Featured Essay: Pilgrimage Has Gained Momentum

by Demetri Inembolidis

Athens, Georgia is a place I should have zero interest in ever visiting. As someone who graduated from Ohio State who hated every single thing about football Saturdays I get a little uneasy any time I am around college football hotbeds during the season. I can’t explain it and don’t care to. It’s not for me and I didn’t realize that until there was a “frog boiling in water” situation as I returned back to campus after visiting my parents the Sunday after the riot when the Buckeyes beat the University of Michigan in 2002. I was pretty ambivalent about college football until I came back to my new home and it looked like a war zone. 

But Athens, Georgia is a place I care about. Deeply. It is a place where multiple generations of weird kids made music perhaps as a way to escape that culture. Music that resonates with large audiences to this day. 

More importantly, it is the city that gave birth to America’s Best Rock and Roll band: R.E.M.

When Les Savy Fav announced a weekend of shows at The Earl in Atlanta on the second weekend of November, I knew I had to be in attendance. Dear readers, my apologies for this derailment. But if you ever have a chance to see Les Savy Fav perform, do it. 

I also knew that a trip to Atlanta would require a detour to Athens. I was there in 2015 with my shitty 2015 camera phone, less than ideal picture taking weather and my wife who was humoring my obsession with this little city which was a 3 hour detour from our destination. I knew I had to go back and do it right. 

First on my agenda was the shop Low Yo Yo Stuff. I really enjoyed that shop when I was in Athens last time because they had an entire bin dedicated to R.E.M. While there, I bought an original pressing of Reveal for $75 which felt like a lot but ended up being a steal by today’s prices. 

Low Yo Yo Stuff felt like a good starting point to talk to a local about R.E.M. sites. I knew about Weaver D’s, the Murmur train trestle, Wuxtry Records and the 40 Watt Club. What I was looking for was something deeper and I found it at Low Yo Yo Stuff. In addition to the complete 2006 fan club package, 2001 fan club CD, and Bad Day single I was able to talk R.E.M. with the shop’s owner and customer. I was told stories about how the song Bad Day was very old and there was only one known recording of it which happened to be held by Low Yo Yo Stuff when the band decided to finally record a decades old song for a single late in their career.

I went with these CDs because they had songs that were new to me as B-sides. I was hoping to buy some vinyl this time around but the only item they had that I did not have was an original pressing of Around the Sun for well over $200. That is a lot for an album I do not love that I own a reissue of. 

While discussing R.E.M. a customer shopping at the same time as my friend and I told us how to access the site that graces the cover of the album Murmur. This was exciting to me because Murmur is my favorite album by my favorite band. It can only be accessed if you know where you are going and are willing to trespass on private property and scale a fence. 

While there, we learned about the reputation of Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe locally. My suspicions were correct: They are solid dudes that everyone pretty much likes. We were shown a picture of Michael Stipe that was taken on a cell phone. It was humorous because it was a picture of Michael Stipe posing for the camera which when you break it down had to go something like this:

Stranger: Hi, Michael! 

Stipe: Hi

Stranger: Mind if we get a picture together?

Stipe: No thank you, but you can take a picture right now

From there, we went to Wuxtry Records. Legend has it that this is where Peter Buck met Michael Stipe while they were students at UGA. Michael Stipe had a bad habit of coming into the shop and buying the records that Peter Buck had tried to set aside so he could buy once he was paid. The rest is history.

Unfortunately for this essay my R.E.M. collection is large. I did not need anything else LP wise from Wuxtry but I did manage to purchase the new Karate LP which I had been considering mail ordering. They had a sealed copy of Live at the Olympia on the wall but were asking $275 for it. A little too rich for my blood. 

We spent the rest of the day visiting R.E.M. sites. I was very happy to visit the Murmur trestle even though it is not the original. A meal was had at Weaver D’s. Locally it is known for its delicious soul food. Internationally it is best known for the phrase “Automatic for the people!”. Next was a stop at the steeple at 394 Oconee Street. The steeple is all that remains of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, the site of where R.E.M. played their very first concert on April 5th, 1980. The band was so new that they did not yet have a name or many original songs. Next door is a nonprofit called Nuçi’s Space which is built for local musicians to have a practice space, somewhere to work and have a drink. While there, I remembered that they sell bricks from the steeple that were removed during the stabilization project. I can say that I am a proud owner of a brick from the site of my favorite band’s first concert. Because we were in from out of town and clearly big fans they took us into the steeple. It wasn’t much to see but simply being in that building was unspeakably cool. On a personal level, I would put it up there in the “if these walls could talk” scale with when I visited Delphi this past summer.

The best part of the visit was the site of the cover of Murmur. Being able to take my picture in front of it is my second favorite picture of myself. It required parking in front of some very well maintained homes and climbing a well-worn fence. Additionally, on the way in we saw a water tower. I have to assume it is the infamous water tower referenced in the song Time After Time (Annelise) where Mike Mills was arrested for getting stoned and climbing the tower.

The visit to Athens was well worth the hour and a half detour. There’s a solid record shop scene, good food, nice people and plenty of sites for even casual R.E.M. fans. I can’t wait to go back and do an even more in-depth dive on the sites. Let’s just make sure it isn’t on a football Saturday. 

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