Fact #79819

Paul Butchart (support band, Side Effects) : The scene in Athens at this time was a group of around 150 individuals, who would meet at parties and go out to Atlanta clubs together to see such acts as the Ramones, Talking Heads, and Devo. There was no club in Athens that would take a chance with the New Music at that time. Bands mostly played at parties, or as an occasional opening act in Atlanta.

Dan Wall (owner, Wuxtry Records) : Peter Buck, who was then a student at Emory University, worked in my record store, Wuxtry. I had bought a disused church on Oconee Street. I fixed up the pulpit area which had broken floorboards… and rented the church to them.

Peter Buck : It was a real zoo. We lived with some girl who dealt drugs - all of these sickos coming over at four in the morning with the urge.

Kathleen O’Brien (student/friend) : I wanted to move in there because I thought it would be a really cool place to live. Little did I know … Dan said he had another friend interested in moving in, and I asked who it was. I found out it was Pete.

I had known Bill Berry through the dorm the prior year and had a huge crush on him. Basically, I did whatever I could to throw us in the same situation. One night, there was a party in the fall of 79. I had gone there with Pete and Michael Stipe, and Bill Berry was there with Mike Mills. I introduced them …

Bill Berry : I met them at this party, and said, “A friend of mine up here (Mike Mills) plays bass. We've got bass and drums up here. Let's get together and see what happens. As it turns out, one of us didn't make it, so we bagged the idea. It never would have happened, but I saw Pete again three weeks later in a bar and we said, 'Let's just give it one more shot,' and we did, and got together, and it was great. It was like magic. So it almost didn't happen.

Mike Mills (bassist, R.E.M.) : I remember the first time we played together in the church. It was February in 1980, and there was no heat and we could see our breath. I think I was trying to play the bass with gloves on. It was really cold. Bill [Berry] and I showed them a couple of [songs] we had from before, and we liked what they did with that. They showed a couple of their things, so we thought they were okay songwriters. We figured we’d give it a try.

Dan Wall : I rehearsed with the band a few times on keybass and sax.  Then I moved to Atlanta, to work in my store there.   

Peter Buck : When we met Bill and Mike, within like an hour we were a band, wrote a couple of songs and were playing.

Bill Berry : Michael said he liked my eyebrows, He claims to this day that's the reason he wanted us to get together.

Michael Stipe : When we first got together, it was just, 'What song does everybody know?' We played old '60's, like 'Stepping Stone,' Troggs' songs, stuff like that.

Kathleen O’Brien : They practiced for six months or so on covers and then they started writing songs of their own.

Peter Buck : When we started, the idea was that if you sounded like another band, that was horrible. Most bands in Athens tried not to sound like one another … like Pylon, where did they come from? Where did the B-52s come from? That was just something they pulled out of the air. The whole idea in Athens at that time was to express yourself individually.

Michael Stipe : We sat down and wrote a bunch of songs which probably took as long to play as they did to write.

Peter Buck : When we first started, Michael and I used to say how much we hated most rock And roll lyrics. We had this idea that what we'd do is take cliches, sayings, lines from old blues songs, phrases you hear all the time, and skew them and twist them and meld them together so that you'd be getting these things that have always been evocative, but that were skewed just enough to throw you off and make you think in a different way. It seemed like a really pretentious thing to do, but that concept does work its way in.

Kathleen O’Brien : There was a crowd of us that would just go and listen to them practice all of the time. We’d get in the back of the church and just dance and party. Somewhere around that time, Bill and I started going out and it became a more personal interest.

Michael Stipe : Then Kathleen, the woman who lived there with us, had this grand idea to have a birthday party in three weeks, and she said, 'Why don't you guys play?'

Bill Berry : She begged us to play. We didn’t want to do it.

Kathleen O’Brien : At that point, Michael had also moved in so Michael, Pete and Bill were all living in the church and Mike lived off-campus somewhere. Once the band was lined up, I thought I’d get another band, The Side effects…

Paul Butchart : On February 29, 1980, after John Cale played the last show for a long time at the Georgia Theater, Kathleen O'Brien asked if we could play at her birthday party on April 5th. She said her roommates' band was also going to perform, if they could get a set together. Nervously we agreed, also hoping to have our set together, too.

