Free Admission to John Lennon Exhibit at RnR Hall of Fame Annex NYC Offered This Weekend

"Free entry" is always swell when in an expensive town like NYC and it's even better when the "free entry" is for something that is pretty cool. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC is offering free admission to the John Lennon: The New York City Years exhibit tomorrow and Saturday to commemorate what would have been Lennon's 69th birthday.

Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, donated a variety of items for the exhibit, including private letters and photos, instruments and iconic clothing, as well as the glasses Lennon was shot in and the brown paper bag that the coroner's office gave her with John Lennon's effects after he was murdered. When asked why, Ono said, "This was a guy who like king of the world, you know...just turned into a brown paper bag."

Wow.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex opened Tuesday in NYC's SoHo District. Much of the famous remnants of CBGBs, like the club’s tattered awning, cash register, and flier-covered phone booth, wound up here too (instead of Las Vegas someplace as was the rumor awhile back before CBGB owner Hilly Kristal died of cancer awhile back). If you're heading to NYC for the holidays, consider checking it out...even with a $22 entry fee, I've heard it's quite choice.

The Clash looked down from a wall-size 1978 photograph at a roomful of workmen sawing, measuring, painting and lugging. Vintage amplifiers were wheeled in from the chill outside, passing by plexiglass exhibition cases, Bruce Springsteen’s tarp-covered 1957 Chevrolet and a 26-foot scale model of Manhattan. Then came the heads-up.

“Here comes the phone booth,” somebody said, and in rolled the wooden phone box from CBGB, plastered with decades-old stickers like a punk sarcophagus. Workers stood it up beside graffitied wall sections from that landmark club, along with two of its loudspeakers and a metal frame for the “CBGB & OMFUG” awning that hung over 315 Bowery until the place closed two years ago.

These were among the hundreds of artifacts being prepared for the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex NYC, a $9 million branch of the Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. The Annex, in a 25,000-square-foot basement space at 76 Mercer Street in SoHo — upstairs, facing Broadway, is an Old Navy store — was created as a smaller, quicker offshoot of the headquarters.

A trip through should take about 90 minutes, and costs $26; in Cleveland, where admission is $22, the full experience takes four or five hours. As in Cleveland, you can hardly turn a corner in the Annex without bumping into a smashed guitar, yellowed lyric sheet or pointy bustier.

But the Annex was also designed as a New York-centric temple of rock culture, said Joel Peresman, president of the Hall of Fame Foundation, on a tour one crisp afternoon this week. In addition to having a special gallery for local musicians, the Annex will open with an exhibit honoring the Clash, the British punk giants who kept a particularly high profile in the city. (That shot from 1978 was taken under the West Side Highway by Bob Gruen.)

“The legitimacy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, we’ve established that over 25 years,” Mr. Peresman said. (The foundation, which inducts members into the Hall of Fame, was founded in 1983; the museum in Cleveland opened in 1995.) “But in New York you have to prove yourself, whether you’re a sports team or a museum. We have an important story to tell. And you have to have something interesting and compelling; otherwise, New Yorkers are going to blow it off.”

It will be tough for any pop history buffs — whether they first encountered the Rolling Stones on “The Ed Sullivan Show” or in the recent documentary “Shine a Light” — to resist goodies at the Annex like David Byrne’s big suit from the film “Stop Making Sense,” a blue sequined dress from Tina Turner’s final tour with Ike, Michael Jackson’s handwritten lyrics to “Billie Jean,” and Prince’s coat from “Purple Rain.”

There are also teenage letters between Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel and at least two items that tell the story of Elvis Presley: his motorcycle jacket and his Bible. Some of the pieces are lent from Cleveland, and many, like a tape of a private Bob Dylan show in 1961, have never been exhibited before. And for those with particular memories of CBGB: Yes, they will have a urinal from its notorious bathroom.

Temporary exhibitions will change about twice a year; the Clash show, “Revolution Rock,” runs through the spring.

The Annex uses high technology at nearly every stop of the six galleries. Visitors, 100 at a time, are to enter in 15-minute intervals and encounter first a seven-screen “immersive theater” resembling a small club, complete with stools. They will be given headsets made by Sennheiser, a high-end audio company, which play music programmed for each exhibit, as well as sound for videos; the device is guided by wires beneath the carpet that detect a visitor’s presence.

“You’re seeing, hearing, feeling — getting the full experience,” said Stacey Lender of Running Subway, a New York-based production company that helped design the Annex.

The Annex is part of a broad expansion plan by the Hall of Fame organization to draw both tourists and financing to its main branch.

“This allows us to tell our story and reach sponsors we never could in Cleveland,” said Terry Stewart, the president of the museum, in a phone interview. More annexes are being considered for other cities, including Memphis, he added.

The museum’s growth is not without risk, and the New York Annex has a three-year lease that will be renewed if the branch is successful, Mr. Peresman said. To open it, the museum teamed with Running Subway and two other producers, Jam Exhibitions and S2BN Entertainment, a new company led by Michael Cohl, the veteran concert promoter and former chairman of Live Nation.

The partners have financed the project and will operate it, although the museum retains oversight of all aspects. Running Subway has produced “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical” on Broadway, as well as multimedia concerts pairing live orchestras with films of Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland.

The Annex has been under way for about two years, Mr. Peresman said, and various sites were considered for it, including some in Midtown. But the downtown space suited the subject matter better: somewhat gritty, somewhat flashy and a stone’s throw from many of the Greenwich Village clubs and other historic spaces highlighted on the museum’s detailed, white polymer model of Manhattan.

And as workers rolled in equipment, storage containers, large amplifiers and bits of CBGB, the movement at the museum’s entry — nondescript, since the building is in a landmarked zone — had more than a little resemblance to the load-in rituals that happen at clubs throughout the city every afternoon.

“There are certain things you just can’t quantify,” Mr. Peresman said, “that are just a vibe. Being in this place, it just felt like the right vibe.” (Source)

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to Open Annex in NYC

Sweet, maybe now I'll actually get to visit the thing (sorry Cleveland-ers). And maybe the estate of CBGS's owner Hilly Kristal will be enticed to open something in this Annex and stay true to the NYC-location instead of some Hard Rock Cafe version in Las Vegas.

Best reason I heard recently about why one shouldn't attend the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: "The fucking Dave Clark Five are in there. That's like inducting Candlebox."

NEW YORK (AP) -- The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is coming to New York. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to announce Wednesday that the Cleveland-based museum and hall of fame is opening an annex in downtown Manhattan.

Billy Joel and Clive Davis are going to join the mayor at the location in the SoHo neighborhood. It will be the first time the hall of fame has expanded outside Cleveland.

The 25,000-square-foot annex will house Bruce Springsteen's 1957 Chevy and will feature a number of different exhibits, including one featuring New York City-based sites that have musical significance. (NY Post)