A Visit to the Rock’N’ Roll Hall of Fame Annex Museum.
NYC
By Cary Doll
(SugarBuzz CT/NYC)
SugarBuzz Magazine
On a recent visit to NYC I visited the the Rock‘N’Roll Hall of Fame Annex Museum, a branch of the Rock’N’ Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland, OH). A subterranean museum that archives Rock n Roll from it’s beginnings to present day.
The first room you enter into is a gallery with all the musicians/bands currently inducted into the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame listed on a “brick wall” with band/performer names and the year they were inducted, in a timeline fashion. Each brick also shows the performer’s “signature”. Occasionally particular bricks would light up in neon as that band or musician’s song came out of the room’s sound system. They then distributed a headset to each person which as one moved from section to section in the exhibits would play music appropriate to the area and artist you were looking at as you went through each area.
There’s a room where a film is shown on larger- than- life, side-by-side screens with footage of many performers from The Beatles, Stones, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, to the Ramones & U2, among many others. It was great seeing the images projected on such a grand scale in front of you.
There was another section that showcased different aspects of rock that formed and how the more modern rock artists were influenced by an earlier generation of musicans.
This highlighted several different areas of rock’n’roll as such :female-inspired music, blues-inspired music, hip hop-rap, and the art –inspired rock.
In yet another area was an entire car on display that was once owned by Bruce Springsteen, a 1957 Chevy Bel Air convertible with hot rod flames painted on the sides, which he purchased while recording “Born to Run”. When I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine him cruising around Asbury Park.
It then moved into an area of actual clothing, shoes and artifacts of many rock stars. I found this section the most fascinating, and among my favorite mementos were the white lace-up jumpsuit with rivets that Mick Jagger wore circa 1972 (only Mick’s body was missing in it. Damn!), to a crushed peacock blue velvet cape with purple sequin collar that James Brown wore, and a mini dress worn by Janis Joplin. Also on display were shoes worn by Elvis (man he was a big guy!), to the over- the- knee animal-print platform boots Alice Cooper wore on his “Billion Dollar Babies" tour. There were handwritten lyrics/poem fragments on notebook paper that Jim Morrison had handwritten, notes from members of the Stones to their fans! In one such note from Brian Jones, he thanked a fan named Mary for sending him some aftershave lotion! What a riot!
In a section which was devoted to New York City’s music impact, there was actual souvenirs from CBGB’s such as the actual awning, a urinal and the actual cash register from behind the bar with a multitude of stickers all over it. It also featured some drawings and photos of John Lennon from his “Bed-In” days, an outfit worn by Deborah Harry, a guitar of Johnny Ramone’s, David Byrne’s oversized suit, and a pair of pony-skin chaps from Sylvain Sylvain’s clothing collection. Very cool!
There was so much to look at, reminisce about and “take in”. It’s true that some bands and musicians are “entirely overlooked” (which is inevitable I suppose) but of what it DOES include, it does a pretty impressive job. The “special exhibit room” happening at present is on The Clash, and it is pretty spectacular. It has many pieces of clothing and shoes worn by actual Clash members, guitars that they owned/played, 
and video footage, tour posters, handwritten set lists from various shows, article reprints, and much, much more. If you dig the Clash, this is a “Must-see” exhibit!! However this is on for a limited time and the next special exhibit will be John Lennon starting in May 2009.
And after you get through this room and return your headset you are finally dumped into the gift shop, where temptations of t-shirts, clothing and assorted rock memorabilia are ready for purchase.
This is a fun place to go for the dedicated rock fan, and you should allow a minimum of 90 minutes to go through the museum although you may want to spend longer than that there. No photos were allowed to be taken inside so I don’t have interior photos but it was a visual treat to see the the memorabilia that they have archived.
Editor's Note: But I jacked a few pixs of the interior from the annex website!