New Town

Abstract

After the signing of many bands from Athens, the city was hardly a secret. Alternative music fans wanted to not only go to Athens but to UGA for college. With a constant churn of new people moving to town and new bands forming, the scene in the late eighties continued to expand and fragment. Many bohemians also got involved in local politics for the first time. In the second half of the 1980s, the place-based structure of alternative culture played a key role in propelling this new political engagement. In Athens, growing activism around the effort to save the old parts of town turned many scene participants into registered voters concerned about historic preservation, environmentalism, and homelessness. The growing level of political energy coincided with unprecedented levels of success for the Athens scene’s bands.