Can You Hear the Drums, Fernando?*

The curators are busily installing all kinds of great artifacts in the cases in Another Hot Oklahoma Night and it can be a really exciting process. Deciding how best to display objects, how to make album covers float and guitars look like they're being played is a task that tests the creative powers as well as a person's skills with power tools.

We here at the History Center have a lot of fun installing artifacts. So much fun, in fact, that when we installed the original exhibits, we adopted a mascot for installation. His name is Fernando, taken from the ABBA song so rudely left out of Mamma Mia!, and he is a short, rotund, stuffed alligator. He is currently dressed for the Rock and Roll exhibit and makes daily appearances in the galleries, checking up on the installation process and raising spirits in the process. Here we see Fernando and Wayne Coyne's Mars boot, which will be on display in the Gaylord Special Exhibit Gallery in the Artists section of Another Hot Oklahoma Night. Come by starting May 2nd and see it! Fernando would approve.

*Disclaimer: No, there is not a section dedicated to ABBA in the exhibit :-)

In honor of National Record Store Day

Saturday is National Record Store Day. In honor of that, and my new haircut that makes me feel a bit like I am living in Empire Records, I am writing this entry.

To many of us, who get their music from iTunes, Limewire or bittorrent sites, record stores may seem obsolete. But if I have learned anything from working on this exhibit, it is that music just sounds so good and so real when it is coming from a scratchy vinyl album. And the experience of flipping through bins of albums, never quite knowing what treasures you might uncover cannot be matched by the sangfroid "current chart toppers" or "most played" lists.

With a vinyl record, you get an entire sensory experience. First, you walk into the record store that just smells like musty dust covers, to walls plastered with old band publicity shots and tour posters, flyers of bands seeking musicians or upcoming/long-past shows, to the faint smell of hemp and sweat, but mostly to the slightly charged atmosphere of excitement and anticipation. Walking the beat-up floors that have seen combat boots, bare feet and ballet flats alike, you find a section that seems intriguing, or is the only one not packed with other seekers, and start to flip through the bins. Albums of old bands you haven't thought of in years shuffle along with bands you have never heard of, enclosed in obscure, hilarious and maybe even slightly pornographic covers.

Some stores even still retain the listening station. It may be a sound-proofed booth with high-grade headphones and it may be just a player on a rickety TV table in the middle of the store, but it is all you need for a few blissful moments of rhapsody.

Eventually, with a teetering stack of beat-up albums, with maybe a few protected in plastic wrap, you march to the check-out counter so that you take your treasures home to enjoy.

If you want to check out an all-inclusive record store experience, with bands playing and the masses crowding the bins, look here for information of Guestroom Records' celebration of Record Store Day, 11 am-9 pm. They will have performances, special edition albums, and free food and drinks.

Our exhibit will include its own record store. From the postered walls to the listening station and even bins of Oklahoma-related albums to flip through (although ours will have bios and facts on the artists on the back) you will be able to feel a little bit of that paradise in the middle of the Inasmuch Foundation Gallery. Excited? You should be.

The Days Grow Short...

Well Rock fans, it's getting closer and closer! The final details are falling into place, the galleries are starting to look AWE-some, and the videos, well, you can see for yourself.

The All-American Rejects and Shiny Toy Guns played recently up at the Brady in Tulsa and I got the opportunity to play concert photographer. So much fun! I've been to concerts, but never close enough to have a lead singer grab my camera and sing directly into it. Granted, he didn't do that to me, it was another photog there, but you get the point :-) The photo above is Mike Kennerty of the All-American Rejects rockin' out. Come see artifacts from the Rejects, learn about the current Rock scene in Oklahoma, and learn about the rockers that paved the way for today's rising stars in the Artists gallery of Another Hot Oklahoma Night.

Remember, the exhibit opens on May 2 with 14 bands playing on 3 stages around the History Center! Don't miss out!

-Elizabeth, one excited Assistant Curator of Exhibits and now aspiring concert photographer

A Place to Rock

Advertisement for a dance in the '60s at the Diamond Ballroom.

