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Boston, Massachusetts About five years ago, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland was looking for a person to helm its education division. The hall was looking for someone who had a Ph.D. - that is, a person who could teach at a college level - but had street credibility and knew the world of rock 'n' roll inside and out. Needless to say, this was a small pool in which to fish. "They had hired a search firm," explains Warren Zanes, who once played guitar with Boston's gritty roots-rock band, the Del Fuegos. The Rock Hall, Zanes says, wasn't finding the right candidate. "Then," he says, "there was an article in the New York Times with me and my brother Dan: 'A Night on the Town with the Zanes Brothers."' Warren's older brother, singer-guitarist Dan, had co-led the Boston band the Del Fuegos, in the 1980s, and is now a successful children's music artist. Dan brought his teenage brother into the Fuegos fold in 1983. "Someone at the Hall read" the Times piece, says Warren, "saw I had a book coming out on Dusty Springfield, saw I had a Ph.D. and I had just released a record and they said, 'We found the freak we were looking for."' And so, Warren Zanes became the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's Vice President of Education and Public Programs. He left the position amicably last November to start a new rock/education project with Little Steven, aka Steve Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and "The Sopranos" fame. (More on this later.) The Hall is currently looking for Zanes replacement.  In 2006, Zanes released his second solo album, "People That I'm Wrong For." At the Hall, Zanes's job, which changed daily, involved putting events together that "are educational at their core, but also have a strong entertainment component." Also: "I needed to be able to teach at a university level. My department" - four people worked under him - "taught toddlers to adult evening classes, I covered the university beat and oversaw the K- through-12. The idea was to take something people view as entertainment" and expand it. "They don't think, for instance, how Motown related to the civil rights movement. My job in effect was to catch the people who come in who see (music) as entertainment and take it further. The Hall of Fame is positioned as something of an authority, for when people want to take the next step and see how entertainment plays into the larger social and political pictures." Do not, though, for a moment think that Zanes has become a straight-laced academic. For one, he still rocks out. In 2006, Zones released his second solo album, "People That I'm Wrong For, "I had it written into my contract," he says. "'Warren will be expected to do unconventional things and we will work with him.' It benefited them," His band stopped in Cambridge, Massachusetts last year where we caught up. He recalls, when he was a newly minted Fuego, at 17, copping a ride in the cramped back hatch space of my two-seat Honda CRX. At the time, he said, "I feel like the family dog." "I still feel like the family dog," he says, in the cramped and overheated dressing room in a club called the Lizard Lounge. During the show - his first in three years - Zanes favored melodic, melancholic, mid-tempo songs. He likes wistful, he likes wry. He'll take breaks during the show to explain things like how he once visited the Playboy Mansion for a party, begging to wear a sweat suit (not pajamas) and encountering not just Hef and scantily clad Bunnies but a well-known drunken astronaut. At the Hall of Fame and Museum, Zanes, now 42, conducted programs for visitors. He also taught a class at Case Western Reserve University, helming a course on the subcultures of music. His music-and-education path began with an upbringing in Concord, New Hampshire, prep school at Phillips Andover Academy, and, much later, attendance at Loyola University. This came about only because he was living in New Orleans at the time, and his then-current girlfriend complained all he cared about was music - so he enrolled in a couple of classes to mollify her. The education bug bit. He went on to earn a Masters Degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a Masters and Doctorate from the University in Rochester in cultural studies. And throughout his life, he encountered academicians and musicians - each of who insisted their particular road was so difficult and so necessary of extreme focus, it was impossible to do both.
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