The Seattle Music Experience

At the mere mention of Seattle, images of grunge culture masses swathed in flannel, clinging to the bygone era of the Nirvana revolution come to mind. Seattle is inseparable from and practically defined by it’s history as a city of music. Stretching further back than the early nineties, prior to the late seventies counterculture movement, even further back than Jimi Hendrix, Seattle was a music city. Musical revolutions appear to be in the cities DNA.

The Experience Music Project (EMP) is a museum of surreal architectural stature, located beside the Space Needle and is dedicated to the rich history of the Seattle music scene. The building appears to have been highly influenced by the the consumption of too much LSD, and the exhibits appropriately plunge into the history somewhere around the epoch of Jimi Hendrix. The contorted multicolored structure carries it’s abstract theme inward drawing visitors

toward a towering tornado like twisted pillar of guitars. One installation covers the span of Jimi Hendrix’s career highlighted by displaying his guitars, original concert tickets, personal pen drawings, and even his address book.

The EMP is currently celebrating the 20th anniversary of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” featuring a collection of Kurt Cobain’s guitars, the original photograph featured on the Nevermind album cover 

including hand written notes, and a ton of other noteworthy Nirvana memorabilia. Somewhere around setting eyes on the actual “In Utero” angels all but destroyed by the bands ruckus performances, and the guitars used in the infamous “MTV Unplugged in New York” concert, my nineties teen angst nostalgia came rushing up from some forgotten place in my psyche. We have visited some of the greatest museums in the world on our journeys through Italy and Spain, viewing work by histories greatest artists. Yet for some reason I felt more emotion when looking up at a plastic decapitated transparent angel from 1993.

At the far side of the building sits the Sky Church. A giant hi-definition projection screen mock-venue featuring concert footage and sound responsive stage lighting 

of performances from the past that you wish you wouldn’t have missed. The pop-culture history of Seattle needs to be celebrated and preserved, the EMP is doing a fantastic job of this. However, the Seattle scene should not be relegated to or defined by any past era. If we expect another revolution of sound to emerge we should look to Seattle. Shabazz Palaces are a hip-hop duo redefining the sound of a genre, Fleet Foxesare creating folk that nods to the past but embraces progression and modern influence, and countless other bands are currently lost in the wash of the grey rainy city.