Elizabeth Baxter here, friendly neighborhood Assistant Curator of Exhibits, bringing you all that’s awesome in the world of Oklahoma rock venues. In the Samuel Roberts Noble Gallery upstairs in the Oklahoma History Center we’ll have an area highlighting some of Oklahoma’s most well-known music venues, from the small to the stadium-sized. I thought I’d give you a small preview and let you see a little bit of what I’ve learned about one of the Oklahoma City area’s oldest rock and roll venues, the Diamond Ballroom.


The stage at the Diamond Ballroom.

The Diamond Ballroom opened in the ‘60s, boasting the “Largest Dance Floor in the Southwest.” Although well known for country dances, the Diamond also brought in the likes of Fats Domino, Wanda Jackson, and Jerry Lee Lewis. The walls by the stage are filled with photos of past performers, showing the amazing history of the place. Today the Diamond Ballroom is a great place to see just about anything, from Tesla to Shiny Toy Guns and All-American Rejects.



One of the walls of photos at the Diamond.

The folks over at the Diamond donated one of the original light-up signs from the front of the DJ booth that reads “Diamond Ballroom Largest Dance Floor in the Southwest.” It will be featured in the Oklahoma Venues area of the exhibit. Come and see it, along with other pieces of Oklahoma’s rock history, when Another Hot Oklahoma Night opens on May 2, 2009. C’mon, you know you want to see it…



There it is, folks, the "Largest Dance Floor in the Southwest."

Update...

Everything has been a little hectic around here, which is part of the reason we are now going to have weekly meetings for everyone working on the exhibit to share what they are working on. Lots of different people working on lots of different parts--there is a lot of Rock and Roll history in Oklahoma to delve into.

We have divided the exhibit into many sections that will be in various places throughout the museum galleries. We will cover Rockabilly, Radio Stations and Recording Studios, The Scene, Fashion and hairstyles, Soul and Funk, Venues, and any number of Oklahoma Artists. The links are just a small teaser of what we will be covering.

Today we met with a graphic designer to create some edgy background graphics for all the panels. Our exhibit will be literally like nothing you have ever seen before. No boring panels that look all the same in our exhibit. Nope. We will have specially designed, pure rock energy pulsing from the boards. You just wait and see.

We are still looking for artifacts, so if you have tickets from rare shows, all access passes, band t-shirts or anything else that might be museum-worthy, please e-mail rocknroll@okhistory.org with a brief description. Who knows, you might end up with your own collection in our archives!!!

Also, I am still looking for pictures of you and your Oklahoma band or pics you took at rock venues and shows in Oklahoma. E-mail those to rocknroll@okhistory.org as well and they will be included in a slide-show in the exhibit itself. After all, fans and their experiences are a huge part of rock and roll!

The plans they are a coming...

The Rock and Roll Exhibit team met today to finalize some major plans for the exhibit.

We have several more bands that we are setting up interview times for, ranging from the Flaming Lips to The Evangelicals. We are also trying to set up dates at record stores and funky locations for All-Call Fan Confessionals. Hopefully everyone will come out these and get their rock experiences on film! The footage will be used in the exhibit, and so will what people have to say. For example, we will be asking what your room looked like while you were growing up...did you plaster it with band posters, have fan shirts draped over every surface, or sleep with a transistor radio by your ear like my bosses did? We want to know!!

Then we walked through the gallery space to see where and what was going in. I am super pumped that so much of what we are putting in coincides with existing gallery themes and objects. With just a bit of finangling and lots of added attitude we are going to have a killer exhibit.

Okies In Muskogee

A couple of weeks ago the exhibits team caught up with Oklahoma natives the All American Rejects as they were being inducted into the Oklahoma Music Hall of Fame. We sat down for an interview that will be part of the upcoming exhibit. During the interview the guys told us about what being an Oklahoman means to them, and how it helps keep them grounded as they play to sold out crowds around the world. We also discussed their new album "When the World Comes Down." Come see the exhibit in May at the Oklahoma History Center to watch the interview and check out the artifacts supplied to us by the Rejects. We will document their rise from a local Stillwater band, to multi-platinum selling rock stars.

-Corey (Exibits Team)