite page are lyrics. “Senorita Spanish rose, close her eyes and blows her nose, love is just a fire hose.” (I swear I am not making this up.)

You will find yourself reciting the history in your head as you walk through the exhibit, as you see the things you have only seen in books before (like the Castiles’ first business card). Marion Vineyard’s legendary photo album is there, open to photos from a party celebrating Bruce and George Theiss’ 19th birthday. The haircut and the Elvis shades have got to be seen to be believed.

There is a section for Child and the Bruce Springsteen Band and Steel Mill, posters and fliers and photographs. My favorite is a poster for “Bruce Springsteen And His Band Of Elves,” appearing at a Rutgers University Christmas concert.

Then you come to the exhibit for the first record, and THE Columbia sessions tape box is there, and that’s when you start running into the pages and pages and pages and pages and pages and pages of handwritten lyrics. I am not lying when I tell you that I read every single word of every single page. It took us hours, and other people walking through the exhibit thought we were absolutely insane. If you don’t need to do that, it will take you a lot less time to go through the exhibit. And even if you don’t care, I would urge you to pick one or two songs, just a couple, and stand there and read them. Get to know the handwriting, the loopy T’s. He always used spiral notebooks and he always used blue ballpoint pen. I want to read the early versions, see what lines made it, see what he kept, what he reused later. In “Growin’ Up,” our jukebox graduate was a sweet shop graduate in the first version. Plus, random lyrics from “Blinded” show up in the middle.

It’s not like this was news to me and it’s obvious even on “Tracks” that he does this. He finds a line he likes and he’ll keep using it until it fits. But it’s different to just hear finished product than seeing the process that got him to the finished product.

Alongside the early records, up until Born To Run, he also had lists of album title concepts. These are well worth reading, because many of them are very, very, very bad. For Wild & Innocent, for example, he was also considering “Circle of Lions,” “Hungry & Hunted,” “From The Churches To The Jails”. For BTR, there were pages of alternate titles as well as a tracklist that captured the kind of feeling he wanted on each song -

There’s also a prose description of a cover concept: “Flash - a street in day, fantasy on a golf bench in back of Madam Marie’s with big moon over the ocean & clarence in background”. (If you remember, there used to be a minigolf park behind Madam Marie’s. If you don’t, now you know.)

There are cases filled with reviews and photographs and fliers, all carefully preserved in scrapbooks. Some of this is him but most of it is Adele, you will definitively prove it is Adele when you find a letter written to her from Robert Hilburn, apologizing for not sending a copy of his review to her sooner. There are tshirts and jackets and backstage passes. There is one of Clarence’s saxophones, THE saxophone, the one he used on “Jungleland”. One of Danny’s accordions is there.

The Wild & Innocent lyrics went from one extreme to the other. My notes say “Bruce killed a lot of women in early lyric versions”. Scenes that were more violent in the first draft got way, way toned down in, say, the final version of “incident”. There’s a line I noted “at night we stalk the jungle in heat with murder in our ears”. (Yeah, sometimes the lyrics themselves are very, very bad, too.)

There are women’s phone numbers written in the margins in just about every third page. I liked that. I wondered who they were.

The Born To Run jacket is there. It is smaller than you think it will be, it has shrunk, it was likely tortured to death before it ended up with whichever girlfriend finally kept it. I noted this in my blog for the Hall of Fame’s website, but it bears repeating: one minute I’m reading the lyrics about “silver star studs on my duds” and the next minute I’m standing in front of the jacket, THE JACKET, which has silver star studs on the shoulders. (Which, frankly, must have been a pain in the ass and I’m shocked they’re still there, because if you carry anything on your shoulders they are eventually going to get caught in a guitar strap.)

You head up to the second floor now, up a spiral staircase with the lyrics to “Thunder Road” running up the walls as you ascend. When you get to the top, there it is: the Esquire straight ahead of you, with a BITUSA poster right above it. You probably won’t even notice the poster, but it’s there to give context to everyone else who don’t really know or understand what that guitar is. You will want to spend some time with the Esquire up close, and your observations will be different than mine, you will see different things, pay attention to different things. The glue, the wear, the frets just plain worn away. It is good that it is there where we can all see it.

(I can also tell you that the rumored stories about Kevin escorting the guitar there are true. I can tell you that he refused to give the guitar to anyone except Jim Henke, and when he did, he said, “I can’t believe he’s giving you this.”)

