Few cities in the world can claim a musical identity that has become as well-known, diverse and entrenched as Athens'. Those that do are the metropolitan titans of the world: New York, Detroit, San Francisco, Seattle. Yet somehow little ol' Athens, GA has become inseparable from its music - a David amongst the Goliaths of similarly well-known scenes.

Esquire once called it "the mother of modern music," while the Washington Post noted in 1984 that record company executives at the time listened to "virtually any tape dispatched from Athens."

From the outset, the Athens music scene has been closely tied to and made up largely of the University of Georgia's student body. Throughout the 1950's, UGA students danced to the likes of Jimmy Dorsey and his band or Charlie Spivah and his orchestra, often at locations such as the American Legion Hall, Stegeman Hall or the YMCA.

In 1958, Terry "Mad Dog" Melton formed an unnamed quartet that would play often at The Canteen, a site in Memorial Park that featured music and dancing usually on Saturday nights. The Canteen remained popular into the 1960's and was a common performance location for the Jesters, who formed around 1964 and continue to perform occasionally.

The Jesters blend of beach music and Motown earned them honors as the backup band for the likes of The Platters, The Drifters and Marvin Gaye outside of town. But it also demonstrated the prevailing emphasis of local bands at the time: cover songs played at places such as the VFW, Charlie Williams Pinecrest Lodge or even Doster's Skating Rink.

"Writing your own tunes was sort of unheard of," recalls Harold Williams of the Jesters.

But styles began to change somewhat as the later-dubbed Normaltown River of Music began to flow in the late '60s and early '70s and artists began writing their own music. Williams, Melton, Davis Causey and Randall Bramblett began to perform with numerous other artists to form groups such as Goose Creek Symphony, the Normaltown Flyers and Dixie Grease. Some of these musicians eventually went on to perform with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Gregg Allman.

The Last Resort, which began as a music club and bar in 1966 showcasing primarily folk and quieter music, expanded in later years to showcase bands such as the B-52's and Guadalcanal Diary. Around the same time, other bars in Athens were beginning to feature music along with their liquid refreshment, although the variety was still limited.

"That was really exciting to go to a bar and hear a band," says Williams. "That was new to Athens."

Throughout the 1970's, other popular venues included at one time or another: Normaltown's Between the Hedges and Allen's; the B&L Warehouse on Oconee Street; the area called The Station (currently the Athens Area Council on Aging); the Chameleon and later Tyrone's O.C. on Foundry Street; and the first Georgia Theatre that opened as a club in 1978.

One happening place in 1973 was the Holiday Inn lounge, where Dirk Howell and Tony Brown became a popular duo known as Dirk and Tony. Athens native Brown later went on to musical notoriety with Rack of Spam and as country artist T. Graham Brown after moving to Nashville in 1982.

The 1970's proved to be a fertile time for the Athens music scene on other fronts. The Athens Symphony debuted in 1978, Wuxtry Records opened its doors in 1975 and the University of Georgia's student-run radio station WUOG went on the air in 1972.

WUOG would prove over the years to be a major contributor to the scene, providing not only a host of music lovers as potential band members and listeners, but at least two band names - the Woggles and the Wuoggerz - as well as an eventual outlet for local bands to gain exposure.

A seminal event in the Athens music scene occurred on Valentine's Day in 1977 when the B-52's made their debut at a house party across from the Taco Stand on Milledge Avenue. The B-52's, self-described as a "tacky little dance band," took their wigs and zany antics and quickly went from being the delight of Athens and Atlanta to a larger stage and signed to Warner Bros. Records. By the winter of 1978, opined Rolling Stone in 1980, the B-52's had become the "hottest club band in New York."

"The B's came along and punched a great big hole and made it a whole lot easier, and even more lucrative, for bands like us to take a shot at it," said Pylon's Curtis Crowe to the Red and Black in 1981.

As a result, a handful of bands such as The Tone Tones, The Method Actors, Pylon, The Side Effects, Love Tractor, The Squalls, Little Tigers, Men in Trees, Limbo District and R.E.M. sprouted in the late '70s and early '80s, eventually performing at venues such as the I&I, the Mad Hatter, the 40 Watt Club and Tyrone's O.C.

R.E.M. and The Side Effects both debuted at a friend's birthday party at an old church on Oconee Street on April 5, 1980, an event dubbed one of the 100 Greatest Moments in Rock History by Entertainment Weekly. It was fitting that the legendary event was a party, underscoring the role that the party scene has played in debuting bands, launching clubs and gathering like-minded music fans through the history of the Athens music scene.

But while the core group of friends was having a great time among themselves, the nascent scene was beginning to draw national attention. "Something is happening in Athens," remarked New York Rocker in 1980.

