Imagine if Microsoft crossed the Smithsonian Institution with the Hard Rock Cafe, then injected some genetic material from Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Sony's multimedia Metreon entertainment center in San Francisco. The result might look something like the heavily hyped Experience Music Project (EMP), which opened early this summer at the foot of Seattle's famed Space Needle. Bankrolled to the tune of $250 million by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the EMP began as an homage to Seattle native Jimi Hendrix. It has evolved into something much more-and somehow a bit less.

Housed in a spectacular Frank Gehry-designed building resembling a pile of giant melted gumdrops, the EMP puts a unique high-tech spin on American popular music. The facility-bisected by a monorail left over from a World's Fair-combines a traditional museum, high-tech entertainment proving ground and a new-age shopping mall and melds them into a kind of theme park for boomers. In addition to the Hendrix shrine and other traditional museum-style collections of rock and roll memorabilia, it boasts a number of high-tech innovations. A motion-simulator ride, for example, seems to dive through a trumpet and drop you into high-energy funk concerts by James Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic.