Since the establishment of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, more and more musical museums have been popping up all over the world.

If Cleveland could make itself a rock mecca, so could cities with a stronger impact on musical evolution; Memphis, Seattle, Kansas City. Over the past decade, popular music has decisively joined visual art and science as a subject for museum treatment. Just in time for the midlife crisis of rock 'n' roll, advocates of popular music and chambers of commerce found common cause: suddenly, music was not a diversion or an embarrassment but an asset. And these museums promise visitors an irresistible package deal: a pilgrimage, a party and some painless education.

But while people go to art museums to closely examine paintings and sculpture, and to natural history museums to marvel at dioramas and skeletons, few people go to music museums for music, since it's available everywhere else: on radio and TV, in album collections, onstage, online. As it turns out, music museums do best at presenting everything but the music: the fashion, the detritus, the technology, the business, the biographies, the buzz. They're great places to soak up trivia and gawk at guitars.

Not too long ago, I was talking with a friend about famous people and the instruments they played. The two of us agreed that it would be worth a trip to the Smithsonian to see the bass that Stanley Clarke played School Days on, or the one that Victor recorded Sinister Minister with. The Smithsonian has the jacket that the Fonz wore; surely they could find room for majorly influential musicians in that most American of idioms?