Rick's Picks: My visit to the Rick Nielsen/Cheap Trick exhibit in Rockford

Last month I made the journey out to the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford for their temporary exhibit, Rick’s Picks: A Lifelong Affair With Guitars & Music. The exhibit is collection of Cheap Trick memorabilia and guitars pulled from Rick Nielsen's personal collection. Rick is a packrat of the highest order, so there's no shortage of great artifacts through his entire career.

The obvious museum pieces like the guitars (Uncle Dick, the five necked monster, a Brian Jones guitar, etc), posters, and plaques were great, but it was the ephemera that got me to stay for 3 hours. Rick saved everything from notes handed to the band on stage, equipment receipts, fan letters, rejection letters, etc. For the most part, the entire exhibit is one giant room, but it's loaded and displayed incredibly well.

I've been to the Rock and Roll Hall of Museum in Cleveland several times, but I think Rick's Picks does an even better job of capturing the excitement of rock and roll. I'm hoping to make a second trip in the next few weeks to see it again before it closes in April.

[ CLICK EACH PIC TO ENLARGE VIA FLICKR ]

We went on a weekend morning, so we pretty much had run of the place without any crowds. Above is me (wearing a Redd Kross t-shirt - one of many Cheap Trick logo parodies out there).

ABOVE: Many of the display cases had drawers below that pulled out to display even more ephemera. 

BELOW: As a former member of the Sparks fanclub myself, I was happy to see Rick's Sparks fanclub membership button among the artifacts from his pre Cheap Trick days.

There are a few more Rick's Picks pictures in this set on my flickr page.