It worked out that we save the Experience Music Project (EMP) for our last day in Seattle, since we were there from 10am-4:30pm. Check out the Day 5 Gallery.

I was so anxious to get inside after seeing it from the Space Needle. While we were there, we saw a short film of an interview with the architect, Frank Gehry, and project founder, Paul Allen, explaining the inspiration of the building. It seems the curves were inspired by the side view of a guitar. The colors: cherry red - clapton’s red & white (gibson?), sky blue - mustang fender, gold - gibson gold top, and purple for Jimi.

The museum had quite a collection, including the full KISS outfit set. I still don’t know how they walked in those shoes. I was sort of disappointed at the huge array of new pop stuff and the obvious lack of indie or even industrial rock. They did have a nice collection of Seattle locals, including Heart, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam.

The 3 special exhibits were roots of R&B, Bob Dylan, and Hendrix. The Dylan exhibit was fabulous. It had several listening booths where you could listen to entire albums, and they also had a recording of his very first concert, which was amazing! The Hendrix exhibit was also incredible. As you walked around, you heard him talking and they had letters he’d written to friends. He was a funny man. haha but I did have to hear “You dig?” 1 million times. My sister is taking a course on him this semester, and I’m so jealous.

The entire place was so interactive, which is what I loved. The songwriter’s area had listening tables for some new & old singer/songwriters. It also had booths for playing with harmony and mixing and other fun things.

Now, the lead photo…this was no easy task. I had to do some major pleading to the mom & sis. Basically, you go in to this room, complete with amps, instruments, and stage lighting that faces an LCD of an audience. We got the choice of the 3 songs to basically karaoke to. We picked Wild Thing. The instruments magically played the right notes unless you had them turn that feature off. Your performance was streamed to the others waiting in line. I came up with our band name, The Rusty Nails (dad’s name is rusty hehe). We went through several ideas thought: MC Cutchin, The Plow Girls, and others that just got worse from there. So we took the stage. I took vocals because that was the scariest thing I could do…no instrument to hide behind. Jenna took drums and mom had lead guitar. Now it was really hard, b/c the song seemed to be much slower than I remembered it so we kinda sounded horrible…thus, why we didn’t buy the DVD but we did invest in this cool poster (generated before our eyes with some mad photoshop actions action). It was soo much fun though! I just wish we’d had a rehearsal hehe.

Mom decided to watch the Beatles film after that while Jenna & I went to the SoundStage. Basically, there were a few clusters of booths, each with a guitar, bass, drum set, and keyboard. You could take a quick tutorial for your instrument, just jam, or jam with the others in your cubicle. There was a fantastic guitarist in when i was trying bass, so I had his sound playing and tried going with him. The tutorial was bass part of Wild Thing. It was so exciting for me to play it! Next thing I tried was guitar for Louie, Louie. Also, very exciting. However, i’ve decided that my hands are way too small to play guitar or base, so unless they make a mini version, I’m out. I did surprisingly well with drums. I learned a rock beat with hat & snare.

Jenna managed to secure us a sound booth, which provided us with 2 guitars hooked to real amps and a bi-zllion controls and tweaky things. I could have played in there all day! I got to play with effects and everything and we could make it loud. Sooo awesome! They even had a place where you could record your own CD for $10. I totally would have done that if I’d had musicians with me. It would have been exciting!

Well, after our instrument fun, we went down to check out the Hendrix movie, which was basically a string of live concerts. Obviously, that was quite enjoyable.

It was such a great experience. I wanted to check out the Liquid Lounge, but it was 21+ (the sis is only 20) and didn’t open until right as we were leaving.

We got back to our hotel and then met up with Abbe for dinner at Ram, sort of like Ruby Tuesday’s. It was really good. There was a Mac store right next door, so I had to stop in there (my first time) and experience this Mighty Mouse that I’d heard so much about. It was very neato. I fell in love with an OS feature that tiles all your program windows and then lets you hover to the one you want and then returns them all back to full size. If only I were a student, they’ve got major deals going on now where you get a free ipod mini. Maybe next round in a few years, I’ll go Mac.

And so we headed to the airport to take our red-eye back to Indy. Oh, they had $4 headphones at EMP, so I was saved for the trip back. The sis sat next to me on the flight, so I we each took an earbud and had music for the flight home. I slept like a baby until the pilot decided to tell us we were entering Utah. Seems that warning would only be necessary if we were on the ground :)

And thus ends my Seattle trip posts.