Punk Rock Museum to open in Las Vegas with Canadian punk at the helm
The collection will have over 250 Canadian punk history artifacts
The last seven months have been some of the busiest in the life of Hamilton punk rocker Talli Osborne.
Osborne left Hamilton for Las Vegas at the end of August to be the spokesperson for the strip's newest attraction, the Punk Rock Museum, which is opening its doors on April 1.
"It's been pretty fun lately. It's just like, not chaos, but just the busiest I've ever been in my life," she told CBC Hamilton last week.
She said almost immediately after she landed in Sin City, the museum's creator and NOFX lead singer "Fat" Mike Burkett put her to work.
"Fat Mike was like, 'You're setting up the tour guide program.' And then he's sending me all these really famous punk rockers, like punk rock legends," she said. "Just sending me their contact from his phone, like, 'Go call this person.'"
Osborne told CBC Hamilton back in August that she landed the gig after two decades of friendship with Burkett. The pair met at a NOFX concert in Toronto, after which Burkett wrote a song about Osborne called She's Nubs.
She said the museum's tour guides are all members of iconic punk bands, like Flogging Molly, Anti-Flag and The Germs.
"The museum is for the punk rockers, by the punk rockers," she said.
The museum also features a bar called The Triple Down which the museum's publicist, Toronto resident Melanie Kaye, said is named after two legendary punk venues—The Triple Rock in Minneapolis and the Double Down in Las Vegas.
Over 250 Canadian punk artifacts in the museum
As of last week, the museum was still working on setting up some of the displays inside the museum, Osborne said, but she has a few favourites already.
"The ones that have been exciting for me are Joan Jett's leather jacket, T-shirt and shoes," she said.
Kaye said she worked with the team doing "artifact outreach" and helped secure over 250 Canadian pieces of punk artifacts for the museum.
One of the items, she said, belonged to her late friend and Canadian punk band D.O.A.'s guitarist Dave Gregg.
"His partner loaned a guitar that he used to light on fire all the time. He was really into Jimmy Hendrix, and so I think that's what it was inspired by," Kaye said, adding that a photo by Vancouver photographer Bev Davies will be included in the exhibit as well.
Museum experience a first for group of 'just punks'
Osborne said she has spent the last seven months researching old punk show posters for one of the museum's exhibit projects — a huge floor-to-ceiling mural of punk history.
She said working on the project has opened her eyes to the punk scene of the past.
"It's just cool because punk rock was different before in the '70s and hearing about those times and reading about them, it's just really cool," she said.
Bryan Raye Turcotte, one of the museum's curators, donated some items from his own personal collection, like a jacket belonging to 1970s punk rocker Johnny Thunders.
Osborne said it has been a huge collaborative effort to put the museum together, but it has paid off.
"None of us have ever opened a museum before. We're all just punks and... we all just want to make a really awesome place for everyone," she said.
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