The Science of Rock ‘n’ Roll is in KC

Dinosaurs, King Tut, Leonardo da Vinci — these are the types of traveling exhibitions that museums and science centers tend to book. Informative, sometimes entertaining, but not typically very contemporary. A few years ago, Bryan Reinblatt and Lance Brass — two Canadians working separately in the field of exhibition production — got to talking about the lack of dynamic modern exhibitions.

“We just weren’t seeing a lot of fresh content out there,” Reinblatt says. “Nothing very current, nothing very hands-on. And the sense we got was that these venues were looking for newer stuff, more hands-on stuff. So we started thinking about ideas that might work.”

They started their own company, Elevation Productions. Last month, their first exhibition, The Science of Rock ‘n’ Roll, debuted in Kansas City, at Union Station. At the opening-night party, in mid-November, a cover band called, appropriately, Flashback, belted out classic rock — Billy Joel, Steely Dan — as guests feasted on cupcakes and bottles of beer. In the exhibit area, adults waited in long lines to record vocals in soundproof booths and hammer away at silenced drum kits.

“There’s been a lot of ‘history of rock and roll’ types of shows,” Brass says. “With this, we wanted to give visitors a sense of how technology and science have influenced music over time. The goal is to give a behind-the-scenes look at how rock and roll is made. So the artifacts at the exhibition are mostly tech-based and interactive. We allow guests to have fun. It’s a come-do exhibition, not a come-see exhibition.”

“Interactive” is a bit of an overused buzzword, but it applies at The Science of Rock ‘n’ Roll. When visitors enter ($15 for adults, $12.50 for children 3–14), they are handed a “Backstage Pass” with a QR code on the back. When they want to try out the various learn-and-play kiosks that span the 10,000-square-foot space, they scan their pass, which also can e-mail the recording and the video of their session. These kiosks have a Guitar Hero–like interface; music plays over headphones, notes and beats fly down a monitor, and you try to match everything up with your playing. Other interactive components include mixing stations where visitors can play with the tracking of popular songs. One lesson learned: “Space Oddity” sounds funny with David Bowie’s lead vocal dropped out for the backing vocals.

Visitors also can watch a video explaining the differences among mono, stereo, quadraphonic and surround sound, and learn about sound pioneers such as Alan Blumlein, Clément Adler and Ray Dolby. And there’s plenty of museum-type memorabilia on display: old jukeboxes, old record cutters, and a Gretsch doubleneck lap steel guitar from the 1950s.

The Science of Rock ‘n’ Roll will tour nationally — it’s here through May 2013 — but Union Station ties some local angles into the exhibit. The first room that visitors enter is a decade-by-decade glance at Kansas City’s role in rock-and-roll history, with little tidbits about things like the Beatles playing Municipal Stadium. There also are more obscure items: old newspaper ads boasting of a new entertainment capital at 135th Street and Holmes in Martin City; records by Riverrock and the Rainmakers; and a looping two-­minute trailer for Cowtown Ballroom…Sweet Jesus, Joe Heyen and Anthony Ladesich’s 2009 documentary about the fabled Kansas City venue where Foghat, Frank Zappa and Van Morrison performed back in the day. Deeper into the exhibit, there’s a wall of amplifiers made by Kustom, an electronics company that was based once in Chanute, Kansas.

“Those are collectibles at this point,” Brass says. He got them from Midwestern Musical Co., the Crossroads music-equipment store. “The Midwest has some of the best antiques on the planet, and they tend to be cheaper here than elsewhere. So we tried to save on costs by sourcing some of these items from in and around Kansas City.”

Less thorough, less local but cheaper ($8 for adults, $6 for children 5–12) is another recently opened interactive music exhibit: the Grammy Museum Experience, inside the Sprint Center. There are remixing stations; Grammy-related memorabilia (the clothes that Rihanna and Justin Bieber wore at their performances); a Roland live stage, which is like a more collaborative version of Guitar Hero; and a “Billie Jean”–style dance floor. Another lesson learned: Science is cool and all, but it can’t always beat a dance floor with squares that light up when you step on them.