...that R.E.M. played their first gig at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Athens, GA. Here's the rumored setlist from the R.E.M. Timeline:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~darryl74/1980.html
Support: Side Effects
1st Set:
I Can't Control Myself
God Save The Queen
Narrator
Just A Touch
Baby, I
Action
Needles And Pins
Hippy Hippy Shake
There She Goes Again
All The Right Friends
Shakin' All Over
Secret Agent Man
A Girl Like You
Permanent Vacation
I Can Only Give You Everything
Dangerous Times
Different Girl
Mystery To Me
(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone
Lisa Says
Nervous Breakdown
Schéhérazade
2nd Set:
Honky Tonk Women
One Nation Under A Groove
Roadrunner
California Sun
Gloria
Notes: First ever R.E.M. performance. Some reports have the band playing under the name 'Twisted Kites', other reports claim there was no band name. Song order is not known (although "I Can't Control Myself" and "God Save The Queen" have been acknowledged to be the first two songs played) and it's not known what other songs were played.
---------------------------------------------
In a totally unrelated note, Flagpole recently picked what they consider to be the "25 Best Ever R.E.M. Songs":
http://www.flagpole.com/articles.php?fp=5120
The 25 Best Ever R.E.M. Songs
R.E.M. has never been a band to hide its best songs as import-only b-sides or obscure soundtrack filler; they're right there on the albums, and are more often than not the singles. So if this list of the 25 best (and on another day it could easily be much different, as all but the top five or so changed at least once during the writing) songs of the band's career seems more like a reunion of old friends than a crate-digging, tape-trading archaeological excavation of the last quarter century, just thank Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe for letting everybody know when they've made something worth hearing.
25. "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" Document
You didn't think we were going to get out of here without hearing this one more time, did you?
24. "I've Been High" Reveal
The pinnacle of the band's burbling-electronics phase, an elegy, a statement of purpose: "Make my make-believe believe in me."
23. "Low" Out of Time
What earns this relatively unassuming song a spot on the list are the opposing effects of the dive-bombing cello in the chorus and Stipe's impassioned performance in the third verse, as the violin behind him strains to reach a little higher, just for a moment.
22. "Where's Captain Kirk?" Fan club single
A completely batty cover of obscure British punk band Spizzenergi's biggest hit, this barely sounds like good ol' familiar R.E.M., and is one of the best examples of the sense of humor that mostly stays hidden on the proper albums.
21. "Finest Worksong" Document
Along with its fraternal twin "Turn You Inside Out," this is the biggest, stompingest arena-rock anthem R.E.M. ever recorded, the reason they had to start playing places like the Omni.
20. "First We Take Manhattan" I'm Your Fan
A 1991 Leonard Cohen cover that improves on the original mainly by not sounding like Wang Chung's To Live and Die in LA soundtrack, this is notable especially for the way it prefigures the swagger that Stipe and Buck, in particular, would display three years later on Monster - they sound ready to tear the whole city down.
19. "Gardening at Night" Chronic Town
Proof that everything was in place right from the beginning.
18. "Perfect Circle" Murmur
Every sound here is focused on encapsulating the specific moment when a night ends too early: Bill Berry's understated, echoing snare, the music-box piano, the resigned bassline and the perfect couplet "Standing too soon / Shoulders high in the room."
17. "Feeling Gravity's Pull" Fables of the Reconstruction
Kicking off their third album, this song announced a new landscape where the ground shifted uneasily underneath, hooks clawed their way out of stuttery guitar noises, and melodies dissolved into string-section showdowns.
16. "You Are the Everything" Green
This sounds like a nearly-as-great warm-up for both "Losing My Religion" and "Nightswimming," with the mandolin and the breathless late-night shenanigans in cars out in the country and the low-end organ underscoring the last verse and the secret weapon of cricket noises. Plus, does the addressee wear dentures? Is that what he said?
