Elise

 

The British Music Experience...a place to indulge.

As Easter bank holiday fell upon us this year, I fancied doing something interesting. So I booked a couple of tickets to go down to the O2 in London to see this British Music Experience (BME) I have been hearing about. So on Friday I trundled on down to London town with my brother in tow.

I had no pre-conceptions with this exhibition, because apart from a few articles, I really didn’t know much about it. I won’t go into how to get to the O2 because driving across London is not a favourite past time, all I’ll say is...find the A1 and stay on it!

So walked into the O2 and had to suppress the excited flutter in my stomach of going to a concert, not too hard to do because the massive arena is secretly placed behind glass doors and numerous escalators.

When you get to the BME you’re asked to sit down and wait for the next ‘pre-show’ to start which is indicated by a clock counting down on the wall. You kind of sit there feeling like you’re about to be put on show, now I wasn’t banking on any audience participation so those flutters soon turned into nerves. However, you’re then directed in through a white door into a very black room with a large screen. Then a TV-presenter whose name escapes me, takes you through exactly how the BME works and how to get all that you can squeeze out of it. Given, most of it you will forget and inevitably you will leave thinking there are bits you have missed.

Once the pre-show is over you are directed through the other side of the room through what I would describe as a ‘sound tunnel’. This is where all around you is the muffled sound of an audience screaming and chanting, with a guy on a mic announcing various acts such as The Clash and Robbie Williams. I have to say if you were ever that little kid that got all excited at concerts and wished to know what it was like to be your idol for one minute, then this is a very small margin of that said minute. Well, I got damn excited! Someone calling your name, an audience of thousands waiting for you....come on that’s the shizz!!!

The actual ‘bubble’ is smaller than I imagined it would be which was initially disappointing. All around the circle are different rooms which represent different eras in British music. You have the 30’s right up to today, and it goes through numerous genres from the likes of Skiffle through Reggae up to Pop and Hip-Hop. In each of the rooms they have various bits of music memorabilia which I was particularly impressed with. A Ken Colyer trumpet, Freddie Mercury’s famous white suit, Elton John’s glasses and a guitar smashed up by The Who are just some of these. There is a fascinated young music fan in me that gets all gooey when you’re standing there looking at some of the original stubs from a Beatles set at The Cavern Club.

Something I really liked was all the technology used. There are cabinets with old radios and gramophones and a large light box with a map of England where you can match connections in music to a certain town or city. In every room is a large screen where you can use a roller ball to pick out certain points in time that happened in that era. Also a favourite part of my trip was the ‘table talk’, this is where you can stand and watch interviews with important people of that era being interviewed about particular subjects, such as music venues (massive part on Liverpool), Live Aid, Hip Hop and Skiffle. Very interesting to hear how Cilla Black met The Beatles and how it was working at The Cavern Club for her.

There is also a dance cube where you can record your own dance moves for you to look at later through your SmartTicket. Now your SmartTicket is pretty snazzy; there are smart sensors all around for you to flash your ticket. You then can go home and log on to the site and look back at everything you have previously scanned; this also includes getting three free songs on iTunes.

At the end of it all you go into a room titled ‘The Future...’ which is another dark room, this time with three massive screens all around you. They then play a montage of concerts from Coldplay to Queen, coupled with audience scans, screams and strobe lights. You will stand in the middle of this room and feel like you are there; maybe you are even playing to that audience.

So ‘The Future...’ it seems is much the same, music will carry on, it will grow and your love for it will only get bigger, stronger and last even longer.

 

Elise @ Merseymusic