Friday, January 6, 2012

I Was A College Radio DJ In The 80's: Art In The Dark - Number


Art in the Dark: Number

[out of print]

Thanks to a door blown wide open by R.E.M., if you lived in Athens GA in the mid-80s, could sing with sincerity and knew enough guys to form a jangly rock band, you were already halfway to getting played on college radio. Art in the Dark was better than most. They often opened for R.E.M in their hometown. R.E.M. producer and Let's Active founder Mitch Easter produced their 1983 EP at his Drive-In Studio. They even covered Big Star's "Way Out West" on their first and only full length album The Icons. At the time, the only way to hear Big Star was to find a used vinyl copy in the back of a record store.

 The Icons had a number of good songs but at WTUL we played the lead off cut, "Number", the most. If expectations were for even greater things in the future, they weren't met. The boys split up. Some went to grad school. Some opened businesses. Most have kids. Humid nights in stuffy Southern clubs are now just a memory.

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