15. "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" Reckoning
A good reason to do a little research on your favorite R.E.M. songs: finding out that Mills, not Stipe, wrote most of the lyrics to "Rockville." A good reason not to do too much research: finding out that, instead of this being the brutal examination of dead-end small-town life you had always heard, it's a more-or-less tongue-in-cheek plea for some UGA student Mills had a crush on not to go back to Maryland over summer break. And there are no factories in Rockville. And she was only gone for six weeks anyway.
14. "Begin the Begin" Life's Rich Pageant
Arguably the rockin'-est song in the catalog, as well as a goldmine for the trivia-obsessed: rife with shoutouts to everything from Cole Porter to "Little Black Sambo," the effect is a tangle of interconnected allusion as dense as the snarling riff that kicks it off.
13. "World Leader Pretend" Green
When I was 12, I went to a gifted-students summer camp, where my roommate was an aspiring comedy writer who gave a dramatic reading of the lyrics to "World Leader Pretend," and I thought he was the smartest person I had ever met. The "raze/ raise" pun? Unalloyed genius.
12. "Crush with Eyeliner" Monster
Over Buck's overcranked perpetual-metal-machine guitar, Stipe sings a sneering ode to a sad tomato who may or may not be Courtney Love. Bonus points for Spike Jonze's karaoke-bar video.
11. "At My Most Beautiful" Up
Wherein Buck indulges his inner Brian Wilson on a sleighbell symphony that's nearly a rewrite of "God Only Knows." What raises this from pastiche to sublime is Stipe's voice, which can't hit those crystalline Carl Wilson highs, and as a result keeps it focused on more earthly delights.
10. "Losing My Religion" Out of Time
This is one of those songs that's so ubiquitous you forget how good it is until it sneaks up on you at some odd moment and smacks you in the head with how perfectly realized it is. Like the rest of R.E.M.'s best work, it's about a specific thing - obsessive, unrequited love - but, thanks to certain lyrical withholdings and eccentricities, allows its listeners to inhabit it in any way they please.
9. "We Walk" Murmur
Blame the world's most insidiously catchy nursery-rhyme melody for making sure a seemingly random reference to a David painting and the nearly nonsensical chorus "Take oasis" are lodged permanently in your brain.
8. "Driver 8" Fables of the Reconstruction
The band's entry in the "Great Songs about Trains" category, "Driver 8" displays a notable component of early R.E.M., the ability to create a fully-realized world from minimal, specific details: the "go tell crusade," the floaters on the power lines, the Southern Crescent. What could have been a simple tale of riding the rails becomes instead a mystery, a glimpse of something larger than itself.
7. "Electrolite" New Adventures in Hi-Fi
In his liner notes to the best-of compilation In Time, Buck calls this "the least melodramatic pre-millennial folk-blues end of the century good-bye song ever written," and that's about the best way to put it; it bounces along so amiably on this instantly familiar piano-banjo melody that you think everything's fine, until there's nothing there at all.
6. "Fall on Me" Life's Rich Pageant
R.E.M.'s secret weapon has always been Mike Mills' backing vocals - more "pop" than Stipe's husky mumble, grounding even his most out-there flights of lyrical fancy in radio-ready familiarity - and this is his greatest showcase, almost a Socratic dialogue between the two singers, Stipe warning the sky not to fall on him while Mills wonders what it's up there for in the first place.
5. "Sweetness Follows" Automatic for the People
An exploration of feedback as a conduit for grief, forerunning our No. 1 song below. Here Peter Buck's controlled squalls merge with cello and organ to form something fuller and deeper, yet more hopeful, than the feedback/ organ/ pedal steel interplay on the top song - the shared grief of a family rather than the solitary pain of an ended relationship.
4. "So. Central Rain" Reckoning
When people talk about an "R.E.M. sound," this is what they're talking about. A jangly guitar figure perched at the intersection of country, folk and punk; muted, mumbled verses leading to the bell-clear hook of "I'm sorry" in the chorus; the wailing, echoing attack-piano coda that leads it out of the familiar and into the realm of the epic.
