Despite the ritual guitar-smashing that kicked off the Experience Music Project, it was a very non-rock moment in Seattle. For one thing, the guitar being smashed was a one-of-a-kind objet d'ârt created by glass-blowing superstar Dale Chihuly -- and therefore ten times more expensive than your average Fender. For another thing, the guy doing the smashing was deep-pocketed uber-nerd Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, owner of various Northwest sports teams, and known Jimi Hendrix fanatic. The glass guitar was being sacrificed to celebrate the opening of the Experience Music Project, Allen's $240 million rock 'n roll museum. "I'm on a natural high right now!" the billionaire told the local news as he stood in the lobby with his sister, Jody Allen Patton, the project's director. Originally conceived as a tribute to Hendrix, EMP morphed into a grandiose undertaking designed to encompass the entire history of rock 'n roll. Allen's money was put to use hiring a curatorial staff and buying up guitars strummed by rock's forebears. These originators of rock are certainly long overdue this kind of recognition -- not to mention monetary reward -- but music is a living thing, and it's disheartening to see it enshrined in this way. Then again, seeing Muddy Waters' Guild Thunderbird guitar up close and hearing Bo Diddley reminisce about his early days is pretty cool -- enough to make you forget the $20 admission. Of course, there was never any doubt that Allen would see the project through -- this is the man who once financed an entire election to convince the good people of Seattle that they needed a new football stadium. Whether it's his enthusiasm, or simply the power of the almighty dollar, the local music community was eventually won over. Despite my own skepticism and general distrust of anything remotely Microsoft-related, I wrote and narrated one small exhibit in the Northwest gallery. I'm pretty sure I was EMP's fourth or fifth choice for the job, but I jumped at the chance to help shape this permanent statement about the Seattle music scene. It's like voting: If you don't do it, you forfeit your right to criticize the outcome. In this spirit, let me say that there's much to criticize about EMP. The problem reveals itself soon after you walk into the lobby -- an awesome, airy hall dubbed the Skychurch. Even skeptics will be blown away by the enormity of it. There's an enormous video screen filling one wall and some seriously impressive acoustics (it converts into a concert space). "Time capsules" --glowing boxes filled with band paraphernalia --dot the floor. Photos of icons like Duke Ellington, Tupac Shakur, David Bowie, and Iggy Pop ring the ceiling. It's all very neat. But then you notice the line in the corner under the "Artist's Journey" sign. This is basically a carnival ride masquerading as an exhibit, the kind of thing that graces Six Flags and Disneyworld. Though its designers probably wouldn't want to cop to it, EMP is more theme park than museum, made for the kind of music fan who subscribes to the Columbia Record and Tape Club. Instead of 11 CDs for a penny, they get hundreds of guitars molded into a floor-to-ceiling sculpture for 20 bucks ("That's a real waste of instruments," one local musician noted wistfully during the museum's private opening"). The theme-park atmosphere carries over to EMP's multi-media presentation. In contrast to your average museum, EMP is loud -- loud with music, yes, but also with commentary. This Experience is more heavily mediated than Monday Night Football. If you can't be bothered to read the wall text, you can push a button on your Meg, a purse-sized electronic player that offers recorded commentary on selected topics. And if that's too much, you can watch the monitors spaced throughout the galleries and see brief documentary videos played in a loop. For complete sensory overload, try the touch-screen computers programmed with further details on the artifacts (these were the least popular of the gizmos during my two visits). With its rows of plaques, the publicly funded Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland just can't compete. Interactivity is the museum's other key draw, hawked on billboards around Seattle with the heady slogan "Have you ever...? You will." The most impressive of the interactive exhibits is Sound Lab, which allows visitors to learn about and play various musical instruments; one of these is a kind of glorified drum circle known as the "Jam-O-Drum" ("intended to conjure the early rhythms of our ancestors playing around the fire"). If that sounds too much like work, you can skip to On Stage, "a theatrical reenactment of a live arena performance" that features smoke machines and a virtual audience of screaming fans. You can memorialize your moment in the spotlight by purchasing a rather blurry photo of your band snapped in mid-"Wild Thing." (It must be mentioned that on the night a drunken cackle of me and several friends decided to become "rock stars," computer glitches robbed us of our poster -- a mildly ironic situation considering the source of Allen's billions.) Judging from the snaking lines outside these galleries, EMP's interactive instincts are right on the money: Who doesn't want to be a rock star? 1 | 2