Upstairs you have Darkness and The River and BITUSA and Tunnel lyrics to contend with. You also have more guitars and more artifacts. The exact outfit he wore on the BITUSA cover. No seriously, the exact outfit. And looking at the jeans up close, you realize that there was absolutely zero accident that he chose those jeans, and they weren’t the only ones he had, and the holes and the wear and the wash were all carefully considered, and frankly, if my ass was going to be memorialized on a record cover, I would do the exact same thing.

(I know. I spent too much time thinking about this stuff.)

The outfit he wore on the Human Touch cover, down to that — necklace. (I did not think that era was his best look.) I hope you like “Plugged” because it’s running in a loop up here, and you will be there at least long enough to hear it once, probably once and a half. (I heard it FIVE TIMES before I stopped counting). The ticket taker’s booth from Tunnel. The flannel shirt from The River cover. The Kennedy Center medal, some Grammys, his Oscar. I will not tell you everything that is there because there still need to be some surprises. Do go around the corner towards the elevator, because there you will find a handful of Bruce’s favorite signs from the last tour (apparently he has boxes and boxes of them), along with a photo of Terry in costume and behind the ticketbooth you just saw in the other room.

The lyrics upstairs are different and in some ways less interesting. The older drafts of the later albums are more complete, except for “Walk Like A Man” (please make sure you stop to read that one through, as the early draft was very revealing). The “Streets of Fire” early draft bears no resemblance to the finished product. The Darkness titles were very firmly set, there are no lists of grandiose concepts (or they might not be on exhibit, but I’d like to think that the curators wouldn’t let us down).

The biggest surprise for me was the original “Streets of Fire” draft. In the draft on exhibit, the setting is Vietnam: “With a M16 and face in the mud, there’s a soft rain falling in the jungle.” I could be wrong about this, but this would seem to be the first time he wrote about Vietnam directly, in the first person (Lost In the Flood written as an observer). So if you only pick one lyric to read in the whole place, make it this one.

And then there is the table. It’s the table Bruce has done 90% of his writing on. It’s wooden, old like a guitar. It’s going to absorb vibrations. It gets warm and cold - it wears, just like the Esquire. They have it in a huge plexiglass cube with artifacts on the table - lyrics, setlists, album sequencing (there’s a list with three alternate Darkness sequences). There’s an (overdue) electric bill for the Long Branch house, an insurance receipt for one of his cars. I could have sat next to that table for hours, and definitely did sit there for at least half an hour, going through my notes from the first floor of the exhibit, before I moved on. People that worked with Bruce, as they’ve walked through the exhibit, have seen the table and said, “Yep, that’s just what it usually looks like.” Bruce made a joke about all the songs that were in that table. (Which makes me say, GIVE IT BACK RIGHT NOW.)

Cars: there are two cars on display right now, the first car he ever bought, which is in the lobby and you can take pictures of it, and the car he bought with his Born to Run earnings, which you’ve seen in some of the Lynn Goldsmith pictures, in the regular exhibit hall downstairs. It’s not far from Elvis’ car. I like that.

I wish I had taken more notes. I wish I had broken it up into two days, because there is just so much to appreciate. I think about going back. I wonder what Bruce would have thought if he had seen us standing there, debating the choice of certain words or why some lines were left out (although I kind of understand why the main character in Hungry Heart didn’t go out for a magazine in the final version). I am sure he would have thought we were insane too, just like the daytrippers and Girl Scout leaders herding their charges through as we stood there with our noses pressed to the plexiglass. But, after all, that is why that stuff is there and is what the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is for.

It’s worth checking out the web page for the exhibit on the RRHOF website as it’s got a Flickr slideshow. Of course, no photographs are permitted anywhere in the HOF except the lobby. But photographs wouldn’t do it justice anyway.

Just picked up one of those little Crosley turntables at Target. I have the turntable and the stereo in the living room, but there ain’t that much room in a NYC apartment. It’s got speakers and it closes up just like my mom’s old RCA and has a handle and everything. It’ll do for the occasional vinyl indulgence in my office.

On the turntable for its initial spin was the 45-only release of Greg Dulli’s tribute to Eddie Hinton. His cover of “Hard Luck Guy” is breathtaking. Dulli should get a Guggenheim to be able to work with horns for the rest of his career.

