Free Your Mind And Your Ath Will Follow

We just got back from our week-long Independence Day vacation in Pittsburgh, but before I start posting pix from the 'burgh, I would be remiss if I didn't share a few images from Athens' premier music festival, ATHFEST, even though it happened three weekends ago. Each Athfest kicks off with the FLAGPOLE ATHENS MUSIC AWARDS, which is hosted by our local entertainment and culture paper, FLAGPOLE MAGAZINE. Our little town is lucky enough to have such a large and diverse music scene that is able to support something like the awards, which is best described as a cross between The Grammys and the movie, "Waiting For Guffman"...



Festivities kicked off with the kid-friendly LIKE TOTALLY! who tossed GLOW-IN-THE-DARK BRACELETS into the audience:









DJ MAHOGANY accepts his well-deserved award for "Best DJ":



SHOWTIME accepting his award for "Best Hip Hop Act":



B52's cover band THE B53's giving REPTAR the award for "Best Pop Band":



The amazing KISHI BASHI, once again, stealing the show:



"Best Upstart Band" award winners, GRASS GIRAFFES, closing out the show:



The following evening, we caught Deerhunter's Bradford Cox performing solo as ATLAS SOUND. I was mostly distracted by the PUNK/HIPPIE HYBRID standing in the crowd in front of us:





We spent most of our time wandering back and forth between the outdoor stages (which were free) and checking out the all the other sights and sounds of the festival...







YIP DECEIVER got the dance party started at the smaller stage set up outside Wilson's Soul Food:

















We got to the REPTAR show a little late, after getting stuck at the Yip Deceiver set...the crowd was huge and clamoring to see Athens' next "IT" band. We were tired and hot and acquiesced to leaving the Reptar show midway through their set. On the way out, we stopped to watch feminists do battle with evangelists on a busy street corner...





On the following day, Saturday, we got up early to take the Athens Music History Tour (which I'll post about later), and then made it back to the festival later that evening to see ELF POWER perform:















It started to rain during the fest, so we ducked into the LOW YO-YO record shop, where we were able to do a bit of record shopping while waiting for the clouds to dry up...