02.28.07 - Volume 3, Episode #3 - Length 22:28
Get behind the scenes with Jasen as he discusses this incredible project that features musicians, producers, and others that have shaped American popular music.
MP3 20.6 MB
[music: Andrea Wittgens – Sugertown, How Do You Love, Aquamarine? – Nobody Loves Me True Like You Do]
Jasen Emmons: Sound and Vision: Artists Tell Their Stories; this exhibit is really the first exhibit we’ve had here that integrates Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame into one space.
My name is Jasen Emmons and I am the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Experience Music Project.
[music: Andrea Wittgens – Sugertown, How Do You Love, Aquamarine? – Nobody Loves Me True Like You Do]
Jasen Emmons: We began the program with music interviews. In 2003 when the Science Fiction Museum opened, that is when we also started doing oral histories with people in the Science Fiction world, whether they were novelists or film makers. So this is the first time we have had a exhibit where we put the two together and made it more pop culture, and had different facets of it, so there is a kiosk that is devoted to just science fiction, but when you have the inspiration kiosk, you might have Steven Spielberg talking about what inspired him to become a film maker or George Lucas, what inspired him to create Star Wars. Trying to integrate those two, which is very much part of what we are doing as an institution, that we are, instead of being two separate institutions, one institution that is in some ways a museum of popular culture and this exhibit is the first real step into making that visceral thing, that the visitor can experience in a single exhibit space.
[music: Andrea Wittgens – Sugertown, How Do You Love, Aquamarine? – Nobody Loves Me True Like You Do]
Jasen Emmons: Starting in 1993, the original curators got the idea of beginning to do filmed oral histories interviews of people who had some sort of impact on American popular music. They original started focusing on Hendrix because at that point Jimi Hendrix was one of the main galleries that was going to be there when they opened. The first person we ever interviewed was Al Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix’s father. Since 1993 we have done 523 filmed oral history interviews with an incredible range of artists from Chet Atkins to Pat Metheny to Nile Rodgers of CHIC to Gloria Gaynor to blues musicians. It is not just artists, but also producers, executives, so there is an incredible range, people who were roadies. It’s just this real richness in terms of the stories you get about American popular music and popular music in general because it is more then just Americans.
[music: Mojo Filta’, 13 Track Kickdown – Angelina]
Jasen Emmons: February 28th we open a new exhibit called Sound and Vision: Artists Tell Their Stories which is really a show case for the oral histories. What visitors will get will, we have created a comfortable club like setting where we have 17 monitors, each has a separate theme. Visitors can sit down at the different monitors and then have a menu of selections of videos that they can watch. They range from 4 videos to 8 videos and they are each excerpts. Some of them feature multiple people talking about a similar topic; some of them are one person. You might in the hip hop kiosk get Daryl McDaniels of Run-D.M.C. talking of how they collaborated with Aerosmith to create “Walk this Way” and how when the originally heard the lyrics, they couldn’t understand any of them. You might hear Pat Metheny talking about how when he was 14 years old he heard a Miles Davis record and it was like somebody turned the lights on. One of those moments where his life changed and he thought “Oh my God, this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.” It might be, we have a kiosk called Road Stories, where Bill Sullivan who was a roadie for The Replacements and also Soul Asylum, talks about how Soul Asylum played at the White House once and how the Secret Service kept them down in the basement before they played and they weren’t allowed to go anywhere without the Secret Service guy and at one point they had to move down the hallway so he was walking with the Secret Service person and the guy grabbed him and threw him into another room and shut the door. He was like “What are you doing?” and he said “I can smell the first ladies perfume. She is coming. We have to get out of her way.” So they heard the steps go by and as soon as she left he pulled him back out to the hallway and they resumed going to where they had gone. A number of incredible stories told by a wide variety of people and the visitors decide who or what they want to watch. In addition to the videos we have 4 listening stations where we have artist aret talking about a particular song. It might be Graham Parker talking about writing “Passion Is No Ordinary Word” and then you get to hear the full song or Monument Records founder Fred Foster talking about how he gave Kris Kristofferson the idea of “Me and Bobbie McGee”. You hear him sort of set it up and then you hear the full song.
Jasen Emmons: Two other features we have are performance footage from the oral histories where often we will do an interview with an artist who is seated at a piano or playing guitar and then will end up performing a song as part of it. You get to see some of that when the artist will do a song to illustrate a musical point.
Jasen Emmons: The last part of the exhibit is what we call the personal history booth. It is where basically we are trying to capture the visitor stories. So the visitor can come into a room that is sort of sound proofed and tell the story about the first album they ever bought or science fiction, anything to do with popular culture. We will capture the stories and pick out the best ones and then feature those on a monitor in the exhibit itself.
[music: Angela Reed, Undertone – More Than Stones]
Jasen Emmons: Several years ago we thought about doing an exhibit about fan culture and we had done a bunch of interviews with various fans, Springsteen fans were very devoted and thought its not just about the artists. The fans are such an important part of music and music making. I mean playing to an audience, why the artist means so much to somebody. We have looked for over time with different exhibits, how can we bring the visitor into a part and have their experience be a shared part of what we are doing. This ended up being the perfect opportunity, where because we are being, covering such a wide range of artists and people in the music industry, by having the visitor part of it, it then becomes OK, here is the fans point of view. This is why these albums, these songs, these books mean so much to these people. It’s a test. We shall see how people respond to it. I think they are not only going to enjoy not only doing it themselves, being able to watch other people and the stories they told. Like “Oh my God, that album meant so much to me.” We have all had those experiences and you have talked to somebody where you have some shared record or song or group that means so much to you.