3. "Swan Swan H" Life's Rich Pageant
One of the more overtly "folk" songs in the R.E.M. catalog, this might pass for an actual Civil War relic were it not for the intricate, free-associative lyrics. Is it about the Confederacy? Pirates? Cats? Fame? What? It's perfectly simple and completely mesmerizing, the band's deepest and most absurd exploration into the Faulknerian mysteries of the South.
2. "Nightswimming" Automatic for the People
It's not unwise to feel concern when a rock band breaks out the French horn, but John Paul Jones' orchestration renders all fears moot by letting the simple piano melody carry the song and providing counterpoint that grows richer and more complex as Stipe's lyrics, some of his finest, grow from plainspoken storytelling to a requiem for things lost in time.
1. "Country Feedback" Out of Time
The perfect R.E.M. song - a summation of everything that came before, and a look ahead at what would come next. The blandly descriptive title only reveals the outline of the sound and invites speculation as to alternate meanings, and Michael Stipe's lyrics meld the imagist techniques of earlier R.E.M. ("Paperweight / junk garage / winter rain / a honey pot") to the clear-eyed confessionalizing that emerged on later albums ("I was central / I had control / I lost my head / I need this"). "Country Feedback" was the highlight of the one R.E.M. show I've seen, at the Omni 10 years ago: Stipe sang most of the song on his knees, his back to the audience, as if unable to look us in the eyes, while great rippling curtains of feedback encircled everyone, even up in row RR, drawing us all together in someone else's grief.
Gardner Linn
It Was 25 Years Ago Today
Moderator: SMLCHNG
It Was 25 Years Ago Today
Last edited by Jahfin on April 5, 2005 9:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
From athensmusic.net:
http://athensmusic.net/newsdesk_info.ph ... desk_id=94
R.E.M. at 25: The April 5, 1980 Party (Part 1 of 4)
Date: Tuesday 05 April, 2005
Editor's Note: R.E.M.'s legendary debut was later dubbed the 60th Greatest Moment in Rock History by Entertainment Weekly in front of Elton John's U.S. debut, the Monkees debut, and the Beatles rooftop farewell. The church was later torn down, although the steeple still remains. I later heard Kathleen O'Brien bemusedly remark how her birthday was named such an event. - Jeff Montgomery
By Daniel J. Matthews, Jr.
It was 25 years ago today, when R.E.M. began to play.
"I really don't remember any interesting specificities, just a great, crazy time with lots of drunk people I didn't really know yet (and that was just the band!)," emailed bass player Mike Mills from New Zealand.
I was a young boy from Iowa, hungry for the world, hanging out at O'Malley's (now Dial America) with my dad and a local Athens UGA journalism professor friend in Dan Kitchens. We stayed at his house on King Avenue.
April 5, 1980 did not seem like the day a rock band would set out to change the world, but they sure did. I came down from Iowa to check out the University of Georgia as a place to go to school. I am sure glad I did.
The occasion was the birthday for Kathleen "K.O." O'Brien (now married) Layson. She was the catalyst for this birthing of a band that did not even have a name yet. She was living at the church with roommates Peter Buck and Michael Stipe at the time of the event.
The following passages in italics were borrowed with permission from the Rodger Lyle Brown book Party Out of Bounds, recently republished by everthemore books.
That night, April 5, 1980, it was O'Brien's party: for her and by her, she did it all. She wanted it to be big. She cleaned the house. She bolted the front doors and posted the sign "Enter in Rear." She told everybody about the party. She reserved the kegs. To make the party extra special she even got a fancy tap: lighted, fake wood grain fleur-de-lis-shaped Budweiser tap-putting down a bad check as deposit. And she got the bands to play.
