Tempe Sound transports patrons to city's rich music scene of yesterday
This article was originally posted on the examiner.com website on February 5, 2015.
When the Tempe History Museum curator Joshua Roffler first promoted to the public that the museum sought memorabilia from Tempe's rich musical past last January, he and his staff underestimated the response of people willing to lend their possessions to represent its recent past.
The Tempe Sound, the museum's current exhibition which runs until October, covers more than 60 years of musical history and sits in a space slightly larger than a master bedroom. A sampling of the artists represented features Waylon Jennings, Meat Puppets & Jimmy Eat World.
The compact space also meant painful exclusions when it came time to assemble all the content into a simple chronological narrative.
"There's been a lot of great musicians and venues in Tempe over the years, so there was no way we could include everyone," Roffler said.
Roffler did much of the legwork for acquiring the exhibitions contents himself, visiting dozens of people’s homes who experienced it firsthand, recording their memories and picking items that would represent their recollections.
Although not all the local talent will be recognized, there's plenty of brushes with history with more popular bands and contemporaries. As he goes through the exhibit items, he stops at a display for the punk band JFA (or Jodie Foster's Army), which includes a crude stencil of their logo onto a t-shirt and skateboard.
Yet, the jewel of their memorabilia includes a yellowed handwritten log — in different color pens and styles — of the band's first tour in 1981. An entry notes they performed with the fledgling Black Flag as their second tour date. Farther down the list includes a plethora of other familiar contemporaries, including Social Distortion, Meat Puppets, Butthole Surfers and Dead Kennedys.
"If you look down the list, it's just incredible, these guys that were 15 years old, just starting out as a punk band and they played with everyone — and most of these were in town." Roffler said.
Many of the exhibit’s displays provide reminders of the community that launched its local acts to greater prominence. On a wall dedicated to Gin Blossoms, lead singer Doug Hopkins' McClintock High School identification and his various name tags are juxtaposed with a 1997 telegram from the Late Show with David Letterman, congratulating the band on a recent Grammy nomination.
Another highlight from the exhibition includes a note-perfect replica of the Long Wong's stage, faithfully recreated, including the faux-copper backsplash. Many items are original, including the stain glass door where Roffler could observe shows from as a teenager, the Long Wong's signage above the stage, as well as the soundboard next to the doors.
"Imagine how many bands plugged in through there," Roffler notes.
The exhibit focuses back to when when the city of Tempe was still a smaller city, before chains and restaurants redeveloped the land and gradually wiped out many musician-friendly venues, including Long Wongs, which was closed down and razed in 2004.
A wall facing out into the museum charts such places onto a map shaped in the form of a guitar pick. As Roffler scans the map of Tempe's old venues, he struggles to generate more than a few names that endured.
"We've lost a lot of music venues. The density used to set Tempe apart. On any given night there was a whole bunch of places all over town with a bunch of great bands playing."
