Yes, you read that right. Germany’s getting a techno museum. Kind of. The Museum of Modern Electronic Music — snappy name there lads — is set to open in 2017. There are already museums around the world dedicated to pencils, lawnmowers, and fishing, so erecting a listed building dedicated to 4/4 doesn’t seem like the strangest thing in the world. We’ve all heard of that dick museum in Iceland right?
The MOMEM is going to be built in Frankfurt, a city currently most famous for sausages you get in cans, so we imagine the residents are pretty jazzed about it. As we speak, the MOMEM team — headed up by Andreas Tomalla, the bloke who invented the term ‘techno’ — are probably scrambling around, desperately trying to work out how you create a mausoleum to a living culture. We like to think of ourselves here at THUMP as kings of canonisation so we’ve put together a little list of fives things we think should be represented in Frankfurt’s museum of techno. We don’t expect payment for it but a few free pencils and maybe a replica coin with Sven Vath’s profile embossed on it would do.
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THE INTERACTIVE BERGHAIN EXPERIENCE WITH WAXWORK SVEN MARQUARDT
I’ve never been to Madame Tussaud’s but I’ve seen people I never spoke to at school post photos of themselves stood gawping at a waxy David Beckham and, christ, it looks terrible. Just unfathomably boring. What’s the point? Wandering in a daze through room after room of imitations of people you’ve seen on the telly. It probably stinks in the height of summer too. Just imagine it: beads of synthetic sweat pouring off the top of a simulated Ross Kemp, obese Americans hulking about spitting bits of cheeseburger over dear old Elizabeth. Repugnant.
Still, people seem to like it so why not get some spod out there to knock up a replica of the bloke who doesn’t like letting people into the club that’s now so well known the guest list is comprised of blokes who were on Hollyoaks for a bit. Obviously, because it’s Berghain, you’ll have your camera removed if you whip it out. Oh, and you’ll have to start queuing at 7am on Saturday to have any chance to get it. But when you do…
WHATEVER CAR JUAN ATKINS WAS DRIVING WHEN HE RECORDED THE NARRATION ON “NIGHT DRIVE (THRU-BABYLON)”
Techno. Detroit. The Motor City. Cars. Driving. See where we’re going with this? Yes, you’ve got it: MOMEM should give us all a chance to press our eager cheeks into the foamy seats of whatever automobile Juan Atkins was in possession of when he conceived “Night Drive (Thru Babylon)”. You could put your hands on the very gear stick that the hands responsible for this classic touched. You could check the glove compartment for stray sweet wrappers and see whether or not Atkins was a litterbug. You could be at one with the history of techno.
THE TR909 DRUM MACHINE THAT DERRICK MAY SOLD TO FRANKIE KNUCKLES
I realise we are treading into other genres here, but surely the machine that was sold from one of techno’s founders to the Godfather of House is worthy of a plinth. The machine was passed around the hands of a whole host of Chicago DJs, making this one unit instrumental in the forging of our electronic future. We just need to work out who’s got it now. In fact, MOMEM could make a whole FUN interactive display around that, like the kind of thing your grandad gets excited about in the Imperial War Museum, where a map is punctuated with small bulbs that show the location of every atom bomb dropped in the 20th century, except, get this — we’re dropping bass(drums) not bombs!!!
ORIGINAL PRESSING OF VIRGIN’S “TECHNO! THE NEW DANCE SOUND OF DETROIT”
I mean, sure, this compilation is a) actually pretty much just a collection of house records and b) available for a tenner on Discogs, but the whole point of museums is to get people to pay to see things that aren’t actually that interesting on their own but imbibe some kind of cultural cachet through setting. Sorry, a sixth former just grabbed hold of my Mac there. This should be in the MOMEM because it’s the first commercially released record to use the word ‘techno’, even if it’s not actually techno and you could have it in your own home for the price of two pints in central London.
TECHNO VIKING’S FULL OUTFIT
Picture it: the shorts, the necklace, the knotted beard. All on one stern looking mannequin in a cabinet. Techno’s ultimate warrior preserved for time immemorial. Look but don’t touch.