It’s not going to be a secret to anyone who’s read my work over the years that I’m a tremendous Replacements fan. I could not be happier that someone is finally telling their story especially when that someone is Gorman Bechard. If you don’t know who he is, he’s the author of one of my all-time favorite books, The Second Greatest Story Ever Told - which I found out about because the Replacements are mentioned repeatedly, and it popped up in some issue of The Skyway (which, if you’re a Mats fan, will be near and dear to you). (It doesn’t hurt that he’s also a tremendous Mets fan.) Anyway, he was raising funds for the film on Kickstarter and I couldn’t donate fast enough.

The film is called Color Me Obsessed. Spread the word.

(I really, really, really need to drag out all of my contact sheets and negatives from the 80s and get them burned to DVD. Tons of great Replacements shots. Yeah, in my copious free time.)

I know what you are going to say. You are going to argue that [artist] isn’t in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame yet, or that it took them [X] years to induct [X]. I have heard your arguments, and I have made them myself (Patti Smith likely only got in when she did because Michael Stipe issued an ultimatum. Gram Parsons is STILL not in. et cetera). But you need to separate the nominations from the physical place with the stuff, or you will be doing yourself a disservice. Because if you care enough to make those kind of nuanced arguments, then you are exactly the kind of person who needs to visit the Hall in Cleveland.

I will get to individual artifacts in a minute. First, I want to talk about context. In a time in which the notion of radio as a cultural force is all but gone, and kids are learning about classic rock from Guitar Hero, context is vital. While it’s easier nowadays to connect the dots and find the music, I’m not sure that anyone bothers to do the legwork anymore. If you’re curious about a band, you’d probably read the wikipedia article and then go find the record for free. You wouldn’t have to find a record store that carried the Dutch import of the first New York Dolls album (nor deal with the humiliation you endured in the first store where you asked for it). You wouldn’t have to collect old Rolling Stone and Creem magazines to try to learn about bands. You wouldn’t troll through microfilm at the library on a rainy Saturday.

But When you walk into the main floor of the RRHOF, it’s all about context. There’s a wall of early influences. Then there’s a wall of the 500 most influential songs in rock and roll. There’s the performer influence database, an entire wall. Then there’s an exhibit about censorship. Yes, I walked through all of those… and was greeted by Elvis Presley’s purple Lincoln Continental.

The Elvis exhibit is the first one you should look at, because it’s a good example of the multi-layered presentation you’ll find in most of the RRHOF. For the average fan, you get the BOOM of the car and some of the more outrageous artifacts, while the rest of us can read the letter from Colonel Tom Parker to Elvis about paying his income taxes, how hard it is to become a millionare, and to not overspend.

From there, I moved onto the ‘Treasures From the Vault’ exhibit, the one-offs. Like Cooperstown, only a small percentage of the items that the HOF has in its collection are on display at any given time. So this will be different every time you come. And there was Slash’s top hat and Ian Anderson’s fugly poncho but there was also the handwritten lyrics to “Clampdown” sitting next to “Here Comes A Regular”.

There are handwritten lyrics EVERYWHERE in the RRHOF. You will be amazed how many rock stars opt for spiral notebooks and blue ballpoint pen. (Or maybe it was just me.) Joe Strummer used a black felt tip and the words were bouncing all over the page, Paul Westerberg used ballpoint and the words were neat and orderly. You know that bit that Joe shouts as the song fades out? It’s all there, scripted, in pencil.

The clothing exhibit was next. Fleetwood Mac. Aerosmith. Bowie a little disappointing (and all of the items were from Mr. Bowie). The Who was fun. U2 and some lemon-studded quasi army uniforms they apparently only wore for the Australian tour (and I can see why). Nearby is a case with the first U2 tshirt (which Larry made when he was 15 - it looks like it could be sold in baby gap, it’s so small) and the lyrics to “Bad” (large A4 sheet of paper, ballpoint, lyrics against the left margin, changes in the right margin).

Beatles & Stones followed. The big WOW in the Beatles exhibit is Lennon’s Sgt. Pepper suit. It is definitely a wow. But the rest of it was somewhat disappointing - at least to me. But I am a veteran of years of Beatlefest. Beatles memorabilia is old hat to me. With the Stones, the most interesting thing was a rider for MSG in 1973, on which the Stones’ preferred cheeses were detailed. (This will be hilarious to anyone who was ever on the Undercover mailing list). The rest of it was not so thrilling. I suspect Mick is hoarding it all for the big bang in the future. Personally, I am just not going to find Steel Wheels era memorabilia that exciting. I did like knowing that the Stones pinball machine was a gift from Keith and it used to sit in his apartment.

