The Velvet Underground's Exploding Plastic Inevitable was an experience pumped with body-penetrating sound, saturated color, light and motion. Rock music pulsed and strobes flashed as projected slides and Andy Warhol's films animated walls and band members.

It was the 1960s. Psychedelic posters, with Day-Glo colors and text that meandered like smoke trailing off the end of a joint, lit New York street posts. Journalist Tom Wolfe defined the era in "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." And Warhol, as manager, booked the rock band he'd discovered at Cafe Bizarre in Greenwich Village -- at first for a black-tie affair of the New York Society for Clinical Psychiatry, eventually taking the musicians across the country with the sensually accelerated EPI.

This weekend you can immerse in the flavor of that sensory surround when The Andy Warhol Museum throws open its doors on "Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Andy Warhol's Work," an exhibition itself infused with sound and lighting effects.

The plan is to "evoke the [Exploding Plastic Inevitable] with the elements known to be part of the show," says Matt Wrbican referring to the concentrated energy in the opening gallery, which is part of the exhibition's "Warhol as Producer" section. But there are different soundtracks in every room of the exhibition, adds Wrbican, Warhol Museum archivist and exhibition co-curator.

The exhibition is a co-production of The Warhol and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where it debuted to appreciative crowds and enthusiastic reviews. It comes to Pittsburgh via the de Young Museum in San Francisco, where it was drawing 6,000 visitors a week, Wrbican says.

The focus is on the (considerable) portion of Warhol's artwork inspired by music and the performing arts. So, for example, while his Interview magazine featured a veritable roll call of celebrities on its covers, those in the exhibition reflect the show theme, including Madonna, Yoko Ono, Cyndi Lauper, Cher, Steve Rubell and Diana Ross.

The exhibition addresses the more visible Andy: The Factory studio environment where the artist, dependent upon who's recounting, encouraged/exploited the Downtown bohemian crowd; the Studio 54 club scene, down to its black, silver and gold walls; the raunch of the 1971 "Sticky Fingers" album cover he famously designed for the Rolling Stones that received a Grammy Award nomination.

But it also reveals a not-so-familiar Warhol.

Who knew, for example, that Warhol held season subscriptions to the Metropolitan Opera for years? Or that he was such a fan of Maria Callas that he had the best seat in the house for her New York Met debut and listened to her records regularly at home?

Warhol designed the covers for almost 50 albums, representing a range of performers, beginning with Mexican musicians in 1949. These are displayed, as are album covers from Warhol's personal collection.

"The records he collected and actually listened to are completely different from ones he did covers for," Wrbican observes.

Warhol was even a backup singer for the short-lived rock 'n' roll band Druds, whose lyricist was noted artist Jasper Johns, lead singer was Patty Oldenburg, the wife of Pop artist Claus, and which included instrumentalists Larry Poons, Lucas Samaras and La Monte Young. They never performed live.

His interest in dance began early as the only male member of the Modern Dance Club when he attended Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University). Warhol's "Silver Clouds" were used as the stage design for famed dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham's 1968 "Rainforest," which plays on DVD in the reinstalled gallery of the floating plumped "Clouds."

One section, "Classical Tastes," includes Warhol paintings of Rudolf Nureyev, George Gershwin, Martha Graham and Beethoven, the latter done in the last year of his life.

The Warhol we all know glows in "Hollywood," a world that had fascinated him since childhood. Elvis, for example, is represented by five incarnations of Warhol's multiples painted after a publicity photograph for the film "Flaming Star." It will be accompanied by the sound of gun shots, something Warhol wanted when the images were first exhibited in galleries but never happened.

Similarly, the Rolling Stones were a continuing interest, not the least due to Mick Jagger's pouty, androgynous sexuality, a quality underscored by the inclusion of Warhol's "Ladies and Gentlemen" series of drag queens, along with Warhol's own Polaroid self-portraits in drag, in the gallery with Stones material.

The latter ranges from a superlative portfolio of 10 screen prints, "Mick Jagger," by Warhol, to backstage passes to Stones shows at Madison Square Garden.

Also hoppy teeth. Those once-popular plastic falsies that clicked and clacked disassociated from any body, found in a Time Capsule, were part of the promotional material for a Stones album.

The "teeth" are among many objects and artworks displayed only in the Pittsburgh edition of "Warhol Live," testament to the significant role this museum plays in maintaining and expanding the artist's legacy. That's also a reflection of Wrbican's intimate knowledge of Warhol, which continues to grow as he opens Time Capsules and uncovers new material.

The exhibition includes more than 640 works and objects including paintings, silkscreens, photographs, works on paper, illustrations, films, videos, album covers and archival material.

Woven throughout are great stories, cool lighting and hot music. Allow some time.