Me: How long have you been involved in the music scene in Athens?
Ort: Since Athens began, or since I began. I was born here and I remember quite a few people who made records in the 60s, 70s, and even some 50s rockabilly stuff. There was a rockabilly label in Athens that turned out some pretty decent records. Both of them are quite collectible and hard to find because they were very geographically-site specific.
Me: What have you seen in terms of when things come and go in Athens, how that has affected the music scene?
Ort: The music scene originally didn’t even begin in bars. It began in parties at people’s houses and this was in the era when beer was currency. You’d buy beer on Saturday because some friend of yours would forget to buy and there wouldn’t be any on Sunday. There were an awful lot of bands that were very informal. It would be whoever would show up. They didn’t always have a name. Or, if they had a name, it would generally change rather frequently. One of the first house-party bands that kept its name was the B-52s. I’ve talked to a lot of people over the years about them, but I still remember the tourists who came all the way here from Finland and wanted to know where the Love Shack was. I told them it was a fictitious location and they looked at each other, and the guy goes, “All of this distance, for nothing!”
Then the first thing that happened, the first bar that played music regularly was Tyrone’s O.C., which was a place that had been the Chameleon. It was ‘O.C.’ for Old Chameleon. They had a performance room, but they showed pictures in it. They never did very much in terms of business, so when the owner was approached with the idea of letting a band come in once a week, he decided it couldn’t hurt anything.
Me: Did it help business?
Ort: Oh, heavens yes! He had to shoe-horn people into the place. He had to keep door people at two doors and guard the porch out back so that people couldn’t come and go off of that because the age was 21. I remember the night that Pylon played there for the first time. They never even thought to charge cover. Oliver [the owner] told them he would pay them a portion of the bar tab if it were more than usual. He said if it went over the usual amount, he would give them a percentage of that. Other than that, they were playing for nothing and beer. They walked out of there with 120 dollars. It was incredible. They had no conception. Vanessa [Briscoe Hay] would remember just exactly how much to the penny. But, uh, to say it worked would be an understatement.
Me: When did cover charges become a thing?
Ort: That first Pylon show didn’t have a cover, but after that they got the idea to charge 50 cents and then a dollar.
Me: What first interested you in the music scene? A love for music?
Ort: I just enjoyed being a part of it. I knew all of the people. It made me think of Fred Schneider [B-52s] going, “I never thought I’d make a living doing something that was play.” I’m still in touch with Fred. I’m still in touch with a lot of people. I’ve kept in touch with them. Now, after Pylon came Kathleen O’Brien’s birthday party and I think that the three bands that began that night were the Side Effects, the Turtle Bay Band and the Twisted Kites, which was R.E.M.
Talk about visionary artists who did not have any immediate thing that you can call to mind as an influence! REM did not have any straight off the top influences. It was a bunch of stuff put together, but it’s fitting. Self-taught maniacs. I’ve been a self-taught maniac since 1918 and I wasn’t even born then.
Me: After playing in bars and doing covers, what was the next direction the music scene took?
Ort: The biggest thing that happened was it reached a point where people began taking it too seriously. They would have press kits and all of that stuff. I mean, none of the early Athens bands had a press kit. I mean, a press kit? They would have asked, “What’s a press kit?” People heard about other band’s gigs by word of mouth. It was sort of like… when I lived in Richmond in 1979, there was an AM Progressive Radio Station that changed my life. It was the most incredible commercial radio station I’ve ever heard. It was WGOE Progressive Radio Richmond. They used to say things like, “Others claim it, we do it, that settles it.” And it’s true, they did. They were known for taking records they were mailed and slapping them on the air right out of the envelope. Well, when the Pylon 45 came out, it would have been in early 1980, Vanessa asked me if there was anyone they should send a copy to and I said, “Yes. Send one to WGOE.” I got them an address and they put a copy in the mail. Before they mailed it, I wrote a note and put it in the single that said: “Dear WGOE, This record is really great. Play it. Love you, Ort.” They threw it straight on the air. They mentioned me and said, “If Ort says it’s good, its good.” They played both sides of it and the next time the reporter sheet came out to radio stations, it said: WGOE Richmond Virginia and it was additions to the heavy play bin. Pylon 45 ‘Cool Dub’ was there. When REM went to New York a few weeks later, they picked up WGOE in South Virginia and got about halfway to Petersburg when they heard Cool by Pylon. Of course, it made their whole trip. On the way back, fittingly-enough, they heard them play Dub. They weren’t there anymore when REM released their single, but they did something a little more… dangerous. They sent a copy to the NYT. Well, two people went to review it and didn’t like it, so they put it back in the file. Not their cup of tea. They gave it then to someone who really knew what he was doing. A guy reviewed it and gave them a glowing review and when they played at CBGB, he came backstage and got to meet them. He was 82. He knew what was good.
