Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by writesdave
Party Out of Bounds: The B-52's, R.E.M., and the Kids Who Rocked Athens, Georgia by Rodger Lyle Brown
emotional
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
I've lost track of the number of music-in-a-time-and-place books I've read, but I'm always interested to see what conditions (social, cultural, educational, environmental) gave rise to a "scene."
Here, we learn the origins of the silly, arty pop of the B-52s, and the high-concept pop-rock of R.E.M., as well as a few others that should have made it, if you ask those in the scene. No real surprises here if you lived through that period of time anywhere, and if you paid attention to culture at large; admittedly, I didn't hear R.E.M. until "Shiny Happy People" and "Losing my Religion," and I never encountered the B-52s until "Love Shack."
Okay, one surprise. Athens hasn't always been the sophisticated model college town of its repute, and only after the emerging bands thrust it in the spotlight did the cosmopolitan haze descend thanks to the masses crowding the town, hoping to catch a glimpse of The Next ™ or be a part of it themselves.
Under the current circumstances, I cracked this one open to be transported, and Brown did just that. He might have needed another edit, and he admitted his memory of some of those nights is hazy, but even if he wasn't sure he knew exactly who to ask, like a good researcher.
The simple explanation comes at the very end in the afterward—Athens is a college town with a yearly influx of enthusiastic, courageous, optimistic and creative people, pushing each other to greater heights in their art. You could say that about any college town, really, but for some reason Athens really caught that wave in the late 70s and early 80s. Brown skillfully brings it all to the page.
Here, we learn the origins of the silly, arty pop of the B-52s, and the high-concept pop-rock of R.E.M., as well as a few others that should have made it, if you ask those in the scene. No real surprises here if you lived through that period of time anywhere, and if you paid attention to culture at large; admittedly, I didn't hear R.E.M. until "Shiny Happy People" and "Losing my Religion," and I never encountered the B-52s until "Love Shack."
Okay, one surprise. Athens hasn't always been the sophisticated model college town of its repute, and only after the emerging bands thrust it in the spotlight did the cosmopolitan haze descend thanks to the masses crowding the town, hoping to catch a glimpse of The Next ™ or be a part of it themselves.
Under the current circumstances, I cracked this one open to be transported, and Brown did just that. He might have needed another edit, and he admitted his memory of some of those nights is hazy, but even if he wasn't sure he knew exactly who to ask, like a good researcher.
The simple explanation comes at the very end in the afterward—Athens is a college town with a yearly influx of enthusiastic, courageous, optimistic and creative people, pushing each other to greater heights in their art. You could say that about any college town, really, but for some reason Athens really caught that wave in the late 70s and early 80s. Brown skillfully brings it all to the page.