This ain't no foolin' around...

Welcome back to the next installment of my trip to the Rock and Roll temple that is the Hall of Fame museum. From the lobby, you go down the escalator to the lower level. This is where the largest collection of items that you're allowed to photograph is assembled. Unless noted (usually for song lyrics or pictures), everything you see is the real deal. Down here is Billy Gibbons' Eliminator car (with a request you take pics for personal use only, no posting or sharing), next to Joan Jett's Jaguar. Next to that is the drum kit Alex Van Halen used on Van Halen's 1980 Invasion tour (which I got to see). Kinda amazing he only used it for the one tour and here I am seeing it in person for the 2nd time in 32 years.

There were also circular displays of various guitars, including a Bobby Womack ESP Acoustic from 1975, Sting's Spector NS-2 bass from 1983, a Rick Danko bass from 1995 and this 2000 Strat that belonged to Link Wray;

From there, you finally went into the museum portion. The first of many films you can watch is your first option, this one called "Mystery Train". It's an excellent 12 minute piece that takes you back to the early 1900's, showing clips from Country, Gospel, and Blues players as well as just regular folk, singing songs of the time. During the course of the film, it slowly brings alla these influences together, giving you an excellent set up of how it all came together to become rock and roll.

As much as I hate to keep breaking this into short, seemingly never ending little bits, I'm gonna save the next portion for next time as this was when I truly started to get the chills and being moved by what I was seeing. See ya next time...