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UNDER RADAR: Experience Music Project
By Bob Pomeroy
You may have already heard about Experience Music Project, the brand new rock and roll museum that just opened in Seattle. If you saw any of the coverage of the museum’s June 23rd debut, you’ll already know that EMP grew out of Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s passion for the music of Jimi Hendrix. Over the years, Allen amassed the world’s largest collection of Hendrix memorabilia. The Experience Music Project started off as a vehicle for Allen to display his Hendrix collection, but quickly exploded into something much bigger and much more interesting. Experience Music Project uses every cutting edge trick in the book to make the museum a fun place to be and to teach you something along the way. As luck would have it, I had a layover in Seattle on my way to visit my brother in Alaska, so here’s the unofficial paid-full-price review of the Experience Music Project.
EMP isn’t hard to find. In fact, you can’t miss it. Located near the base of Seattle’s Space Needle, the building looks like a three-dimensional rendering of a Salvador Dali scene rendered in glass and steel. The building’s exterior is intended to symbolize the energy and fluidity of music. It’s a building with the sort of finish you’re more likely to see on an electric guitar. Or, as one Seattle wit put it, “It looks like the Space Needle got undressed and left its clothes in a heap”.
The real story begins once you get inside. The admission fee is $19.95, which at first seems a little steep. Once inside, the staff sets you up with an electronic gadget called a MEG (Music Experience Guide). You wear this thing over one shoulder and it bears more than a passing resemblance to a tricorder on Star Trek. In reality, it’s more like a combination Discman, Palm Pilot and remote control. As you walk through the galleries, point the handheld unit at exhibits to get a display on your screen. Touch the items, and you hear music or narration about the artifacts on display. It’s really a pretty neat device (and most other places would make you pay extra for the privilege of using one).
The exhibits on the main floor are called the Crossroads. Here there are four exhibit halls and a small theater showing (what else) music videos. The kernel around which the whole venture grew is the Jimi Hendrix Gallery. Here are displayed the gems from Paul Allen’s collection, including (but not limited to) shards of smashed guitars, stage costumes, Mitch Mitchell’s drums, and Noel Reddings’ bass. As of the galleries, the MEG’s narration is supplemented with video loops featuring interviews with musicians and writers talking about the subjects at hand. The Hendrix Gallery is already a fan favorite. I got to EMP right at opening at 9 AM, and by 9:30 the Hendrix Gallery was already getting congested.
Another gallery that got crowded very quickly was the Guitar Gallery. The displays are arranged chronologically along the theme of "The Quest for Volume". The earliest example is a small, Spanish guitar made in 1770. The gallery progresses by showing how luthiers over the years have experimented with different designs to give the guitar greater presence and a louder voice. Thanks to your trusty MEG, you can hear both how these guitars sound and learn what techniques were employed to give the various instruments their edge. A few of the highlights from the Guitar Gallery include Tampa Red’s 1928 National steel guitar, the 1934 Rickenbacker "Frying Pan" lap steel (the first electric guitar of any kind), an Audiovox "Bass Fiddle" from 1936 (the earliest and only existing example of an electric bass) and the prototype for the Gibson Flying V guitar. There is a lot to look at and listen to in this room. It gives you a greater appreciation for just how technically challenging making the music scream really was.
My favorite gallery in the Crossroads section is the Northwest Passage. This is the story of pop music in the Pacific Northwest from Ray Charles to Sleater-Kinney. Along the way you learn about the thriving garage band scene that spawned the Kingsmen, Paul Revere and the Raiders and the FBI probe into ‘Louie Louie’. You can even take a look at the report. Heart and Rail take us through 70s metal and into the punk world that exploded into the marketing sensation that was Grunge! Video narrations include appearances by members of Nirvana, Soundgarden and other Seattle favorites.
The fourth Crossroads gallery hosts temporary exhibits. The one that I saw focused on architect Frank Gehry and the building of the Experience Music Project.
Upstairs you will find Milestones, a selective history of rock and roll beginning with trying to pin down where rock and roll came from all the way to post punk and hip-hop. The first section of Milestones is devoted to the roots. Here, the links between Big Joe Turner, Hank William Sr., Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the sounds of Elvis Presley and Bo Diddly are made clearer. One of the neat artifacts in this part of the museum is an old movieola, a 1940s version of the video jukebox. The next section of Milestones tells the story of 60s rock by focusing on the careers of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Eric Clapton. It’s a highly selective take on the 60s, but as an added bonus, Robbie Robertson provides the MEG narration.
The final section of Milestones focuses on Punk and Hip-Hop. Where the 60s gallery may have been too focused, the Punk display gives a very nice overview of from the New York Dolls to the Sex Pistols to Black Flag and Husker Du. Video loops include narration by the likes of Malcolm McLaren, John Lydon, Grant Hart, Henry Rollins, and Greg Ginn. One of the cool pieces of trivia I picked up was that the Replacements road manager was appointed legal guardian of Tommy Stinson so that the 13 year-old bass player could gig with the band.
Across the way from Milestones is the room kids of all ages will love. In the Sound Lab, you can take part in computer assisted tutorials on guitar, pass, keyboards, drums, mixing, scratching and even DJ-ing, It looked like a blast. If you want to get your lessons in, go early and head straight to the lab. I didnt make it up there until 11 AM and all the learning stations were in use. As much as I would have like to take a guitar lesson with what looked to be really remarkable computer assisted tutorial programs, I didn’t have the time or patience to wait my turn. Besides, (he rationalized) better to leave the tutorials to the younger set who might find the inspiration here to go learn an instrument and form a real band!
Another experience I would have enjoyed but passed on is the performance room. Here you can put together your "band" and take it on stage! Your performance is simulcast on video monitors (not the sound in case you sing and play as bad as I do). When you’re done, you can even get a faux concert poster for your "band”. I witnessed the first and probably only performance by Frozen Mackerel.
The final experience I want to mention is the EMP’s Artistic Journey. This is an amusement park style ride that takes you "into" the music. The first Artistic Journey subject is the Voyage into Funk. The whole thing takes over 20 minutes and is divided into three sections. Anyone who has ever been to Disney will recognize the format. The first room shows a seven-minute video on the making of the main theme song. In this case, it’s a reunion of the original JBs to cut a new song with James Brown. The second room cranks up the excitement with a fantasy funk sequence where were prepped for the main event. The main event is a moving platform ride where we jump into the heart of funk with James Brown and P-Funk. The whole thing is kind of cheesy, but that doesn’t matter a whole lot. The set up is silly but the ride is fun (and you don’t have to pay extra to ride!).
As you may have gathered, I really enjoyed Experience Music Project. It’s well worth the price of admission. There are a few bugs that need to be worked out. The MEG is a great tool, but it doesn’t always work as well as you’d like. Sometimes, I found myself clicking away at the displays feeling like my remote was broken. At least once, the MEG booted the menu for another display. The MEG also takes awhile to load up (something Internet users will be all too familiar with). These technical glitches will probably get worked out. EMP was open only a couple weeks when I visited. The MEG does have a rather strange side effect. All these people drifting through this fabulous museum is their own solipsistic world. A few times I was bumped into (or bumped into someone myself) because people were absorbed in their own little world.
If you’re going to Seattle, EMP should be on your must-see list. Give yourself plenty of time. I spent four hours there and didn’t see or do everything. You can get a good feel for the place by visiting the EMP web site (www.emplive.com). There you can see some of the museum’s highlights, plus check out the band of the week and guitar lick of the day.
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