The Present: Museum of Making Music

Josh and I both had Saturday off, so we decided to find something new to do. (We may not get as many days off together as we would like, but oh, do we make the most of them.) I had purchased a Groupon to the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad. We didn't even know this existed until I saw it on Groupon, and it sounded right up our alley. (Groupon.com, check it out. It's awesome.)

We drove up to Carlsbad expecting to find a big museum-ey building, but the museum was located on one floor of a corporate-type building in the middle of a big corproate-y type building office-park (Chicago suburb style. You know what I mean.) A little odd, but we were still excited.

The museum was separated by decades from the late 1800s to present day, displaying the history of American music. Starting with JP Sousa (did you know he was part of over 13,000 performances?!?) and military band music, to the creation of amplified instruments and radio with the discovery of electricity, to the evolution of the guitar and the creation of the Strat and MTV, it covered it all. Ragtime, jazz, big band, swing, rock and roll, country, psychedelic, latin, there were clips and soundtracks of it all. And we may have done a little swing dancing while listening to some of the clips :-)

Now for my favorite things I learned...

Jazz started in New Orleans and moved up the Mississippi to St. Louis and, hey! Davenport, Iowa! (Ok, I knew that, but I am always REALLY excited to see anything about Iowa, ANYWHERE.)

And of course, we had our eyes peeled for any pictures of Bix Beiderbecke. (Oh we miss the Bix. I'm not sure anything in San Diego can quite compete with sitting by the river at the Le Claire bandshell listening to endless jazz on a sultry summer night.)

So apparently the Zildjian family (of Zildjian cymbals of course) is Armenian. The company was founded in the 1600s in Istanbul (Constantinople) when Avedis the alchemist began making cymbals with a unique fusion of copper, tin, and silver. The sultan was so impressed, he gave Avedis the surname Zildjian, meaning cymbalsmith. And now that's the family's name! I just thought that was crazy. Do you think they were sitting around that night saying, "Do we seriously have to take that name?" (And Josh was excited that he actually has this cymbal here.)

When Fender came out with the infamous Telecaster, it was actually called the Broadcaster. However, the name Broadkaster was already registered for a line of drums by Gretsch. Fender removed the name Broadcaster from the guitars, and 60 were released with no model name before they came up with Telecaster. These no-name guitars are known as No-Casters.

Taylor guitars (based on El Cajon, actually, where Josh works) created 400 guitars known as the Liberty Tree Guitars. They were made out of a more than 230 year old tulip poplar from Maryland known as the "Liberty Tree," where patriots rallied before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. Each colony had a liberty tree, and this was the last surviving one. It was blown over during Hurricaine Floyd, and Taylor was able to give it new life in the form of guitars. Very cool. (I've actually seen one of these somewhere else, because I knew the story, but I can't for the life of me remember where!)

And then there was a room at the end with lots of normal and unique instruments to play (including guitar hero!) We were in that room for a while... And yes, I beat Knights of Cydonia on hard when Josh could not. My work here is done.