R.E.M.'s rise only fanned the flame when The Village Voice named "Radio Free Europe" Single of the Year in December 1981 and their IRS Records full-length Murmur was dubbed the Album of the Year by Rolling Stone over Michael Jackson's Thriller and the Police's Synchronicity in 1983.

In January 1983, People magazine ran a "family portrait" of 12 Athens bands in front of the Elijah Clarke monument on Broad Street, while the likes of Newsweek and The Washington Post came to town and began to write stories about the Athens music scene.

Tyrone's O.C. burned down in January 1982, and the 40 Watt Club took on even more focus as the core of the scene. Given its name for a Halloween party in 1979 due to the lone bulb that lit up the original space above what is now The Grill, the 40 Watt moved to different locations around town until eventually coming to rest at its current location on Washington Street in 1990.

The mid-'80s saw other parts of the scene pop up. The North Georgia Folk Festival made its debut in town in 1984 and a trio of musicians calling themselves Widespread Panic began performing in 1985, becoming known for their weekly jam sessions at the recently opened Uptown Lounge on Washington Street.

Two major events occurred in 1987 with lasting effects on the music scene. The film documentary Athens, GA - Inside/Out, which attempted to showcase the scene at the time, quickly became a cult classic despite including some folks with dubious Athens ties. Also that year, 40 Watt co-owner Jared Bailey started Flagpole Magazine as the "Colorbearer of Athens Alternative Music." Two years later, Bailey wrote an editorial that was used in 1997 as the catalyst for the first annual AthFest, an event that continues to showcase scores of Athens bands each summer.

By 1987, the Uptown Lounge had become the largest club in town, but eventually closed as a club in 1990. Smaller clubs such as the 40 Watt Club, the Rockfish Palace and The Downstairs took on their own niche of bands and crowds throughout the late '80s. The Georgia Theatre, which had been converted to a movie theater some years earlier, was re-opened as a club in November 1989 and became one of Athens' most well attended clubs.

The former Uptown Lounge space eventually became the Atomic Music Hall that featured the likes of Harvey Milk, Dayroom, Jucifer and Kevn Kinney until closing in 1997, while a former 40 Watt space became the Caledonia Lounge in 1999.

Artists such as Buzz Hungry, Jack Logan, Five-Eight, Hayride, Roosevelt and Jack O'Nuts left their mark throughout the early 1990s, before a new tide of bands that made up much of what was called the Elephant 6 collective garnered attention. These new bands such as the Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Of Montreal and Neutral Milk Hotel drew new attention to Athens in the mid-1990s as a close-knit group who played on each others' records and gained a loyal following while puzzling the media who attempted to chronicle their incestuousness.

A similar buzz grew up around Athens' Kindercore Records, a pop label that formed in 1996 and has since released over 50 records, including those from locals such as Japancakes, Masters of the Hemisphere and the Sunshine Fix.

In 1998, Widespread Panic hosted a record release party for their album Light Fuse, Get Away with a free concert on Washington Street outside the 40 Watt Club. After several weeks of wrangling with details, security and a local wedding, the concert went on and drew an estimated 70-100,000 people to the show.

That same year, Pylon's Michael Lachowski opened Candy, a DJ store on Broad Street. It would soon become the headquarters for several years for the burgeoning Athens dance music scene that included the likes of DJ 43, Danger Mouse and the Phungus crew before closing in 2001 and later reopening on Clayton Street.

A series of recent projects have focused on helping and acknowledging the Athens music scene of today and yesteryear. In 1999, Flagpole established the annual Athens Music Awards as a way for voters to recognize others in town. Nuci's Space, a one-of-a-kind space formed by Linda Phillips in response to her son's suicide in 1996, opened its doors in September 2000 to provide counseling, low-cost practice space and other resources for area musicians.

An Athens Music History Project exhibit showcased memorabilia from the scene in June of 2001 while working to find a permanent home, while the Athens Music Preservation Society formed in part to collect and clean past recordings. AthensMusic.net and RockAthens.com, online information and record sources, both launched in recent years. Additionally, the Georgia Music Hall of Fame featured an Athens music exhibit during the summer of 2002.

Today, over 400 bands are listed in the most recent Flagpole Music Directory and the scene boasts more clubs than ever before. Some think that with so many outlets, artists and distractions that the current scene is slightly diluted. Others think the strength of today's scene is its diversity with rock and pop being fleshed out by the burgeoning electronic and hip-hop scenes. A recent example is Athens newcomer Bubba Sparxxx, whose hip-hop debut peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts.

But whatever the thoughts about the current state of the Athens music scene, perhaps Lachowski put it best in an Open City article in 1986 that still holds true today: "There can be no doubt that there is an Athens Music Scene. By this time, though, it doesn't really matter what's been said or what's been done or what people think. It's just good to be doing it and it keeps going on…"

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