Can the energy and spontaneity of rock'n'roll really survive being walled up in a glass case? By concentrating on artefacts, music museums lose the essence of pop, argues Jim Carroll.
It would be churlish not to admire the ingenuity of the people behind the Experience Music Project (EMP). This is truly a museum where bright sparks are at work. That's evident from the moment you first catch sight of the futuristic and fantastical outline of the Frank Gehry-designed building beneath Seattle's iconic Space Needle.
Inside, the EMP does its best to re- imagine everything about your experience of rock'n'roll museums. It starts in the entrance hall with the Roots & Branchesinstallation, a spectacular, soaring sculpture by Germany-born local artist Trimpin, made from more than 600 different musical instruments.
Not surprisingly, it's the various interactive galleries in the 140,000sq ft EMP building that get the most footfall from visitors. In the Sound Lab, there's a range of musical instruments for you to play and experiment with. Should you feel the need, there are a dozen or so recording booths where you can record your own future hit or random burst of noise. Meanwhile, in the On Stage section, you can experience what's it's like for a performer to stand on a stage in front of thousands of screaming fans with the lights flashing.
For those looking for some context about what they can see and hear, the Sound & Vision gallery contains video interviews from the museum's oral history vault, where artists, music-makers and the people behind the music tell their tales.
These segments cover a broad swathe of social and cultural tales. Legendary Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun talks about racial segregation, punk pioneers Ian MacKaye (Fugazi) and Henry Rollins recall their part in various "rogue operations" and the late Noel Redding remembers how the Jimi Hendrix Experience "died a death every night" when they were supporting The Monkees in 1967.
Yet despite such inventive and hands-on initiatives, EMP just cannot quite get away from the artefacts and detritus abandoned by rockers. The glass display cases are present and correct, each one containing some item or other which has been lovingly gathered, dusted off and curated.
Like so many other music museums, the EMP has been struck by the curse of the Hard Rock Cafe. There's the stage suit once worn by a member of Kiss or the cane and cloak which old-school hip-hop figure Afrika Bambaataa used to sport on stage back in the day. Here's the original contract which Nirvana signed with Sub Pop Records. And, if you're interested, there's a black jacket which once belonged to Johnny Cash.
It seems that you can look, but you don't get to touch the magic. The Guitar Gallery has all the Fenders, Les Pauls, Rickenbackers and Flying Vs a heart could desire. A walk through the Yes Yes Y'Allhip-hop exhibition brings you face to face with images from those Bronx basketball courts and basement rooms where hip hop's original dusty grooves were minted.
While this may be a problem common to many music museums, it hasn't put a halt to their gallop. Music museums are big box-office earners because it seems that people really do want to look at the cast-offs of pop stars as if they were religious relics.
For some towns and cities, music museums have become an important tourist- dollar earner. The Music Museum Alliance is a talking shop for these institutions and has about 70 members throughout the US. These range from such biggies as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC to starry local attractions including the St Louis Blues Museum, the Jimmie Rodgers Museum and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
In Ireland, one attempt to emulate these Stateside tourist draws was the Hot Press-helmed Irish Music Hall of Fame, which opened in Dublin's Middle Abbey Street in May 1999. The unique selling point here was a collection of memorabilia from and multimedia exhibitions about the likes of U2, Van Morrison, Boyzone, the Riverdance musical and various showband stars.
However, it did not turn out to be as big a smash hit with the public as its promoters hoped and the museum closed in September 2001 with losses estimated at €1.5 million.
What all of these music museums have in common is that the curators obviously believe rock'n'roll's best days are behind it. There's little sense of the music or the sound as a living, breathing culture and there's scant evidence that new tales are still in train in music venues and rehearsal spaces around the world. Instead, it's all about facts and statistics, the first this and the biggest that, the jeans and the baseball caps.
While museums are about researching, documenting and exhibiting the past, most music museums also seek to propagate a certain notion about the past. When you walk through EMP's galleries, for instance, it's not hard to get the sense that music began and ended with the usual suspects from the 1950s to the 1980s. Call it the baby-boomers' revenge, their chance to say "hey kids, music sounded much better when we were young", but you really do sense a common belief that the best music has already been recorded.
Such tunnel vision can make for an uninspiring spectacle. Rock music is still evolving, but you wouldn't think so from the way music museum curators work. Such myopic attitudes lead to some notable lapses and oversights when exhibitions try to cover and review more recent developments.
At EMP, the North West Passage gallery takes an in-depth look at the music of Seattle and its hinterland. While we get plenty about such garage rock milestones as Louie Louie, The Sonics and Paul Revere and the Raiders, things come a little unstuck when the timeline moves towards a recent phenomenon such as grunge.
It may have all the accroutements money can buy to fill a couple of display cases - such as guitars and contracts - but there is little attempt to go beyond these. There's no explanation, for example, of the local roots or impact of Nirvana's Nevermind, bar some trite lines about a Seattle scene. There's no assessment of the forces that contributed to this local sound going global, and there's certainly no analysis about why the whole Seattle scene fell apart or where it went from there.
Even a segment dedicated to post-grunge in the museum's Sound & Vision gallery would go a little way to clarifying the links between Nirvana and today's alt-rock kingpins. Yet the opportunity to showcase the sound's current health is scorned.
The main problem for EMP and other music museums is that the area they're dealing with cannot be covered solely by artefacts and memorabilia. By concentrating on the trappings and reinforcing the commodification of counterculture, the museums do their visitors a disservice.
Removed from the protective glass, one man's guitar really does look, feel and - yes, as sacrilegious as it may seem - sound the same as the next man's, but it is the music produced and the cultural shifts this music soundtracks which tell a far more vivid and far-reaching tale.
That story, however, is difficult to tell within the confines of an institution's remit and resources, which emphasise static displays and exhibitions. It would seem that music museums are great places to go to see and hear and experience everything but the essence and context of pop music.