I was bored by the wooden planks of the O'Malley’s deck and severely bummed out by the fact I was too young to get in the bar. So I abandoned my father and his friend as they sat down and drank a couple of cold ones as I decided to check out the strangely compelling tunes coming from the former church on Oconee Street. I actually was afraid to go in at first, but something about the music made me want to peek in that party.
I walked over there to check it out as I heard the strains of something sounding like the Monkees being filtered through the Sex Pistols. Turns out, that is exactly what it was: "I'm not your stepping stone."
The scene was littered with the usual party refuse: beer cans, 12-pack packages, bricks, rocks, et cetera. You had to climb around the side of the former St. Mary's Episcopal Church to check out the bash.
There were lots of holes in the floor and floor boards worn bare. The sanctuary stage back area was entered through a hole in the closet. The drugs of choice seemed to be keg beer and assorted other kinds of alcohol and cigarettes, but there was plenty of acid, pot and a preponderance of other substances being consumed by the college kids there.
Other musicians involved in the entertainment that evening included deejay Kurt Wood and The Side Effects, with drummer Paul Butchart. Many thousands later claimed to be there, when in fact maybe a couple of hundred people did filter in and out of this birthday bash.
Part 2 of 4:
http://athensmusic.net/newsdesk_info.ph ... desk_id=95
Part 3 of 4:
http://athensmusic.net/newsdesk_info.ph ... desk_id=96
Part 4 of 4:
http://athensmusic.net/newsdesk_info.ph ... desk_id=97
http://athensmusic.net/newsdesk_info.ph ... desk_id=94
R.E.M. at 25: The April 5, 1980 Party (Part 1 of 4)
Date: Tuesday 05 April, 2005
Editor's Note: R.E.M.'s legendary debut was later dubbed the 60th Greatest Moment in Rock History by Entertainment Weekly in front of Elton John's U.S. debut, the Monkees debut, and the Beatles rooftop farewell. The church was later torn down, although the steeple still remains. I later heard Kathleen O'Brien bemusedly remark how her birthday was named such an event. - Jeff Montgomery
By Daniel J. Matthews, Jr.
It was 25 years ago today, when R.E.M. began to play.
"I really don't remember any interesting specificities, just a great, crazy time with lots of drunk people I didn't really know yet (and that was just the band!)," emailed bass player Mike Mills from New Zealand.
I was a young boy from Iowa, hungry for the world, hanging out at O'Malley's (now Dial America) with my dad and a local Athens UGA journalism professor friend in Dan Kitchens. We stayed at his house on King Avenue.
April 5, 1980 did not seem like the day a rock band would set out to change the world, but they sure did. I came down from Iowa to check out the University of Georgia as a place to go to school. I am sure glad I did.
The occasion was the birthday for Kathleen "K.O." O'Brien (now married) Layson. She was the catalyst for this birthing of a band that did not even have a name yet. She was living at the church with roommates Peter Buck and Michael Stipe at the time of the event.
The following passages in italics were borrowed with permission from the Rodger Lyle Brown book Party Out of Bounds, recently republished by everthemore books.
That night, April 5, 1980, it was O'Brien's party: for her and by her, she did it all. She wanted it to be big. She cleaned the house. She bolted the front doors and posted the sign "Enter in Rear." She told everybody about the party. She reserved the kegs. To make the party extra special she even got a fancy tap: lighted, fake wood grain fleur-de-lis-shaped Budweiser tap-putting down a bad check as deposit. And she got the bands to play.
I was bored by the wooden planks of the O'Malley’s deck and severely bummed out by the fact I was too young to get in the bar. So I abandoned my father and his friend as they sat down and drank a couple of cold ones as I decided to check out the strangely compelling tunes coming from the former church on Oconee Street. I actually was afraid to go in at first, but something about the music made me want to peek in that party.
I walked over there to check it out as I heard the strains of something sounding like the Monkees being filtered through the Sex Pistols. Turns out, that is exactly what it was: "I'm not your stepping stone."