I will confess to flitting through Hendrix - it’s not that interesting to me, and I did live in the same city as the <strike>Jimi Hendrix Museum</i> Experience Music Project . Even though I didn’t want to, I found myself going through the Jim Morrison memorabilia, prominently displayed with a plaque pointing out it came from his parents. As Ray Manzarek said years and years ago, kids, don’t die without a valid will, or your parents will control what happens with your legacy. Maybe I’m reading too much into it but there were too many letters from Jim’s father in the exhibit. (I did appreciate that the map of Pere Lachaise came from the collection of Patricia Lee Smith).

My favorite part of the downstairs exhibit had to be the regional showcases: Rockin’ All Over The World. Memphis, LA, London 1960’s, London 1970’s, New York 1970’s.  I looked at everything but cared the most about things like original telegrams from the artists who agreed to appear at Monterey.  There is so much there and I didn’t need the exhibit to teach me anything, I just wanted to see what I wanted to see. Gram was there, in the form of an acoustic guitar that taunted me through the glass. As I mentioned in my blog post for the RRHOF’s blog, Tina Weymouth and Chris Franz were huge archivists and squirreled away posters and fliers and tshirts from the punk scene. I looked at every single thing in that case. The highlight of the punk exhibit was, of course, Joe Strummer’s guitar. I was talking to a docent later in the day and he mentioned that last summer, instead of Joe’s guitar, they had Paul’s bass from the Palladium gig, aka the cover of London Calling.

That’s why you gotta come see this stuff. Really. You do.

Other stuff I liked: I liked the Ohio exhibit just fine because Greg Dulli’s amplifier was in it, representing my beloved Afghan Whigs. I loved the “Respect” exhibit, but wished it had been in the room dedicated to Les Paul and Alan Freed and Sam Phillips instead of just one case against a wall. I did NOT like the pieces of Otis Redding’s plane, nor did I need to see the coat he was wearing when he died. That bothered me a lot and took away from my enjoyment of the rest of that exhibit.  I liked that Pink Floyd have parked their props there, so you have the Division Bell heads and puppets from The Wall. I absolutely freaking loved the Rolling Stone exhibit, which consisted of covers and tearsheets and correspondence. So you’re reading Annie Leibovitz and Jann Wenner’s stormy back and forth, and a letter from aspiring rock journo Patti Smith, and then the absolute prize, that had us howling in laughter to the point that people moved away from us, were letters from Hunter S. Thompson. (A quote: ‘I DID NOT STEAL YOUR CASSETTES. I MAY HAVE DONE A LOT OF ROTTEN THINGS OUT THERE BUT I DID NOT STEAL YOUR CASSETTES!” This theme went on throughout a series of letters back and forth. Ah, letters.)

We did NOT do any of the movies besides the 63-minute reel that shows the inductees. I am sorry we wasted that hour because there was no actual footage from induction ceremonies (or just brief flashes). I expected a lot more. Even if you don’t see the movie, walk through the theater so you can see the signatures in glass of all (or most) inductees along the wall. The reason we didn’t sit through any other movies was because we didn’t want to see footage we either owned or knew by heart. We didn’t think they were going to tell us anything we didn’t know already. Maybe that was an incorrect assessment. That was about the time I wished the HOF had put together maps or self-guided tours for different levels of fans. I would have loved to have walked in there and gotten the “Fanatic” map that would have taken me through the things crazy people would love to see. They have what they call “Spotlight Artifacts” - the Sgt. Pepper suit is one of those - but how on earth is Joe Strummer’s guitar not a spotlight artifact? Or Janis Joplin’s custom car?

When I left, my biggest impression is that I can not ever again skip exhibits about bands I care about. I am so, so sorry I missed the U2 exhibit, for example. It really is worth your time.

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Detail stuff:

You need a full weekend, or two full days. It’s 7 hours from NYC, with a couple of short stops. Drive Friday night, back on Sunday afternoon. You can do it in one day if you aren’t interested in the special exhibit, and don’t need to read every single word on every single lyric sheet that Bruce Springsteen gave to the RRHOF. But you’d still be missing something.

