I finally got around to visiting the Experience Music Project in Seattle. There is an exhibition of Nirvana stuff there right now which struck me as somewhat creepy, maybe being of that generation seeing shirts worn by Kurt Cobain in lighted glass museum cases is just too much for me? I did kind of like how familiar the wall of albums that supposedly influenced Nirvana was for me, and some of the snapshots of happier days were nice. I don't know though, I pretty much had my fill of it in five minutes, and anyway, I was looking for the main reason to visit... no, not the smashed pieces of Jimi Hendrix guitars or famous outfits he wore, but the Paul Allen memorial Guitar Gallery! Man, there are some wonderful instruments from the entire history of recorded music in there and a really nice video presentation of a wide variety of influential pickers to boot! This exhibit while also a graveyard is pretty much worth the admission price to see as far as I'm concerned. They should publish the thing in book form with accompanying CD and DVD even. As it was I had to buy the EMP produced book titled Listen Again in the gift shop upon seeing chapter one being about Bert Williams (mentioned in an earlier post)! I would have photographed everything but wasn't sure if that was the thing to do so I just limited myself to this one snap of one of Bo Diddley's signature cigarbox gits...



At the Fremont street market a day or two later you could buy an actual guitar made with a cigar box, so the form still lives, even if Paul Allen's guitars look to never live again. And yet, they loan out Stradivarius violins to working musicians don't they? Wouldn't it be nice to see and hear that 1953 Fender Telecaster actually played, at least at a special event? Just an idea. And another thing, I kind of expected a permanent PNW exhibit beyond Hendrix or Nirvana. Raiders, Sonics, Wailers, Frantics, and Dynamics, oh my! There was a promo photo of the original Ventures duo Don & Bob in the Guitar Gallery, but come on, the land of Bolo, Jerden and Dolton not enshrining and promoting our part of the continent's music history? Not that I care about say Sir Mix-A-Lot or Queensryche, but you gotta be more inclusive! There was however a surprise bonus for me in that there was a Battlestar Galactica exhibit on the top floor where I got to meet this old friend for the first time...



The main reason I was in town this time however was for my very own father's studio recording debut! More about that later perhaps.