independence

so last saturday, b and i visited the rock and roll hall of fame. it's a pretty amazing place and an extremely well done museum. so far we consider it and the guinness store house our two favourite museums visited together.

the building was designed by architect i.m. pei – who designed the pyramid at the lourve in paris. the hall of fame resembles the lourve because it too had a pyramid incorporated into it's design, only it's just a half pyramid. it's located right on the shore of lake erie, which means when you look out the large windows you can see the water lapping up against it's north-western facade.

the main lobby area contains a lot of props from music videos and concert sets. it's got these mini cars from a U2 tour, the big W from weezer, a hot dog car from phish, and the gwen and moby signs from their collaborative music video. in the same open space, only 3 levels up is all the gear from pink floyd's 'the wall'.

when we paid our admission we also bought tickets to a 3D movie of a U2 concert. it was about an hour and a half and showcased their performance in buenos aires during their vertigo tour. in all honestly, it was the best 3D we'd ever seen. it really felt like we were right there. they did an incredible job with it. we really enjoyed it, but i did feel a bit antsy to get going and see the rest of the museum.

it may be hard to believe, but i can completely unbiasedly say that brendan is the best person in the world to visit the rock and roll hall of fame with. while i knew who a lot of the people featured were, a lot of the content was still above my head, but brendan was able to explain everything to me. not only does he have a deep love for music, he also has a deep love of music history. everywhere we went there he was constantly saying "oh man, oh man". it was so funny. it was like he was going to faint any second. it was mostly the guitars that had him glowing. muddy waters, duane allman, and many many 1959 gibson les pauls. he felt really torn in seeing those guitars because it was both amazing and yet almost sacrilegious to have them in glass cases instead of being played.

my favourite guitar was the ani difranco accoustic featured in the 'women who rock' teaser section beside sue tedeschi's electric. after visiting the 'women who rock' exhibit i found it a bit disappointing that these two incredibly talented and strong women in the music industry only had one guitar shown each and no official tribute in the actual exhibit – meanwhile britney spears and carrie underwood did. one criticism that b had of the hall of fame is that many of their installments are extremely questionable for a rock museum. but in truth, it seems to me that it's slowly morphing into a music hall of fame rather than just rock.

they don't permit photos so we don't have a lot to show of our time there. from what we understand it's because everything on display is on loan from the individual or their estate, and so they can't permit photography of things they don't own. i dunno. it's ok though, it just mean we were more present in drinking everything in. it was quite the experience :)

wake up but keep dreaming that you were meant to fly.