The scene was littered with the usual party refuse: beer cans, 12-pack packages, bricks, rocks, et cetera. You had to climb around the side of the former St. Mary's Episcopal Church to check out the bash.
There were lots of holes in the floor and floor boards worn bare. The sanctuary stage back area was entered through a hole in the closet. The drugs of choice seemed to be keg beer and assorted other kinds of alcohol and cigarettes, but there was plenty of acid, pot and a preponderance of other substances being consumed by the college kids there.
Other musicians involved in the entertainment that evening included deejay Kurt Wood and The Side Effects, with drummer Paul Butchart. Many thousands later claimed to be there, when in fact maybe a couple of hundred people did filter in and out of this birthday bash.
Part 2 of 4:
http://athensmusic.net/newsdesk_info.ph ... desk_id=95
Part 3 of 4:
http://athensmusic.net/newsdesk_info.ph ... desk_id=96
Part 4 of 4:
http://athensmusic.net/newsdesk_info.ph ... desk_id=97
Last edited by Jahfin on April 5, 2005 4:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
ToplessRideFL
- Changing Channels
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Tiki Bar
- Thank God the Tiki Torch Still Shines
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Re: It Was 25 Years Ago Today
Sergeant Pepper taught his band to play!!! 
You’re still grinning, we’re still winning, nothing left to say
I’m still gliding as I go flying down this endless wave
I’m still gliding as I go flying down this endless wave
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iuparrothead
- God's Own Drunk
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Re: It Was 25 Years Ago Today
My favorite on that list.Jahfin wrote:5. "Sweetness Follows" Automatic for the People
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
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Parrot Monkey
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Re: It Was 25 Years Ago Today
Wasn't that "it was 20 years ago today"? Not to nitpick or anything.Tiki Bar wrote:Sergeant Pepper taught his band to play!!!
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tikitatas
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Re: It Was 25 Years Ago Today
We could only hope, Larry . . . Well, too well, I remember June of 1967 when that album was released! Gettin' closer to FORTY years ago . . .!!!!!!!LIPH wrote:Wasn't that "it was 20 years ago today"? Not to nitpick or anything.Tiki Bar wrote:Sergeant Pepper taught his band to play!!!
Cate
"When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky." ~ Buddha
"When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky." ~ Buddha
From Flagpole.com:
http://www.flagpole.com/articles.php?fp=5133
That Night (April 5, 1980)
Back When It All Began: A R.E.M.iniscence
The Party
Boy, were we nervous. In just a few minutes we were going to be playing our very first show ever. Who could have known when we decided to get together and make some music that we would actually be playing in front of an audience? That night was the birthday of one of my oldest friends in Athens, Kathleen O'Brien. We first met while we were in high school, at a German convention, where we snuck off with a few people to get high. I used to work with her brother when I was 15, and her best friend was in my high school German class.
The Invitation
On Feb. 29, 1980, John Cale played the last show for a long time at the Georgia Theatre. After the show I went to a birthday party for local college radio DJ Kurt Wood. At Kurt's birthday party, while standing on the front porch of a house on Lumpkin St., Kathleen O'Brien asked if Kit Swartz, Jimmy Ellison and I could play at her birthday party on Apr. 5. She said her roommates' band was also going to perform, if they could get a set together.
Nervously we agreed. Even though we had only been playing music together for about three months, we also hoped to have our set, too.
The Practice
We began practicing every night, going over and over our setlist, which was only about nine or 10 songs. One thing that always bothered me about the way we practiced was that we would stop and start over at every little mistake, so that it took a long time to go through our few songs. I had only been playing drums about six months, and Jimmy, our bass player, had only been playing four months. Kit, the guitarist, had been playing a little longer than I had, because his brother knew how to play guitar and showed him different tricks. We were listening to a lot of Ventures albums, and the Gang of Four was our favorite band, though we did like most of the "New Wave/ Punk" that was coming out, and they were probably our biggest influences. Therefore, we were an "instrumental band with vocals."