There is nowhere nearby to eat in the middle of the day. We planned to eat at the cafe in the museum both days, just to save time, but the food the first day was so horrible that we preferred to have a large breakfast and wolf down a bag of pretzels and a drink instead the second day. The closest food was in our hotel, which was a 10 minute walk away, and then there was honestly nothing, because the neighborhood is a business district. (If there was food nearby, it would have been awesome if the HOF put together a guide  - and maybe there was one.)  I don’t know how I’d do it differently because there really are no other options.

YOU CANNOT TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS, except in the lobby. No really. There is a sign that explains that due to the arrangements the museum has made with the artists who have donated the artifacts, photographs are not permitted. I wish that wasn’t true, but it is what it is.

Let’s get this out of the way: It didn’t top Bruce. It didn’t top Prince. It didn’t top U2. But it did make me cry, just a little. I cried because I love/d them. I cried because they are old. I cried because I am old. I cried because the music of my youth is dying. I cried because Roger can’t go onstage shirtless anymore. I cried because John is dead, because I never got to see Keith, because there is no one else like them, no one who comes close to them.

I know I am not objective. I know I am emotional and irrational and have a stormy history with this band. But they were the first band I loved insanely. I do not have to be objective.

The performance tonight was a rock band - one of THE rock bands - playing onstage. Just playing. In a few years we will all forget what that was like, a band, just playing onstage, without gimmicks or theatrics. There are no more bands like this, who form when they are young and stick together 20, 30, 40 years. Consider that U2 is the only band in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that still has their original members. Think about this. It was not the Who at their best, but this era is not them at their best. They are old. They have aged. Roger’s voice, which he coddled for years, has not held up. At least he has learned to not to try to hit the notes and miss them, he has figured out how to modulate around them and still deliver a solid performance. But it is not power screaming Roger Daltrey, and if you are looking for that, you are better off watching The Kids Are Alright on repeat. You don’t go for that. Or if you do, you’re not very smart.

You go for the emotional heartstrings being played, and they can still do that. I got goosebumps when “Won’t Get Fooled Again” started. I got goosebumps during “Listening To You”. If you didn’t then these aren’t your songs, this isn’t your band, you don’t care about rock and roll and it’s just background music to you. And I get that this might not be relevant to you. But there’s an awful lot of people to whom it was relevant. Those people are also getting old along with Roger and Pete and in a few years you can have Lady Gaga doing the halftime show for you instead.

Pete, Roger, Zak Starkey on drums, Pino Palladino on bass, Rabbit Bundrick on keys. Simon Townshend filling in the gaps (who I have forgiven previous transgressions due to his work with Roger on his solo tour). This is the Who core right now, and it is sad in a way that I was relieved that it was the people I already know and not someone new. I liked the staging, I liked the clear drums with the target cymbals (okay I LOVED the target cymbals), I liked how I was not seeing the camera cut to audience plants who have no idea who this is or have never seen the band before and could mostly care less. The connection with the audience was a big part of what the Who was, but you weren’t going to get it here. The lighting and setup were topnotch.

Zak was remarkably restrained and so was Pete and I think that put a damper on the energy. Not enough guitar, too much keyboard in the mix. When Pete did play, it was fantastic, melodic, compact - which is a freaking challenge in a medley of songs that don’t easily lend themselves to being medley-ized, in a band that was never about brevity (remember Pete in TKAA going on about Kit Lambert giving him a hard time about songs being more than “2 minutes 50″). But the BIGGEST problem, hands down, was the fucking JACKET. For years we have all gotten on his case for his need to wear expensive suits onstage, which he then spends the entire fucking show moving and adjusting and it gets in the way and causes him to miss solos and notes and windmills. WHY ON EARTH DID YOU DECIDE TO WEAR IT TONIGHT? “It’s just not windmill conducive,” to quote a friend texting me after the show.

Roger hit the scream on WGFA and that was all that mattered. The look of relief on his face when it was over showed just how nervous he was.

I haven’t seen them live since the tour when John died, out at the Gorge, when I yelled at the thunder for taking the Ox from us. I wasn’t going to see Roger on the most recent solo outing until a friend gave me a free ticket. I will probably go this time around, because this time will likely be goodbye.

There’s also a news story from me on Backstreets.com, but you’ll have to scroll down to the news from 1/26.

Full posts on the Springsteen exhibit and the rest of the hall in general will be up on the weekend.