So, anyway, when it went to the next phase, people started taking it too seriously and they had their little press kits and their whole ‘gimme-some-attention’ kind of thing…this guy would come and he would draw all over the sidewalk and his band was horrid. Absolutely horrid. I wrote a not too good review of them for Flagpole. He wrote in and said I was old so I didn’t understand their music. Well, we sent one of our interns out. She was really young. She went out to hear them and wrote several column inches of pure vitriol about them. They were horrible. They didn’t have anything to recommend to other people. That’s where it went in Athens. Just a whole bunch of egos.
Me: Is it in that phase now?
Ort: No, not really because people now play music because they love music and don’t give a tinker’s damn whether they make a fortune doing it or not. They pay back the people who put up the money for the instruments, but they know it’s important to have fun or it’s not worth anything. Music shouldn’t be a business, it should be pleasure. It should be fun. I’m not a big fan of bands who do it as a business and I think that’s one reason that REM hung it up. It was becoming too much of a business. And I think that’s why the B-52s got rid of their manager. That was an interesting and almost unparalleled story. They fired him. People said they would never find anyone else to manage them. When they caught wind of that, one of the members of the band said, “Then, we’ll manage ourselves.” And they didn’t have to do that because someone else in management had a band of his retire and he had room for one more in his stable, but he’s been managing them since, I think. It’s nice when you can get along with your manager and you don’t have to bring bludgeons tucked away behind your back.
Me: Who is your favorite person that you’ve met through this scene?
Ort: That person was Jimmy Ellison. He wrote for The Red & Black under the name J. Eddy Ellison. He was, at one time, married to Vanessa of Pylon. Jimmy was, or he described himself as, the second worst bass player in the world. He didn’t care who the first was. He didn’t care. He knew there had to be one worse. He reviewed bands and worked as an insider. He never believed in the ‘it’s us versus them syndrome.’ He was constantly encouraging other people. That was one of the biggest things he was more than guilty of. He was a lovable, eccentric, frustrating individual who ended up dying of a brain tumor. It is really a tragic story in Athens. He was loved and one of the best friends that I have ever had. He played bass for a group called the Side Effects. They had an EP that didn’t do them justice because they had a song that was throw all abandon out the window-ish and it was called, “I Always Used to Watch Her.” Kit Swartz wasn’t much of a singer, but he didn’t have to be. I don’t remember all of the lyrics, but it sings itself. That was their most requested song. You can hear Jimmy thumping away on bass on that.
After that, considerably after that, I had a very wonderful lady friend. She and I used to go see bands together and she became quite a visible part of Athens. She was very shy before she met me and didn’t go out, but I coaxed her out of her shell. She was beautiful and had beautiful hair. She wanted to grow it down to the floor. I used to brush it. She loved it. She’d purr herself to sleep when I brushed her hair. Then, I’d have to wake her back up. I miss her very much. Her name was Melissa Williams. She was the best friend that I ever had. A lot of other people in Athens loved her very much too. She turned me on to the Indigo Girls because she had seen them while she was going to school at Emory. And, as a result, I found a copy of the 1st Indigo Girls EP, the one that has never been reissued. I found it in a thrift store and grabbed it and now I think I have four or five or maybe even six of them. I also have the Kilkenny Cats, Little Tigers, The Plague, even more. A lot of us have them. They’re around. I’ve got the B-52s first single. My copy belonged to Debbie Hydell when she decided she didn’t want it anymore. Debbie Hydell always painted her toenails. She painted one primary colors and the other secondary colors. And she never wore sandals. I only knew it because she had a rock in her shoe one day.
