Scott Meyer

How to Take an Interest in History

Added 2023-07-31 07:00:02 +0000 UTC

The Musical Instrument Museum is real, and it is really good! If you’re ever in Phoenix, I strongly suggest you go.

The only thing I can only compare it to the Experience Music Project, which no longer exists. It is now part of the MoPOP museum in Seattle. See, when the museum that is now MoPOP first opened, it was two different museums in one building. There was a music museum upstairs, and a science fiction museum down in the basement. As I understand it, they were both filled with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s personal collections of stuff he thought was “neat.”

I mean, the collection included Captain Kirk’s chair. I can’t disagree with him.

The music exhibits at the EMP had a noticeable focus on Pacific Northwest artists. They had Kurt Cobain’s sweater, Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. I remember laughing when Ric asked if they had Sir-Mix-a-Lot’s first big butt.

The Musical Instrument Museum is exactly what it says on the tin. It is a huge, beautiful museum that houses a vast collection of musical instruments from many different places, cultures, and time periods.

Given my upbringing, I couldn’t help but notice all the accordions. It seems that anywhere there are people making music, there’s at least one guy trying to do it with an accordion. The museum had accordions of all shapes, sizes, and descriptions. Big ones for playing polkas, small ones for playing sea shanties, giant ones that you sit at and work the bellows with your feet. They also had a great many harmonicas, which, when you think about it, is just a tiny little accordion where you replace the bellows and the keys with your mouth. In a sense, you become the accordion, which is either extremely Zen, or the plot of a terrible Twilight Zone episode.