It turns out the Days Inn was more of a shit-hole than expected, but at midnight we weren’t going to quibble. My room turned out better than Todd’s did. His had 40+ cigarette burns on the bathroom counter, another 40+ on the nightstand, at least one on the toilet seat, and one on the lampshade. The Continental Breakfast was a couple sad bagels, bad coffee and nothing else. If you ever have the opportunity to stay at the Days Inn in Downtown Cleveland…don’t.

Obviously we decided against a second night there and went looking for food and a different place to stay. We ended up at The Erie Lodge which, although less than what I want in a hotel room, it was only $46 including taxes. For that price you get a bed, a bathroom, and a door that locks. No amenities, just a cheap room. Perfect for a one-night stay where you won’t spend much time in the room.

Once we settled on the new hotel, we headed for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There are six floors, the first two are set up like museum exhibit space with multiple galleries set out in different themes.

The first two floors had tons of cool stuff. Tons of costumes, guitars, studio equipment, and other memorabilia. Throughout there were tons of notebooks that the various artists had used to write out lyrics. Todd and I both noticed that throughout them most were written in ink and there were very few cross-outs. Kind of like any other creative endeavor, songwriters would get into the zone and just write. They didn’t go back and correct anything, they just wrote to get the words down.

In my mind there were too many costumes focusing on current musicians and could have been more from a wider range of artists. I guess it’s part of curating a museum, you have to try to appeal to a broad range of people and kids will be drawn in by a grouping of several Britney Spears (2), Christina Aguilera (2), Backstreet Boys (3), N’Sync (5), and J-Lo (1) costumes. Although they did have one spot with 5 David Bowie costumes from over the years.

Third floor is the cafe and the entrance to a three-screen multimedia display that touches on all of the inductees over the years. It’s about 20 minutes long and worth sitting through. It’s packed up with some great songs, many short interview segments with the honorees, and video footage of them performing throughout their careers.

The theater are empties onto a ramp that takes you to the fourth floor gallery space. Up there was a very cool Les Paul exhibit that covers his lifetime so far (the guy is 91 and still plays!) and has several of his early guitars and design experiments.

The sixth floor special gallery was closed to install a new exhibit, but fifth was open and had a thing about The Clash covering their entire career. One thing I noticed was that most of the items on display were Mick Joneses. Maybe a dozen stage outfits, several guitars, notebooks used for developing lyrics, and a video running an interview with the band.

There were several points where the whole thing was almost overwhelming. The two lower galleries are just packed with stuff. Huge cases with 50-60 items each all numbered with short descriptions below. It only takes a few hours to go through everything, but it would almost be better to split your visit across a couple days and only do half each day, taking a break mid-way through each time.

From there we went pretty much directly to the venue for the Roger Clyne show. This one was at the Beachland Ballroom and there was pretty much nothing around it. Fortunately there was a Chinese place called Jackie Chen’s, so we could grab some dinner and kill some time before the doors opened.

I’m still working on a show review, and will probably just do one for the 4 shows to contrast and compare. The short version for right now is that it was great. We stood up front, the band recognized Todd during the show and when I talked to Nick afterward he recognized me right off. We weren’t the only familiar faces to them. There are a couple dozen people that regularly travel to his shows and see them several nights in a row.

The opening act was called As Fast As and they were pretty cool. Rock with a 70′s vibe to it. Very good stuff. They’ll be opening the next few nights, so more on them later.

The Beachland is a decent concert venue. Looks like it could hold between 500 and 700 people. The stage was up so the people in the back could see and had plenty of space for the guys to move around.

The set list for the night was: Nada, Wanted, Blue Collar Suicide, I Don’t Need Another Thrill, Bury My Heart at the Trailer Park, Mexico, Beautiful Disaster, Little Hung Over You, Sonoran Hope and Madness, Love Come Lighten My Load, Switchblade, Leaky Little Boat Boat, Banditos, Feeling, Americano, Tell Yer Momma, Green and Dumb, Andale (a new song!), and Girly flowing into Yahoos and Triangles (the King of the Hill Theme); with Counterclockwise and Mekong* for the encore.

After the show, we hung around for a while and talked to P.H. and Nick for a bit. Then we found Steve in the bar and he invited several of us to join him at the tavern next door where they were allowing free crossover from the ballroom. Todd and I were there, several other Roger fans, and I think the entire opening act. A rockabilly group called The Luster Kings was playing and Steve got up and did Folsom Prison Blues with them.

The Luster Kings were great too. A perfect cap to the evening. I picked up a couple of their CDs and talked with the guys in the band for a few minutes. Very cool stuff indeed. Three bands in one night isn’t too shabby.

Tomorrow we make our way to Detroit.

(* These were originally recorded as Refreshments tracks.)

It was kind of last minute because of Todd’s flight schedule, but Monday and Tuesday turned into travel days while I jaunted up to Madison to visit my good friend Michelle.

This was one advantage of my having stayed in Northbrook rather than a hotel closer to downtown. I didn’t have to deal with rush-hour traffic to get on the road. Then again, I checked out of the hotel just before 11, grabbed a leisurely lunch, and headed up the highway.

And don’t even get me started on toll roads. I’ve had enough of toll roads. It felt like every 20 miles I had to stop and pay just to be out on the road. And Illinois gets you leaving the state too. There’s one last toll booth a mile or two before the state line.

I got to her place around 3pm and we started getting caught up on everything, joking around just like old times. Steve came home a while later, just long enough to throw some stuff together so he could fly out east for a meeting. I wish he could have stayed, but it was good to at least say hello.

Michelle and I went over to Bluephies for dinner and it was great. The place has a funky sort of atmosphere and a menu to match. She went with the and I had the Peppercorn Crusted Tuna. It was done perfectly and the honey wasabi sauce was terrific. It came with chili infused sweet potatoes which were delicious, although mashed. For dessert we both had the Duo of Crème Brulee. A brown-sugar vanilla in one cup and chocolate chambord in another; it was positively divine, if a little small, but they say good things come in small packages.

We stayed up late talking and I realized that even though she and Steve left the Twin Cities 4 or 5 years ago, I still miss them being there. At least Madison isn’t the opposite end of the earth.

For breakfast we kept it simple and hit The Original Pancake House. The food and the service were good, just as you’d expect for a small, local place. Then back to Michelle’s house where I got to see what was left of the garden (it is fall, after all) and hear some of the plans she has for next year.

Eventually, we had to say our goodbyes. It was wonderful to see Michelle again. The two years or so since I’ve been there was far too long. I almost didn’t want to go, but I had to be back at the airport by 3:45pm to pick up Todd.

I got lucky and only had to circle the airport once to catch the right turn for hourly parking, but it paid off. I managed to find a space about as close to the terminal as you can get and ended up very close to where Todd and I had agreed to meet.

Back in the car, we hit the road and headed for Cleveland. Of course it was rush-hour in Chicago and we missed several chances to get on the express-way, although it wouldn’t have done us any good if we had. Once we finally made our way around the city, it was smooth sailing. Although we had to pay to leave Illinois again – damn tollways. Not that Indiana and Ohio don’t have toll roads either. They just do it differently. You get a ticket upon entering (in our case coming into the state) and each exit has a toll station where you pay based on the distance from where you started.

We made good time to Cleveland with only a couple rest stops along the way, one for fast-food dinner and another just to stretch our legs and top off the gas tank. Leaving the airport at about 4:30pm, we were at the hotel by 11pm (midnight local time). Not too shabby for 360-something miles.

The first hotel we looked into, I had found on-line. The Northpoint Inn is only about 9 miles from the bar for the Cleveland show and the rates looked good. When we got there and saw a strip club in the building with the hotel entrance on the other end and the rooms above, Todd and I both decided that it was worth an extra 10 or 20 bucks for something (anything) better.

About a mile away was a Days Inn and we put in there for the night. For $70 they have free Wi-Fi Internet access, free Continental breakfast in the morning, and decent enough rooms in a fairly easy location. The room isn’t anything fancy: bed, bathroom, desk, TV. It’s downtown, it’s vaguely inexpensive, it’ll work.