You've Further Removed the Focus From Inspirational Power

DJ Riz on the Experience Music Project and Jimi Hendrix: “What [Paul] Allen and his ilk are doing is removing the juice from the fruit of culture. So with Hendrix, you reduce him to a merely great instrumentalist, as opposed to an insightful philosopher, hedonist, and partly disgruntled charlatan who also refused to live or perform here. You can commodify the former, while the latter remains fluid and elusive. But in doing so--in reducing him--you've further removed the focus from inspirational power, and that's tragic. Allen and that museum enshrine the past rather than allow themselves to be instructed by it.”

That's from an interview mostly focussing on the city of Seattle, where Riz is a DJ for KEXP, funded by the very Experience Music project he criticizes in the above quote. He's a really great DJ, very low-key and with a unique voice when he's listing the tracks he played or going through upcoming concerts. I mostly love the tracks he plays because they're perfect for a quiet late night: ambient noise mixed sometimes with drum'n'bass beats, but usually fairly beat-free. Which makes the criticism of the Experience Music Project feel a little weird: that it would take on as a DJ someone who takes the 'hiring' organization to task speaks a few volumes about that organization.

It's a really great interview, and I've never really been able to 'get' Seattle either, but that may have to do with my never really being in the downtown core save for baseball games at the Kingdome, and that was nowhere near to a downtown core. Portland has always made more 'sense' to me, with a fairly large downtown university campus and, well, walking distance to everything from the apartment of the friends I stay over with. (That and the MAX.)