"I thought I'd landed in a hippie cowtown," Michael Stipe says of his first months as an art student in Athens, Georgia. "I was an urban punk rocker, and Athens was beige and granola; it took me a while to find my 'people.'" But in 1979, in the only coffee shop left open after Stipe worked the night shift at the local steakhouse, he saw "this incredible, 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 - would later become Limbo District, the most radical group from an underground Athens scene that gave the world the B-52s, Pylon and, of course, REM. But while those bands achieved worldwide recognition, Limbo District was forgotten. They lasted only two years, imploding messily before releasing any music. For decades, the only evidence they ever existed was a few minutes of footage in the 1987 documentary Athens, GA: Inside/Out.
"They were one of the best bands on the planet," says Stipe. Now, a new album of rediscovered live footage spotlights a group whose fusion of artistry, furious rhythms and punk sensibility proved an indelible inspiration for Athens' future stars.
Limbo District was led by Ayers, an Athens native, 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-52's. "His parties in the early '70s were like art events - walls covered in black plastic; floors covered in popcorn; Beefheart and Velvets records playing. He opened doors to creative possibilities. In addition, Jeremy and his friend Chris [Coker] were gay - Ricky too [Wilson, future B-52s guitarist] and I, but we weren't there yet. It was inspiring to see Jeremy walking around Athens in tight velvet pants and a little fur jacket."
I'm just glad that there's a renewed interest in Limbo District, that there's still some of their influence
Michael Stipe
Ayers loved recording himself reciting poetry and playing percussion while Chris improvised on the recorder. Strickland says, "It was a cacophony and it was the introduction to writing and recording for Ricky and I. We continued that method of songwriting."
In 1972, Ayers escaped to New York, where he joined Andy Warhol's Factory studio, wrote for Interview magazine as Sylva Thinn and befriended such superstars as actors Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis. "Andy loved Jeremy," Stipe says, "and Andy was hard to impress." But within two years, Ayers was back.
"There was a cynicism to that scene, a hard edge," Strickland says. "Jeremy wanted a different life."
Athens was certainly different: there were no clubs, no "real" music scene. Bands in Athens played at house parties to entertain their friends; making a career was not an option - although REM would of course become world stars. Even here, Ayers' influence was crucial.
"Jeremy was a great friend and mentor," Stipe says. "The person I became, the public persona of Michael Stipe, I owe it to him. He taught me how to dance, how to laugh at myself, how to dress. At the time, I thought he was the first love of my life - but it turned out I was just in love with him," Stipe laughs.
Ayers formed Limbo District in 1981, playing percussion. His friend Stevenson-"a big, muscular, beautiful redhead who liked to talk about Schopenhauer," says guitarist Kelly Crow, who later joined the band-played bass. Amet, who played organ, came from an upper-class French family and knew nothing about rock and roll.
"At their first rehearsals, Jeremy asked her to sing Johnny B Goode, and she sang like it was opera," says Crow. "Jeremy loved it: he was hoping for someone who wasn't from a [typical] Western music background."
Amet was "Amy Winehouse levels of exotic," Stipe adds. "She lit matches and used the ashes as eyeliner, applied with a nine-penny nail."
I had no friends in Athens. Those guys became my saviors
Margarita Bilbao
Singer Craig Woodall was "a small, quiet kid from an environment where you couldn't be openly gay without expecting something to happen to you," Crow recalls.
"Craig had a really hard life," adds guitarist Margarita Bilbão, an emigrant from the Basque Country in Spain whom they discovered after hearing her rant about Athens on student radio. She had never played guitar before, but the band liked her attitude, and that was more important. "I had no friends in Athens," Bilbão recalls. "Those guys became my saviors."
Even among the post-punk mavericks of early '80s Athens, Limbo District's wild, perverse cabaret was "radical," says Stipe. "They were deliberately abrasive, like Einstürzende Neubauten or Psychic TV, but they had melody, humor. They rewrote where punk could go, drawing on vaudeville and Edith Sitwell. They unsettled people, in a playful way." Strickland remembers the band as "a mesmerizing tapestry of pure imagination, with a sexy, surreal, Fellini-esque quality."
Athens loved Limbo District, but on tour it became apparent that they were a matter of taste. "We cleaned out the room," says Crow. They recorded material with future REM producer Mitch Easter, but no one wanted to release it. Bilbão became concerned about her limited skills and fled heartbroken to New Orleans. She was replaced by Tim Lacy, who was replaced by Crow in 1983. Around this time, Jim Herbert, a university professor, made Carnival, in collaboration with photographer Marlys Lens Cox. The remarkably surreal, dreamlike short film depicts Limbo District as "an existential traveling circus from the 1920s" that stops by a lake and wrestles naked. Stipe tried to get MTV to air Carnival. "But there's butts and dicks and boobs in that thing," says Crow. "They were never going to play that."
The band was already living on borrowed time. Woodall became addicted to heroin and spent the next few years homeless, struggling with alcoholism and mental health issues. Stevenson's brother Gordon, of the New York "no wave" band Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, was one of the first AIDS victims; his death in 1982 broke Davey's heart. He and Ayers split in 1983, ending the band, and Stevenson moved to France to study philosophy at the Sorbonne. Amet, who had been arrested for shoplifting and was facing deportation, went with him.
"Dominique was in love with Davey from day one," says Bilbao.
"Davey was everything to her," Crow nods. "They lived together in an apartment where you could see the Eiffel Tower from the balcony." Stevenson died of AIDS in the early 1990s. Amet later married, had a son, and died about 20 years ago. "None of us know more than that," Crow sighs. "She always told me she wanted a child. She didn't make it to 40."
Ayers, meanwhile, had moved on to painting and photography. "His paintings were beautiful-figurative and symbolic," says Strickland. "He did a beautiful painting of Ricky, from memory, after Ricky died. Jeremy was always so open. You felt seen when you talked to him; you were listened to and heard."
Before fleeing Athens, Bilbao visited Ayers: "When I felt angry and everything seemed wrong, I would have a cup of tea in his garden and talk and we were happy. It was like an oasis of peace, his big bamboo garden." It was here that Ayers died of a seizure, on October 24, 2016. He was 68.
"It was so tragic, but also poetic," Herbert says. "He died in that garden that he loved so much."
In the years following Limbo District's split, the B-52s and REM enjoyed multi-platinum success and critical acclaim. But the avant-garde experimentalists who had proved such a vital source of inspiration for both groups were "lost in time as an entity," says Stipe. It was Henry Owings, the unofficial historian of the Athens music scene, who rediscovered their legacy, releasing three EPs of previously unheard studio material and a live album, Live Limbo , on his Chunklet Industries label (with more to come); he now organizes Carnival screenings around the world.
For years, Crow was Limbo District's archivist. "I spent decades carting all the studio recordings, live tapes, flyers, posters from house to house," he says. "We always wanted to put our music out, but we could never afford it. I was about to give up. Then Henry got in touch. Henry cared. Our music is now streaming. I can drive around in my car and listen to Limbo District on the stereo."
Stipe is "just happy that there's interest in Limbo District again, that there's still a bit of their influence." For Bilbão, it's the memories of the people who made Limbo District that matter most. "The music was just incidental-the most important thing was the people," she says. "I think about Dominique, Davey, and Jeremy all the time. They were amazing. They've always been in my heart."
Live Limbo is available now from Chunklet Industries. Carnival opens in the UK later this month.
