Grabbed a few collections tonight, two that came out from the Experience Music Project here in Seattle, and a demo disc that I.R.S. Records put out in 1994 to celebrate 15 years of ‘being on the charts’.

The EMP discs I got with some weariness. EMP represents to me most of what I think is wrong in the world. It is an expensive ‘museum’ of Paul Allen’s memorabilia collection that is a headphone / PDA guided tour of, well, Paul Allen’s stuff. And the building is the biggest architectural disaster of Frank Gehry. I love his work usually, but this monstrosity is just hideous. And to top it off, when you go to the top of the space needle and look DOWN on it, the roof has had no design attention paid to it. No, if I was putting a building, especially one that is supposed to be interesting to look at, next to the Space Needle, what would I make sure to do? I would make sure it looked damn good from above. Anyways, the aesthetic problems, as well as the audacity that Paul Allen has to basically put his money into building a museum to store the stuff he has bought, then to charge an arm and a leg to close yourself off to the museum experience tells me that there would probably be problems with mix discs that the same place produced. The surprise is, they are actually pretty good. There are some small problems here and there, but they are, for the most part, pretty right on.

One set is a chronology of rock in the northwest called ‘Wild and Wooly’, and charts 50s garage bands up to Murder City Devils. The Wailers and The Kingsmen are represented, as is Mudhoney’s ‘Touch Me I’m Sick!’, a pre-Nevermind Nirvana track, Sleater-Kinney and some power pop from The Posies. My favorite moment on the disc though happens near the beginning of disc 2… Queenryche leads into Green River (followed by a torrent of grunge). It is almost like a baton is passed, and the music of the ‘90s takes over. The second set called ‘Funk Blast!’, and it earns my ultimate respect for starting out with not one but TWO James Brown songs. THEN it goes onto The Temptations’ ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’. Pretty bad-ass way to start a funk chronology. War gets a track, Funkadelic, Chic, Ohio Players, Parliament… most of what you expect. But once it starts, the two discs are playable pretty much from start to finish. This set may be one of Tamiko’s top 10 most played discs actually. Pretty solid set… especially considering the EMP sins discussed above.

The I.R.S. disc is fun as well, though definitely something meant for in-store play as a way to sell older re-issues. It did get me ‘Mexican Radio’ and ‘The Future’s So Bright’ though without needing to buy discs by Wall of Voodoo and Timbuk 3.