The Trip
During spring break a few weeks after Kurt's birthday, I rode to New York City with Michael Stipe and Peter Buck (of the band that was to headline Kathleen's party) and Kurt Wood, who started the first "New Wave/ Punk" show at WUOG, the student-run University radio station. The trip to NYC was, to say the least, quite eventful. It was while in New York that we all were somehow invited to attend a birthday party for music critic Lester Bangs. Years later, I would ask the hostess if she remembered us from that day, and she said, "Oh yeah, you were the guys that smelled so bad."
We spent the whole time living in a van off Columbus Circle in front of the club Hurrah's, and didn't get to shower, though Peter didn't show up one night and said he had picked up a girl at a bar just so he could get a shower.
I knew Peter because he worked at Wuxtry, and Michael and I worked together at the Steak and Ale restaurant, where the crew would sometimes get together and have go-go parties at a house outside of town.
The Critique
Two weeks before the show, Michael and a friend of his, Mark Cline, came to see us rehearse at a house my parents had bought out in the suburbs of Athens. We were quite the amateurs. We plodded through our nine-song set and asked them what they thought. Michael seemed to feel that we were really no threat to them musically, but we definitely may have had them beat in the originality department. We played several covers, but after Michael came to see our practice, we narrowed it down to two: "Boots are Made for Walking" and "For Your Love," because the other band was playing some of the same songs. However, our versions were played not at all like the originals, yet still captured their essence. We decided not to play "Secret Agent Man," so that they could perform that as well.
The Rehearsal
The night before the show, we loaded our equipment through a back door into the sanctuary of the old Saint Mary's Church, where Kathleen lived with Peter and Michael. There was a two-story apartment built inside the church, occupying half of the available space in the sanctuary. After setting up our equipment in the dark and dusty chamber, we ran through our set. We played our set for Bill Berry, the drummer of the headlining band, and the bassist, Mike Mills. It was the first time Peter heard us as well. We were quite nervous, since they had just finished performing some of their songs for us. It was the first time I had ever heard them play, and they were much more professional and quite tight. Their set consisted of mostly covers, with about 40 percent originals interspersed throughout it.
The Nerves
"That is interesting the way you accent the downbeats the same as the upbeats," Bill told me.
I honestly had no idea what he was talking about, having never taken a lesson in my life. "Thanks," I said through the microphone after our set while doing a very lousy impersonation of Johnny Lydon in the Public Image Ltd. vein. We were really wasted on the Quaaludes that were going around by the time the night was over, because we wanted to play sober at the party.
The Buildup
Earlier in the evening before the birthday party, members of both bands did interviews with Kurt Wood on WUOG. The party was to be a big secret. The headlining band hadn't even chosen a name yet and were asking the audience to vote on such names as "Twisted Kites," "Third Wave" and "Negro Wives." Both bands were really playing up the big rock star image. It was quite hilarious. We made about eight posters for our show with only the name of the band, "The Side Effects," and a photo of a kid with a hand grenade in Central Park, by Diane Arbus. Since the headliners didn't have a real name they didn't have a poster, though the poster at Wuxtry had written on it, "With Twisted Kites, at a Theater near you'all. Only the coogat will know." Coogat was our catch phrase at the time for things that were more than keen, from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper which most of us had seen a few weeks earlier.
The Performance
Time for our debut set, and the whole place was packed. It was G-Day weekend and perhaps word made it out beyond the downtown scene. People were hanging in the windows next to the stage being careful not to fall through the holes in the floor. We were scared to death! We opened with "I Always Used to Watch You" and ran quickly through our set, ending with a song the Peter would eventually name for us, "Neat In The Street." For some reason, I think the idea of playing before the audience gave us some weird boost of energy. Finally our set was finished and everyone was screaming for an encore, so we played our first two songs over again.