Kathleen O’Brien : Then we decided to make it like a club, and we got Men In Trees to play. The guys were still fairly reluctant to play.

Paul Butchart : The night before the gig we loaded our equipment into the sanctuary of the church, which had a two story apartment occupying half of the available space. Fortunately there was a back door so we didn't have to load our equipment through the closet, which had a small door that one had to duck through to enter the sanctuary from the apartment.

After setting up our equipment in the dark and dusty chamber, we played our set for the drummer of the headlining band and the bassist. It was the first time the guitarist heard us as well. "That is interesting the way you accent the downbeats the same as the upbeats,” said the other drummer to me. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about, having never taken a lesson in my life.

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 it was much more professional and quite tight. Their set consisted of mostly covers, with about 40 percent originals interspersed in it.

Earlier in the evening members of both bands had done 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.

Peter Buck : We couldn't think of a name at first. I liked Twisted Kites. Then we thought maybe we should have a name that was real offensive, like Can of Piss. That was right there at the top.

Kathleen O’Brien : We got five kegs of beer and 500 people showed up. It was the most phenomenal party ever.

Dan Wall : The night of the gig was a nice, Athens fall-like, cool evening - all the windows open. 

Mike Green (member of Athens band, The Fans) : It was a big deal at the time, not necessarily because we thought anybody was going to get famous, but because the party was huge. You couldn’t breathe once you got in.

Curtis Crowe (drummer for Athens band Pylon) : That was a real memorable night because, at the time, the Side Effects were my favourite band.

Mike Green : There was something in the air that night. The two bands were making their debut. I was much more impressed with the Side Effects.

Paul Butchart : The whole place is packed. There are even people hanging in the windows next to the stage, being careful not to fall through the holes in the floor. We are scared to death! We run quickly through our set. For some reason I think the idea of playing before the audience has given us some weird boost of energy. Finally our set is finished and everyone is screaming for an encore, so we play our two first songs over again.

Curtis Crowe : They were great. Kind of real dumb surf music. They were a ragged three piece outfit. You could really, definitely dance to it. That night, R.E.M. were operating under the name The Twisted Kites.

Bill Berry : We were scared shitless! We were saying, ‘You know, it’s not too late to back out!’

Paul Butchart : The headlining band finally takes the stage for the first time ever, "Oh No!!! Ba ba bada ba ba baba dada" They play 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 has long vanished. However, their set is just beginning…

Bill Berry : Once we got on stage and got through God Save The Queen, that was the second song, it was really fine.

Mike Green : They sounded like a garage band and everything they played sounded like it could be a cover.

Dan Wall : They played Paul Revere and The Raiders (I'm not your) Steppin Stone.  People raved as if the original Yardbirds had come to play.  They we're hanging in windows and from the rafters.  Everyone partied all night and kegs of beer flowed.

Michael Stipe : I guess we had fifteen songs and a bunch of covers. We ended up doing three sets that night. It was a real hootenanny.

Curtis Crowe : They were doing a lot of cover songs and, at the time, the whole art school/party crowd had this thing about cover songs. We were on the ‘leading edge of a musical revolution’ and we thought playing cover songs was taking two steps back and everyone kind of put their nose in the air about that. But they were really good and had a lot of energy about it.

Peter Buck : We played for two hours … Honky Tonk Women … we played (the Modern Lovers’) Roadrunner for fifteen minutes.

Michael Stipe : It was really fun. I don’t remember the last half of it.

Curtis Crowe : I even wrote a review of that show … I knew something was happening. It just felt like something had happened. It needed to be documented. It was the first and last review I tried to write in my life.

Kathleen O’Brien : Mike Hobbs from Tyrone’s, an Athens club, was at the party, and he heard them and immediately wanted to book them. They ended up getting their first gig a month later.