Rodger Lyle Brown - Party Out of Bounds: The B-52’s, R.E.M., and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia

Party Out of Bounds really captures the rhythm and feel of the Athens music scene. Rodger knows. He was there from the beginning.
Peter Buck, R.E.M.

For fans of the bands, rock historians, and followers of the indie scene, this is a Party worth attending.Billboard

A book about the interconnected lifelines of the artists, students and musicians who dominate the Athens music scene is a challenging project at best, and Brown has done a better job than anyone would have thought possible. He delineates the tangled spheres of influence and the hundreds of threads of potential that keptand keepthe Athens music scene alive.Athens Magazine

His foot heavy on the accelerator, Mr. Brown speeds his readers through the Georgia darkness from keg parties in rural love shacks to packed warehouse dance marathons in town.... Without turning maudlin, Mr. Brown captures both the joy of Athenss youthful exuberance and the pain of a generations loss of innocence to cynicism and AIDS.Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Luminous... wittily written... Browns musical and sociocultural insights unselfconsciously pierce like perceptual spears.... With a book like Browns, as with the B-52s Cosmic Thing, we can revisit, again and again, a mythic place of lust, youth, music and eyeliner; fragments of our past, shards of our present, refractions of our future. San Francisco Bay Guardian

Party Out of Bounds is an entertaining and wistful work which chronicles the origins of Athens, Georgias rock scene.... The book also recaptures the musical rush of the late 1970s, when challenging new sounds seemed to cut through the air like determined stilettos.
Memphis Flyer

Party Out of Bounds

Music of the American South

The B-52s, R.E.M., and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia

Rodger Lyle Brown
Foreword by Charles Aaron
Afterword by David Barbe

Published by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
1991 by Rodger Lyle Brown
Additional materials 2016 by the University of Georgia Press
All rights reserved
Set in Minion Pro by Treva Tam
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

Most University of Georgia Press titles are available from popular e-book vendors.

Printed in the United States of America
20 19 18 17 16 P 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brown, Rodger Lyle, author.

Title: Party out of bounds : the B-52s, R.E.M., and the kids who rocked Athens, Georgia / Rodger Lyle Brown.

Other titles: Music of the American South.

Description: Athens : Published in association with the University of Georgia Music Business Program, The University of Georgia Press, [2016] | Series: Music of the American South | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016014381 | ISBN 9780820350400 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Rock musicGeorgiaAthens19711980History and criticism. | Rock musicGeorgiaAthens19811990History and criticism. | B-52s (Musical group) | R.E.M. (Musical group)

Classification: LCC ML 3534.3. B76 2016 |

DDC 782.4216609758/1809047dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016014381

Originally published in 1991 by Plume

To the memory of
Richard Louis Brown Sr.

Does not the true character of each epoch come alive in the nature of its children?

Karl Marx

Its been a bad day, please dont take my picture.

Michael Stipe

Chapter 1
The Founding Fathers Crash a PartyA School Is StartedThe Parable of the Iron HorseKeith Strickland Meets Fred Schneider

Chapter 2
Fred Meets OrtKeith and RickyRickys Little Sister CindyKate Comes to TownThey All Get Drunk at a Chinese RestaurantThey Start a BandThey Give It a Name: The B-52s

Chapter 3
The B-52s Play Their First PartyFake Fur Shag Carpet Muff WigsThe B-52s Play Their Second Party

Chapter 5
Curtis Knapp Comes to AthensThe B-52s Go to New YorkDanny Beard Rides Along

Chapter 6
January 1978, The Sex Pistols Play AtlantaThe First Atlanta Punk FestivalThe B-52s Outpunk Atlanta

Chapter 7
Danny Does The B-52s First SingleThe B-52s Play the Georgia TheaterThe Incomparable PhyllisThe Tone Tones, Athens Second Band

Chapter 8
The B-52s Are BlessedMike Green DisappearsThe Fans Blow Their ChanceAthens Dominates