The headlining band finally took the stage for their premier performance as well. They played "I Can't Control Myself" or maybe it was ‘Nervous Breakdown." It is hard to remember. Our set was over, and the need to remain sober had long vanished. However, their set was just beginning, and for them it would be the first of many for years to come.
The Revelation
The next day, I returned my brother's van, which had been used for the spring-break trip to NYC with Peter and Michael. While cleaning it out, I find a pair of underwear inside the refrigerator. For years, I had no idea where they came from until one evening in a casual conversation with Peter, he admitted that they were his and that on that historical evening he had an intimate encounter with what was perhaps his first rock groupie. Funny how things turn out that way.
The Perspective
Looking back on the last 25 years, it always amazes me how much the scene has grown, from small secluded parties in old warehouses and people's homes to a major industry bringing in thousands of dollars to the local economy. There would be no place now for a band like ours, once referred to as the nerds of the local scene. Still, I am thankful to have been in the right place at the right time to capture the small town magic that was once the Athens music scene. I am sure there are those who experience the same sense of oneness with those in the audience and those on-stage, but self-awareness may have removed some of the naive charm and wonder experienced when everything thing was new, every note fresh, and every beat empowering.
Paul Butchart
http://www.flagpole.com/articles.php?fp=5133
That Night (April 5, 1980)
Back When It All Began: A R.E.M.iniscence
The Party
Boy, were we nervous. In just a few minutes we were going to be playing our very first show ever. Who could have known when we decided to get together and make some music that we would actually be playing in front of an audience? That night was the birthday of one of my oldest friends in Athens, Kathleen O'Brien. We first met while we were in high school, at a German convention, where we snuck off with a few people to get high. I used to work with her brother when I was 15, and her best friend was in my high school German class.
The Invitation
On Feb. 29, 1980, John Cale played the last show for a long time at the Georgia Theatre. After the show I went to a birthday party for local college radio DJ Kurt Wood. At Kurt's birthday party, while standing on the front porch of a house on Lumpkin St., Kathleen O'Brien asked if Kit Swartz, Jimmy Ellison and I could play at her birthday party on Apr. 5. She said her roommates' band was also going to perform, if they could get a set together.
Nervously we agreed. Even though we had only been playing music together for about three months, we also hoped to have our set, too.
The Practice
We began practicing every night, going over and over our setlist, which was only about nine or 10 songs. One thing that always bothered me about the way we practiced was that we would stop and start over at every little mistake, so that it took a long time to go through our few songs. I had only been playing drums about six months, and Jimmy, our bass player, had only been playing four months. Kit, the guitarist, had been playing a little longer than I had, because his brother knew how to play guitar and showed him different tricks. We were listening to a lot of Ventures albums, and the Gang of Four was our favorite band, though we did like most of the "New Wave/ Punk" that was coming out, and they were probably our biggest influences. Therefore, we were an "instrumental band with vocals."
The Trip
During spring break a few weeks after Kurt's birthday, I rode to New York City with Michael Stipe and Peter Buck (of the band that was to headline Kathleen's party) and Kurt Wood, who started the first "New Wave/ Punk" show at WUOG, the student-run University radio station. The trip to NYC was, to say the least, quite eventful. It was while in New York that we all were somehow invited to attend a birthday party for music critic Lester Bangs. Years later, I would ask the hostess if she remembered us from that day, and she said, "Oh yeah, you were the guys that smelled so bad."
We spent the whole time living in a van off Columbus Circle in front of the club Hurrah's, and didn't get to shower, though Peter didn't show up one night and said he had picked up a girl at a bar just so he could get a shower.
I knew Peter because he worked at Wuxtry, and Michael and I worked together at the Steak and Ale restaurant, where the crew would sometimes get together and have go-go parties at a house outside of town.
