“I thought I’d landed in a hippy cowtown,” says Michael Stipe, of his first months as an art student in Athens, Georgia. “I was an urban punk rocker, and Athens seemed beige and granola; it took me a while to find my ‘people’.” But, in 1979, at the only coffee joint still open after Stipe’s nightshift at the local steakhouse, he saw “this unbelievable, almost-cartoonish trio who looked like they’d stepped out of the Weimar Republic”, he says.
“I waved at them. They waved back.” That trio – Jeremy Ayers, Davey Stevenson and Dominique Amet – later became Limbo District, the most radical group of an Athens underground scene that gave the world the B-52s, Pylon and, of course, REM.
But while those bands went on to enjoy global recognition, Limbo District are forgotten. They existed for only two years, imploding messily before releasing any music. For decades, the only evidence they ever existed was several minutes’ footage in 1987 documentary Athens, GA: Inside/Out.
“They were one of the greatest bands on Earth,” says Stipe. Now a new album of rediscovered live recordings illuminates a group whose fusion of art, furious rhythms and punk sensibility proved an indelible inspiration to Athens’ future stars. Limbo District were led by Athens-native Ayers, the son of a professor of religion and philosophy at the University of Georgia.
“Jeremy Ayers inspired almost every musician in Athens,” adds Keith Strickland of the B-52s. “His early-70s .