The Music of Athens, Georgia

Known as “the Liverpool of the South”, Athens, Georgia has played a revolutionary role in the formation of local bands such as the B-52s, Widespread Panic, and the Indigo Girls. By 1980, the chart-topping band, REM, brought the rock music that flows out of Athens to national attention. The Athens Symphony Orchestra, the University of Georgia, college radio station WUOG have made this unique town a center for musical development. The wide variety of music performed by the Athens-based rock bands is not known for shaping a characteristic style of rock; for example, downtown, The 40 Watt Club and Uptown Lounge are key venues in the rock, country, and bluegrass scene and host such prominent groups as Dave Matthews Band and The Drive By Truckers. Athens’s wide diversity of popular music was essential to the early evolution of alternative rock and the New Wave movement. These cultural activities performed throughout the town have shaped Athens’s social identity into one that unites the bands with their eccentric and iconoclastic image.