My 'Experience Music Project' Experience

Well I went to the EMP on Friday morning (the first day it was open to the 
public). The building is really cool on the inside too. When you go [inside] they 
give you a MEG (museum exhibit guide). Its a thing that you wear on your 
shoulder and its got a hard drive in it. There's also a handheld screen (of 
course). With that, you can point it at certain places and press a button, 
then it gives you a little more to read, and a celebrity's voice says some 
stuff about it. Then, the items in the cases in that area are numbered. You 
can type in a number and learn more about the item. Some items you can 
bookmark. When you're done at the museum, you take your MEG downstairs to 
their computer lab, and put it in the machine they call the "toaster". That 
downloads all your bookmarks to their computer system. You can use one of 
their computers and learn more about the stuff you bookmarked, and send it 
to your email address so you can learn more at home too. I think eventually 
they'll have it to where you can view everything and more on their webpage. 

It was the 1st day so they still had some bugs to work out. I never recieved 
my bookmarks. About the only complaint I had about the place is that they 
didn't have much on the Beatles, Doors, Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath, and 
only a tiny bit about Elvis. Nothing at all about Leadbelly. If they had any 
of that, I missed it, and I'm pretty sure I saw everything. 

Some of the Nirvana stuff they had was; a sunburst strat of Kurt's, Krist's all 
black bass, and Dave's drums. There was a demo tape, 'Heaven can Wait'. They had Nirvana's 
contract with Sub Pop, Love Buzz/Big cheese 7", Bleach, Nevermind, In utero all on 12" 
and the coolest thing I think was the lyric sheet to "If you must" and "Downer" (on the same 
paper). They had a lot of stuff that was in [the movie] Hype!, like the posters and 
records. They had a couple wipers albums and one of Greg Sage's guitars. 

There was a lot on the whole grunge thing, of course, and a good bit on the 
whole Olympia scene, K Records, Bikini Kill, that stuff. There were tv 
screens in the cases with ppl talking about grunge or whatever. In one, Krist 
says that they [Nirvana] had the world in the palm of their hand and they blew it, 
they just couldn't handle it. The Northwest music section was very good. I didn't 
realize all the musical history Seattle/Northwest had before grunge. Ray Charles and 
Quincy Jones both got started there. There was a lot of old blues/jazz stuff.
 
The next place I went was the Jimi Hendrix room. Very cool. It has diaries in 
there and you can read a page from it, some of his clothes and guitar, lots 
of info about him. In another area they have different music movements. There 
was all the 50's stuff and a hip hop section and punk section. They had a few 
Sonic Youth LP's and J Macy's guitar. There was also a promo for Nirvana to 
be on SNL (the 1st performance). They had some great stuff in the punk area. 

Upstairs is the sound lab. Thats where you can go and learn how to play bass, 
guitar, drums, keyboards, or even mixing. In the guitar booth you can play 
along with 'Teen spirit'. Then there's an upstairs [room] to that and its a private 
room with time limits. There's a room for guitar with a few amps and effects. And a 
keyboard room that I didn't go in, so it may have a million dollars in it for 
all I know. A drum room with a real set of drums, but I couldn't figure out how 
to get it to where the 'puter would let me just play. Every now and then a 
drum would light up and be hit by something inside of it, I guess for 
demonstrating how to do it. There's also a vocals room. You can sing along with 
Ann and Nancy wilson or even sing along with 'Teen spirit'. I was gonna try it, 
but its not Nirvana's version of 'Teen spirit' (so of course not them singing). 

They had lyrics and things you should work on to make it better. There was an 
option on the screen for you to just sing anything. There were six different 
settings. There was normal, one w/ delay (or a lot of reverb, I don't 
remember) and where you sound like you're on helium. And one that is what 
they use in the movies for when ppl call someone on the phone and they 
disguise their voice with it. Very deep sound. I don't remember what the other 
settings were. In the sound lab I was interviewed for the Tacoma news tribune. 
You can read it here: http://search.tribnet.com/archive/180_day_archive/0624a11.html 
They start it off with me. Oh, I saw Jimi Hendrix's dad. Strong family resemblance.
I was about 5 ft from him. There is a guitar room which shows the history of the guitar. 
Its pretty indepth. On sunday of opening weekend I went to the screaming trees/built to 
spill concert. It started at 2 w/ young fresh fellows then the fastbacks. I really 
wanted to see the fastbacks, I heard them outside, but I was late getting there. 
It was ok though, because when I got into the place, a mr Krist Novoselic was talking 
about JAMPAC and introducing the bands. I was about 30 ft from him. The band he introduced 
was New strychnine (sp?) which is made up of Mudhoney and a few other ppl. They were doing 
a tribute concert to the Sonics (a 60's Northwest band). They finished w/ louie louie. They 
were great. After that, I think, Sunset (Presidents of USA & Sir mix-a-lot). They were ok. 
The crowd really got into them, especially during "Baby got back". After them was Ann 
Wilson (I think, it may have been Nancy, which ever one who didn't just recently have twins) 
of heart. She can really sing. my cousin is friends w/ her (she played w/ them on Ann n nancy 
wilson's song on home alive. Paula stentz, if you wanna look in the credits for it.) If my 
cousin had gone, I woulda gotten to go backstage and meet Krist and Mark Arm and a whole bunch 
of cool ppl, but she couldn't go :( 

After her, was built to spill i think. Some of you may disagree, but they weren't that great. 
The guitar was good, but they were long songs that didn't go anywhere. Hardly built up to 
anything. I suppose it was like all apologies if it was 6 mins and if there wasn't the distorted 
chorus (and the brillance of the song of course). After them screaming trees came on. They kicked 
ass. Mark Lanegan wasn't very lively on stage but he made up for it w/ his great singing. I think 
it was shown on TV by VH-1 or MTV, but I'm not sure. Well I guess thats about it. There's more to 
the muesem than I said, I mostly just talked about the highlights for me.

- Chris, July 2000.