Chapter 9
Michael Lachowski Bloodies an ArmThe Scrapes Clean DowntownCurtis Crowe Gets a LoftThe Very First 40 Watt Club

Chapter 10
Michael Lachowski Rents a StudioRandy and Michael Buy GuitarsCurtis Plays the DrumsVanessa Sure Can SingPylon Plays

Chapter 11
The B-52s Have Manager TroubleThey Settle ItThey Sign a Record DealTheir First Album Comes Out

Chapter 12
Kathleen OBrien Meets Bill BerryThe Story of Bill and MikeThe Girls in the SubbasementThe Scene Heats Up

Chapter 13
Pylon Goes out of TownPylon Seals the Deal with New York City

Chapter 14
The ChurchPeter Buck and Michael StipeThe Punk Girls of Lexington Highway

Chapter 15
Life at the ChurchThe Method Actors

Chapter 16
DB RecsPylon Does a Single

Chapter 17
Peter Buck and Michael Stipe Meet Bill Berry and Mike MillsR.E.M. DebutsBill Drops out of School

Chapter 18
Athens Gets Its First New Music Club, the 40 Watt East

Chapter 19
R.E.M. Plays Their First Show in AtlantaMike Mills Is Late for an InterviewR.E.M. Goes to North CarolinaA Rock-and-Roll Sick Thing

Chapter 20
Something Is Happening in AthensThe Post-Bouffant BopPylon ParkLove Tractor Debuts

Chapter 21
The Make Me Dance HouseBerber StreetR.E.M. HeadquartersThe Street of Stars

Chapter 22
The Mens ClubA Fresh Season in AthensR.E.M. Raids the CountrysideR.E.M. Records a Single

Chapter 23
The New Coffee ClubOh-OKThe B-52s Crisis

Chapter 24
R.E.M. Records Chronic TownR.E.M. Signs with I.R.S.R.E.M. Rules

Chapter 25
Love TractorThe Side EffectsOh-OKThe Method ActorsNone Can Compare to R.E.M.Back at Home, the Girls Wait

Chapter 26
A Photograph Is TakenR.E.M. Releases Murmur, Their First AlbumA Cold Wind Blows through Athens

Chapter 27
The Athens ShowThe Whole World Is Watching

Chapter 28
Fade Out

Charles Aaron

A s a social-anxiety-disordered nerd derping around the University of Georgia campus from 1980 to 1985, collecting more vinyl than credits, I was sure of very littleexcept that I wanted to get closer to the new music scene happening nearby (soon to be valorized as the Liverpool of the South, among many other superlatives). So its a testament to Rodger Lyle Browns Party Out of Bounds: The B-52s, R.E.M., and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia, which chronicles almost exactly the above era, that it was a total revelation when first published in 1991. Admittedly, Id been a nave bystander, but it wasnt just that. Brown got inside the party, got the walls to talk, and wrote down the truest lies.

But beyond that, Party Out of Bounds still resonates so strongly because of its fancifully visual sense of place and its uniquely appropriate portrayal of an arts scene; Browns report reads like a savvy, informed hallucination. He takes his conjured history back to the late 1700s and early 1800s when UGA is established as the countrys first land-grant universityon a patch of lush hills reaching up and out from the Oconee River, got by musket and treaty from local Cherokee and Creek tribes. Jump to the equally lawless world of the 1950s Greek system, where a group of fratboy goons christen an abstract horse sculpture commissioned by the university with a load of manureso much for modren art. But the book really kicks in during the posthippie southern blooze-rawk swale of the early- to mid-1970s when a remarkably unlikely drag camp underground evolves at house parties in the absence of any welcoming bars or venues for original music. (Remember: Athens is a small, conservative town in a conservative state during an increasingly conservative era. Until 2001, Georgia flew the Confederate stars-and-bars as its state flag, and until 2003, there were strict antisodomy laws, even for consenting adults in private.)