Another FRIDAY FLASHBACK! based on my own upcoming road trip. It’s off to Seattle, where I plan on visiting Experience Music Project, the Seattle-centric rock museum that Townsman BigSteve chronicled in one of our earliest Rock Town Hall blog posts. I’d hoped that a monthy Trippin’ series would develop, in which Townspeople would report on their own rock-related road trips, but to date I think this is the only rock road trip report. Hrrundivbakshi did report on a curiously named record store he found somewhere in Japan, I believe, so I’m holding out hope that this series will catch fire yet. Should I make it to EMP this weekend, I’ll be sure to share my thoughts. Now let’s revisit a very cool post!
This post initially appeared 1/23/07.
BigSteve, our Townsman in New Orleans, files the following report from Seattle.
I went to the Experience Music Project yesterday. I thought it was definitely worth the visit, and there was more than enough to keep me occupied for 3 hours. There’s actually not that much exhibit space, and one of the, presumably temporary, exhibits was a commercial for Disney musical product that gagged me. The history of rap exhibit was more interesting, but at least the Disney shit helped keep the busloads of kids away from the interesting stuff. The other useless parts of the museum were the interactive areas – you pay extra, go into a “studio” and `make your own CD by playing with a few computer stations. There’s also something where you pay and end up with a DVD of yourself onstage playing with other people in a band. I don’t know how it works, and I wasn’t interested enough to find out.
There’s a very nice exhibit, I assume permanent, on the history of music from the Pacific Northwest. From the Fleetwoods through the Ventures and Raiders and Sonics to grunge and punk. Lots of posters, artifacts, instruments, video – not enough time to look at it all.
The Hendrix exhibit is pretty amazing. I mean, they have the white Strat that he played at Woodstock, the guitar he was most often seen playing. They have pieces of many smashed guitars. Really I could have spent all day looking at this exhibit alone. They had lots of video of him playing, and then they had many of the outfits he was seen wearing in the videos, and you know how important fashion is to me.
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