[music: Carrie Clark, Seems So Civilized – Long Black Coat]
Jasen Emmons: The tech team informed me yesterday, a server setup that will accept a terabyte of these interviews that we are capturing. I think they built it on the idea of 30 interviews a day they have enough to go for about a year. You get two minutes to tell your story, so two minutes of digital audio recording. The idea is we will be watching them on a regular basis and sort of picking out the best ones and continual rotate what we feature in the exhibit.
[music: Carrie Clark, Seems So Civilized – Long Black Coat]
Jasen Emmons: With the exhibit, one of the things we are trying to do is make the Northwest music scene a part of that and show the affect it has had. One of the kiosks we have is devoted just too Northwest music. We have the Northwest passage exhibits. When we first started doing that they probably interviewed over fifty people. Really I think what this exhibit is the first chance for most visitors to be able to watch this footage. We have seen little snip-its in exhibit films but this is the first time you can see more extended periods of it. I am hoping what we can do is that by raising the profile of this, of the oral history program itself, other artists will be more willing to do the interviews. We have got a lot of people who initially were a little skeptical, but I think the more we can make it this national treasure that anybody can access, the artists will say “oh, this has great value and I would love to be a participant.” I think we are hoping that will help with local artists, that way if we approach them and say “hey, would you be willing to do an interview” and be like “Yeah, I’d love to be part it.”
[music: Carrie Clark, Seems So Civilized – Long Black Coat]
Jasen Emmons: It is funny, because for me having done quite a few of the interviews, for me sometimes the back stories are as much fun as doing the interviews itself. This is what you have to go through to get the interview, to set it up in the first place. Today I was watching some of the footage for the section on social struggle and I heard Ernestine Anderson tell the story of how she moved from the South to Seattle. They were downtown and they were going to take a bus, she was with her mother and her mother said “Now, remember when you get on the bus, you don’t have to go to the back of the bus.” And she said “Yeah, yeah, I know that.” And got on the bus and saw a seat that was open and sat down in it and was thinking, “Wow, I’m actually sitting up toward the front of the bus, this is really great.” The next bus stop a white woman got on the bus and the only seat available was next to Ernestine Anderson. She started to panic, thinking “Oh my God, this is the only seat. A white woman can’t sit next to me, a black girl. “What am I going to do?” Started sweating, her heat was pounding. She felt her mothers hand on her shoulder push her back down in the seat. The white woman came over and sat down next to her. She said when that first happened “I had just panicked, because where I come from that wasn’t allowed. It was a big adjustment mentally to be in that situation and realize that its OK.”
Jasen Emmons: For me, and this is what I love about the oral history program, is that you can hear powerful stories like that told from a lot of different people. For me there are 100’s of stories like that in the exhibit that are really moving in that way.
[music: Kym Tuvim Unrealesed from the upcoming album, Nothing, Sweet Nothing – Reservoir]
Jasen Emmons: One of the things we are trying to do with the oral history project is connect it to schools locally and hopefully eventually nationally. What we are doing is trying to raise awareness of what an oral history is. I think that was part that drove that part of the oral history booth was to encourage people to thing “Oh, wait a minute my story is worth telling to. This was fun, why don’t I go do an oral history with my parents, why don’t I do it with my grandparents, why don’t I do it with my friends and realize that other people can do it to. We are working with a number of local schools, Holy Names is one of the schools that has an oral history program setup where they are going to have a class that is devoted to it, where the kids are actually going to have a camera available where they can go capture oral histories and then use it to understand how oral histories work and capturing the story of a family or a city or a time. Very much trying to push this idea of that anybody can do this, particularly with technology now that makes it so much more accessible and also inexpensive that you can do this sort of thing and capture it yourself and that it does not require hiring this high end production team.
Jasen Emmons: I really feel like this exhibit is just a drop in the bucket. We have 523 interviews to date, probably do another 50 in the next month and I think what we want to do is just increasingly make it accessible. What I would really love to see is in a year or in 5 years, is essentially almost like the Smithsonian. This national treasure that anyone can access. It is not just in Seattle, it is available on line. If you are in Jackson, Mississippi and you say “I’m a huge John Lee Hooker fan” and you could go see the John Lee Hooker oral history interview. It’s not just for scholars, its not just for music journalists, its for anybody who loves music or popular culture who can then say “Oh my God, I can hear a first hand account from this artists.” Who ever that might be. It would have this richness to it; depending on what ever your interests there would be something there that would be satisfying for you.
Jasen Emmons: If you would like to find out more Sound and Vision: Artists Tell Their Stories, the easiest thing to do is go to emplive.org. You will see on our home page there the banner that talks about the exhibit. Click on that and it will give you more information. You can also find directions to the museum, which is in the shadow of the Space Needle. You can go to sfhomeworld.org to get information from the Science Fiction side, which will also direct you to it. The other is just come to the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame. You can’t miss the building; it is the crazy Frank Gehry building right by the Space Needle in the Seattle Center.
"...this exhibit is really the first exhibit we've had here that integrates Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum Hall of Fame into one space." - Jasen Emmons
Official Website
Featured Music
Andrea Wittgens – Sugertown How Do You Love, Aquamarine? Nobody Loves Me True Like You Do
Mojo Filta’ 13 Track Kickdown Angelina
Angela Reed Undertone More Than Stones
Carrie Clark Seems So Civilized Long Black Coat
Kym Tuvim Unrealesed from the upcoming album, Nothing, Sweet Nothing Reservoir
