Cool Town meets Any Night of the Week: IASPM music books talk
I took part in a really interesting online talk, as part of the Popular Music Books in Process Series - organized by IASPM-US (International Association for the Study of Popular Music, US chapter). This was a discussion about "music scenes" alongside Grace Elizabeth Hale, author of the 2020 book Cool Town, a history of the Athens, Georgia music scene that in the ‘70s and ‘80s spawned R.E.M., The B-52's, Pylon, and more, with Toronto's own Carl Wilson moderating.
Grace and I had a really illuminating chat, covering the parallels between groups like The B-52’s and Martha & the Muffins, the comparisons between Deep South and Canadian regionalism in music, DIY music scenes’ roots in LGBT+ communities, and much more. Cool Town is also a fascinating read, and resulted in me listening to way more early R.E.M. than usual this summer. I was also delighted to discover Lynda Stipe’s band Oh-OK (she is the sister of Michael, in case you’re wondering) and get even deeper into arty post-punks Pylon. It’s still incredible to think that such a small town - less than 50,000 population in the 1980s - had such a huge impact on the development of alternative music culture in the US and worldwide. I think the college-rock revival is long overdue as well.