The Critique
Two weeks before the show, Michael and a friend of his, Mark Cline, came to see us rehearse at a house my parents had bought out in the suburbs of Athens. We were quite the amateurs. We plodded through our nine-song set and asked them what they thought. Michael seemed to feel that we were really no threat to them musically, but we definitely may have had them beat in the originality department. We played several covers, but after Michael came to see our practice, we narrowed it down to two: "Boots are Made for Walking" and "For Your Love," because the other band was playing some of the same songs. However, our versions were played not at all like the originals, yet still captured their essence. We decided not to play "Secret Agent Man," so that they could perform that as well.
The Rehearsal
The night before the show, we loaded our equipment through a back door into the sanctuary of the old Saint Mary's Church, where Kathleen lived with Peter and Michael. There was a two-story apartment built inside the church, occupying half of the available space in the sanctuary. After setting up our equipment in the dark and dusty chamber, we ran through our set. We played our set for Bill Berry, the drummer of the headlining band, and the bassist, Mike Mills. It was the first time Peter heard us as well. We were quite nervous, since they had just finished performing some of their songs for us. It was the first time I had ever heard them play, and they were much more professional and quite tight. Their set consisted of mostly covers, with about 40 percent originals interspersed throughout it.
The Nerves
"That is interesting the way you accent the downbeats the same as the upbeats," Bill told me.
I honestly had no idea what he was talking about, having never taken a lesson in my life. "Thanks," I said through the microphone after our set while doing a very lousy impersonation of Johnny Lydon in the Public Image Ltd. vein. We were really wasted on the Quaaludes that were going around by the time the night was over, because we wanted to play sober at the party.
The Buildup
Earlier in the evening before the birthday party, members of both bands did interviews with Kurt Wood on WUOG. The party was to be a big secret. The headlining band hadn't even chosen a name yet and were asking the audience to vote on such names as "Twisted Kites," "Third Wave" and "Negro Wives." Both bands were really playing up the big rock star image. It was quite hilarious. We made about eight posters for our show with only the name of the band, "The Side Effects," and a photo of a kid with a hand grenade in Central Park, by Diane Arbus. Since the headliners didn't have a real name they didn't have a poster, though the poster at Wuxtry had written on it, "With Twisted Kites, at a Theater near you'all. Only the coogat will know." Coogat was our catch phrase at the time for things that were more than keen, from the Woody Allen movie Sleeper which most of us had seen a few weeks earlier.
The Performance
Time for our debut set, and the whole place was packed. It was G-Day weekend and perhaps word made it out beyond the downtown scene. People were hanging in the windows next to the stage being careful not to fall through the holes in the floor. We were scared to death! We opened with "I Always Used to Watch You" and ran quickly through our set, ending with a song the Peter would eventually name for us, "Neat In The Street." For some reason, I think the idea of playing before the audience gave us some weird boost of energy. Finally our set was finished and everyone was screaming for an encore, so we played our first two songs over again.
The headlining band finally took the stage for their premier performance as well. They played "I Can't Control Myself" or maybe it was ‘Nervous Breakdown." It is hard to remember. Our set was over, and the need to remain sober had long vanished. However, their set was just beginning, and for them it would be the first of many for years to come.
The Revelation
The next day, I returned my brother's van, which had been used for the spring-break trip to NYC with Peter and Michael. While cleaning it out, I find a pair of underwear inside the refrigerator. For years, I had no idea where they came from until one evening in a casual conversation with Peter, he admitted that they were his and that on that historical evening he had an intimate encounter with what was perhaps his first rock groupie. Funny how things turn out that way.
The Perspective
Looking back on the last 25 years, it always amazes me how much the scene has grown, from small secluded parties in old warehouses and people's homes to a major industry bringing in thousands of dollars to the local economy. There would be no place now for a band like ours, once referred to as the nerds of the local scene. Still, I am thankful to have been in the right place at the right time to capture the small town magic that was once the Athens music scene. I am sure there are those who experience the same sense of oneness with those in the audience and those on-stage, but self-awareness may have removed some of the naive charm and wonder experienced when everything thing was new, every note fresh, and every beat empowering.
Paul Butchart