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The
story inside Seattle's new pop culture extravaganza, the Experience
Music Project.
By
Kathryn Robinson
The
single most stunning thing about Seattle's new Experience Music
Project is its architecture of the Early Swoopy-and-Bulbous Period.
No. Make that its futuristic use of technology. No, no. Make that
instead its mission to transform museumgoers into musicians.
Nope—I
was right the first time. The single most stunning thing about Seattle's
new Experience Music Project is unquestionably its building, a controversial,
rainbow-hued, steel-swathed structure so, well, swoopy and bulbous
it resembles nothing so much as a smashed Stratocaster on steroids.
And though many
befuddled Seattleites will insist otherwise, this is not a mistake.
Four years ago, local billionaire Paul Allen, the cofounder of software
giant Microsoft and a major-league rock and roll aficionado, and
his sister, Jody Allen Patton, approached acclaimed architect Frank
Gehry. Allen and Patton had a vision for a museum to celebrate not
just rock and roll music, but the renegade creative spark behind
it. The word Allen offered to inspire Gehry
was, you guessed it, "swoopy." Multiple blueprints, 280 ribs of
undulating metal, enough steel to build a 20-story office building,
and not a single right angle later, the Experience Music Project
opened its doors this past June.
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As
it is with his famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain,
Frank Gehry's EMP Building is the talk of the town.
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Through those
doors the sensory assault begins. Rising 85 feet above you is Sky
Church, a great hall that takes its name from Jimi Hendrix's democratic
vision of an all-welcoming cathedral of music. There on the world's
largest video screen: ambient images pulsing and flashing to throbbing
music. Above: photos of music legends from Buddy Holly to Bonnie
Raitt rotating around the ceiling. Below: glowing floor-tile time
capsules to be filled with memorabilia from bands that play this
room. Beside you: Roots and Branches, a towering sculpture
of 500 instruments, 40 of which are wired to play various genres
of American pop music. Before you: Artist's Journey, the multimedia
extravaganza whose motion platform lets you feel—at times in
the pit of your stomach—you are "riding" James Brown's funk
music.
Is the word
"overwhelming" forming in your mind?
You've only
just begun. Scattered throughout the 140,000-square-foot facility
are exhibits on everything from Gehry's career to the development
of the electric guitar. In the Milestones room, the evolution of
rock is laid out in a panorama. (Did rock and roll begin when Elvis
Presley sang "Heartbreak Hotel" on the Dorsey Brothers TV program
Stage Show in 1956? You be the judge.)
In the Northwest
Passage display, the story of Seattle music is told through photos
of the '40s Jackson Street jazz scene, Ann and Nancy Wilson's Heart
costumes from the '70s, and Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain's handwritten
song lyrics from the '90s. Coolest for local rockaholics is the
Hendrix Gallery, devoted to the Seattle-born guitar maestro who
is Allen's musical deity and the inspiration for EMP. From Allen's
own collection come many of the 5,000-plus pieces of memorabilia,
which include Hendrix's trademark black felt hat and the Stratocaster
he played at Woodstock.
To navigate
this thicket of information you can use a museum exhibit guide,
or MEG, a piece of wizardry you point at guitar-pick icons for further
narration.
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The
Jam-O-Drum pulsates to rhythms played on its surface.
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The MEG is just
the tip of the high-tech iceberg. In myriad ways, EMP uses technology
to let visitors explore the process of creating music. In the Sound
Lab, you can riff away on an electric guitar along with a machine
designed to teach you to play. I learned Alanis Morissette's "Thank
U" on an electric piano whose lighted keys guided my noodling. I
could have turned it on "Jam" and played in harmony with friends,
or retreated to a soundproof booth to perfect my technique.
Doubtless I'd
then be ready for On Stage, an amped-up version of karaoke, where
groups can take to the stage and make their adolescent dreams come
true. Real instruments (self-correcting to simulate actual talent),
amplification, and hot lights combine with a simulated audience
to complete the fantasy, which is beamed into the lobby for the,
um, appreciation of the crowd.
Overhyped, overpriced
(tickets are $19.95 per adult) homage to a billionaire's air guitar
fantasy? In-your-face emblem of a once-quiet city's play for acclaim?
Enduring tribute to the rebel geniuses who ignited a musical revolution?
In Seattle these days, it just depends on whom you talk to.
Which means
you might have to Experience it yourself.
For more information
on the Experience Music Project, call (206) 367-5483 or visit www.emplive.com.
Kathryn Robinson
is a staff writer with the Seattle Weekly newspaper.
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