Grammy Museum

We took advantage of the fact it was Sunday and headed toward the Staple Center. The traffic wasn’t too bad yet and we found a parking place just a few blocks from our target: the Grammy Museum. It would have been easier on another day, but the Emmy’s award show was starting at 3 PM that day, so parking was restricted. This is a small 4 story museum that displays not only the Grammy award winners, but explains music in general. The first display was one of the most interesting; it started you with one musical genre and while it played a typical song, you could learn about the characteristics and origin of that genre. Then you had a choice of related genres to learn about next. We spent almost a half hour on this one display. Of course, there were a lot of music memorabilia – particularly clothes and instruments used in performances. There were also special extended exhibits about Woody Guthry, the Beach Boys, and Whitney Houston.

            Another floor was dedicated to how music is recorded. From Edison’s first invention to the gramophone, 78 RPM records, tapes, cassettes, CD’s and now digital media up to 5.1 sound systems, it explained it all. Most interesting was a booth where you could hear an artist, we chose the Dave Matthews band, and how they would sound using these various media. It was particularly interesting to hear how much you lost when you went from 5.1 sound to MP3 played through ipod ear phones. This floor also had demonstration booths were you could learn how to mix your own recording. All in all, this was a fun museum.

            We had to dash back to pick up our trailer before 1 PM and then made the trek across 50 miles of L.A. County. By now traffic had picked up, but we headed down to Anaheim, so that we wouldn’t have to do this trip in Monday morning traffic. We’re at the Anaheim RV Park just outside Disneyland and it’s a beautiful park, and has a shuttle service to Disneyland.We can see the Matterhorn from our trailer and watched the fireworks that night.