Danny Beard is one of the people who gave us the music scene in this town because he started DB Records in Atlanta out of Wax N Facts record store in Atlanta and recorded a number of Athens groups. He record the B-52s, Pylon, the Side Effects and several other Athens acts. For the longest time, all of it was still available, but he has had a cash flow problem and hasn’t repressed. He said he’s waiting to win the lottery so he can put everything back in print. He and his partners are still working together after 38 years.
Me: Has a lot changed since then?
Ort: Not a lot in Athens has, except that Tyrone’s burned down and you had to have another venue. And, at that time, the drummer of Pylon had a loft apartment on the third floor of the building that houses The Grille. It has a bathroom and all of the feelings of a home and with a restaurant downstairs, it had hot water. So, he had Pylon play their once. Because it was illuminated by one 40 Watt light bulb, he called it the 40 Watt Club. It wasn’t a club. But Paul Scales, who owned the sandwich shop across the street, wasn’t doing anything with his upstairs lounge. Oddly enough, it was the crow’s nest. He allowed bands to go over there. He had to buy timbers and wedge them into the floor of the building to keep the floor from collapsing. There was only one entrance and one exit, and the owner of the building wouldn’t install other entrances or exits, so it’s existence was really legally iffy. The fire marshal hit the ceiling when he saw it. They had to make changes. The landlord wouldn’t make changes, so they found a vacant place at 256 West Clayton Street. They moved down their and opened the 40 Watt Club as a club. It was honestly a club for the first time. Ultimately, though, the club outgrew the space. There was a bar in an old, what had been when I was a kid, grocery store at 382 East Broad Street. It had been Smoke’s, run by a guy named Frazier. They took that space area. A guy named Doug Houst then came into the fray. He ran it for a while and I don’t remember just what happened, but Barry Buck got in on it and moved the place to the old thrift store on West Washington where it remains. It did move back to 256 West Clayton that is now the Caledonia Lounge for a while before moving back.
Me: On top of some of the places where bars and clubs used to be, there are now Starbucks and stuff like that. How has that affected the scene?
Ort: Hasn’t really affected it at all. I’ve about quit going out. I still have decent hearing and I intend to keep it that way.
Me: How would you say that beer has changed in that time? (He has told me in the past that he likes beer as much as he likes music)
Ort: Let’s go back to the night of REM, to Kathleen’s birthday party. When REM played, they weren’t so much good as they were magic. They were magic. I had never heard anything like that. Kurt Wood was the designated driver that night. He does record sales twice a year and is one of the major reasons there is a music scene in this town. He’s a real good guy. We’ve been friends for over 38 years. I digress. He was our DD in the Volvo. He was the least drunk of all us and I said to him, “Hey, Kurt, if they can maintain the momentum and keep writing material this good, REM is gonna be as big as The Beatles when they learn to play their instruments.” That only happened to me one other time. I lived in Nashville for a while and I got tired of hanging around there, so I got in the car and went to Bowling Green, Kentucky. For no reason other than to go somewhere. I found the record store in the mall and made friends with a woman who worked there. She told him about a band that would be playing at Michael’s Pub. So, I went. I paid cover, walked in. One of the members wasn’t there yet. Or later. Or later. They had everything set up and he wasn’t there yet. Everything was ready except for him. Finally, he comes leaping through the door and apologizing for getting lost. The bass player looks at him and says, “You better be glad you got here quick.” Laying it on thick, pointing to me he says, “This guy has come all the way here from Athens, Georgia just to hear us.” He knew it wasn’t the truth, but it was the fire they needed. They put one one helluva show that night. It wasn’t so much good, again, as it was magic. I came back down here and told the people at REM about them and they were familiar with them through the grapevine. The guy who ran IRS records was very interested in them. But they signed with somebody else. They release 3 records and were the darlings of Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green and Nashville. They’re still together. They’re still playing. All the original staff, same members, same roadie. It’s still magic. They’re still writing new songs.
Me: What do you think makes you such a target for music? How do you meet all of these people?
Ort: Don’t believe the hype!