An Athens, Georgia View of the West: R.E.M. and Widespread Panic

R.E.M. came together in 1980 in Athens, Georgia, when four friends decided to play their own brand of rock and roll at a party in an abandoned church. From the start, R.E.M. had an original sound. Before long the band was on the road playing the circuit of Southern college towns.

From the 1983 release of a five song record titled Chronic Town, which landed them on the David Letterman show, R.E.M. grew into one of America’s most succesful rock acts. They have been described by many as the greatest “garage band” success story in American music history. Many musicians, including the late Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, credit R.E.M. with leading the alternative charge that influenced so many American bands in the late 80s and early 1990s. By 1987, when “The One I Love” hit number one on the pop charts, the four boys from Georgia found that they were rock and roll stars. By 1989, they were regularly playing venues seating 15,000 people. R.E.M had come a long way from the abandoned church where their careers started seven years earlier. In 1997, after the release of New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the band lost original drummer Bill Berry, when Berry decided to retire after life-threatening brain surgery. Between 1987 and 1997 R.E.M. released ten records. In January, 2001, the three remaining members of R.E.M. announced that they had finished their latest record, titled Reveal.

In 1996 R.E.M. released New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which included a song titled “How The West Was Won And Where It Got Us.” The song is about the destructiveness of nuclear power. The reference to uranium mines and the imagery of nuclear explosions witnessed “from a hazy distance” conjure up visions of the vastly polluted nuclear test sites in the deserts of New Mexico and Nevada. The record’s cover and liner photographs reenforce the melancholic tone of the song. Black and white photographs underline the notion that R.E.M.’s American West of sagebrush, jagged mountain ranges, and a cloud-streaked big sky above a remote desert is a landsacpe full of sadness.



On the cover Rolling Stone, 1987

 

Like R.E.M., Widespread Panic (WSP) came together in Athens, when University of Georgia students John Bell, Dave Schools, and Michael Houser decided to form a band in 1985. Three years later, with the addition of drummer Todd Nance and percussionist Domingo Ortiz, the band released their first record, titled Space Wrangler. After their 1992 self-titled record, Widespread Panic, keyboardist John Herman joined the band. Since then, the band members have become road warriors, touring almost non-stop throughout the United States and Europe. In 1992 WSP joined together with Blues Traveler and Phish on the H.O.R.D.E. tour. In 1998, the band played before more than 100,000 fans in the streets of Athens, and in 1999 they jammed for 63,000 music lovers at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Known as a band with great improvisational skills and an amazing ability to pull off unique live performances show after show, WSP has developed an immensely loyal following. Fans enjoy hearing live songs, both originals and covers of other musicians’ material, that have yet to surface on any of the band’s eight albums. The band has played Goin’ Out West, written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan, regularly since 1996, when they played it live for the first time at Boulder’s Fox Theatre. In the song, the narrator sings that he is going out West, to the land where movies are made, and he sings his own praises, saying, “Well I know karate, Voodoo too/I'm gonna make myself forget about you/I don't need to make up I got real scars/I got hair on my chest/I look good without a shirt…I'm gonna wait for the sun to shine down on me/I cut a hole in my roof the shape of a heart/And I'm goin' out west where they'll appreciate me/Goin' out west/Goin' out west.”


Widespread Panic (Founded 1985)


1. Listen to “How The West Was Won and Where It Got Us.” In small groups, research the history of nuclear testing in the West. What was the importance of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and the Nevada Test Site? Look in your newspaper for stories about nuclear power. What are the newsworthy issues today regarding nuclear energy?

2. How does Widespread Panic’s western sojourner, a man searching for work in Hollywood, compare to your notions of the typical man or woman “Goin’ Out West”?

3. Images of the West are often manufactured in the eastern United States. In broad terms, how do these two Georgia bands see the West? How do you think a band from the West might view the South? What would you sing about if you were asked to write a song about someone heading to Georgia?

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