by “I thought I was in a hippy cowboy town,” says Michael Stipe, an art student in Athens, Georgia. “I was an urban punk rocker, and Athens looked beige and granola; it took me a while to find my ‘people’.” But, in 1979, at the only coffee joint still open after Stipe’s night shift at the local steakhouse, he saw “this incredible, cartoonish trio who looked like they’d stepped out of the Weimar Republic”, he says. he. “I hit them. They stood back.”
Those three – Jeremy Ayers, Davey Stevenson and Dominique Amet – later became Limbo District, the most radical group of the underground scene in Athens that gave the world the B-52s, Pylon and, of course, REM. But while those bands enjoyed worldwide recognition, Limbo District is forgotten. They were only around for two years, floundering unhappily before releasing any music. For years, the only evidence that ever existed was several minutes of footage in the 1987 documentary Athens, GA: Inside/Out.
“They were one of the biggest bands in the world,” says Stipe. Now a new album shows rediscovered live recordings of a group whose mix of artistry, furious rhythms and punk sensibility was an indelible inspiration for the future Athens star.
Limbo District was led by Ayers, a native of Athens, the son of a professor of religion and philosophy at the University of Georgia. “Jeremy Ayers inspired almost every musician in Athens,” says Keith Strickland of the B-52s. “His early 70s parties were like art events – walls covered in black plastic; floors thick with popcorn; Record Beefheart and the Velvets playing. It opened doors to creative possibilities. In addition, Jeremy and his boyfriend Chris [Coker] they were gay – so was Ricky [Wilson, future B-52s guitarist] and I, but we weren’t out yet. It was inspiring to see Jeremy walking around Athens in tight velvet pants and a little fur coat.”
I am happy that there is a renewed interest in the Limbo District, that a miniature of their influence is still there
Michael Stipe
Ayers loved to record himself reciting poetry and playing percussion while Chris improvised on the recorder. Says Strickland: “It was a cacophony, and it was the introduction to writing and recording for Ricky and me. We continued with that method of singing.”
In 1972 Ayers escaped to New York, entering Andy Warhol’s Factory studio, writing for Interview magazine as Sylva Thinn and befriending superstars such as actresses Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis. “Andy loved Jeremy,” says Stipe, “and it was hard to impress Andy.” But within two years, Ayers returned.
“There was cynicism in that scene, a hard edge,” says Strickland. “Jeremy wanted a different life.”
Athens was definitely different: there were no clubs, no “real” music scene. Bands in Athens played house parties to entertain their friends; careerism was not a prospect – although REM would of course go on to global stardom. Even here, Ayers’ influence was crucial.
“Jeremy was a great friend and mentor,” says Stipe. “The person I came from, the public persona of Michael Stipe, I owe him. He taught me how to dance, how to laugh at myself, how to dress. I thought at the time he was the first love of my life – even though it seemed like I was infatuated with him,” laughs Stipe.
Ayers formed Limbo District in 1981, playing percussion. His boyfriend, Stevenson – “a big, buff, beautiful redhead who loved to discuss Schopenhauer”, says guitarist Kelly Crow, who went on to become a member of the band – played bass. Amet, who played the organ, was from an elite French family, and knew nothing of rock and roll.
“At their first rehearsal Jeremy asked her to sing Johnny B Goode, and she sang like a musical,” says Crow. “Jeremy liked that: he was expecting someone who didn’t come from a [typical] Western music background.”
Amet was “Amy Winehouse levels of exotic”, says Stipe. “She would strike matches and use the ash as eyeliner, applied with a ninepence nail.”
I had no friends in Athens. Those guys were my saviors
Margarita Bilbao
Singer Craig Woodall was “a small, quiet guy from a place where you couldn’t just hang out and not expect something to happen to you”, recalls Crow.
“Craig had a very hard life,” says guitarist Margarita Bilbão, a Spanish Basque emigrant they discovered after hearing her speak against 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 remembers. “Those people became my saviors.”
Even among the post-punk mavericks of Athens in the early ’80s, the wild, perverse cabaret of the Limbo District was “radical”, says Stipe. “They were deliberately abrasive, like Einstürzende Neubauten or Psychic TV, but they had music, humor. They rewrote where punk could go next, drawing on Vaudeville and Edith Sitwell. They upset people, in a fun way.” Strickland remembers the band as “a great tapestry of pure imagination, with a sexy, surreal, Fellini-esque quality”.
Athens loved the Limbo District, but tours showed they had acquired a taste. “We’d clean the room,” says Crow. They recorded material with future REM producer Mitch Easter, but no one would release it. Bilbão grew concerned about her limited skills and fled to New Orleans, heartbroken. She was replaced by Tim Lacy, who was replaced by Crow, in 1983. Around this time, Jim Herbert, a professor at the university, made Carnival in collaboration with photographer Marlys Lens Cox. The highly surreal, dreamlike short film imagines the Limbo District as an “existential traveling circus in the 1920s” stopping for a lakeside break and engaging in some nude wrestling. Stipe tried to get MTV to screen Carnival. “But that thing has bottoms and dicks and breasts,” says Crow. “They never played that.”
The band was on loan anyway. Woodall fell into heroin addiction and spent the following years homeless, struggling with alcoholism and mental health issues. Stevenson’s brother Gordon, from the New York “no wave” band of Teens Jesus and the Jerks, was an early AIDS casualty; his death in 1982 broke Davey’s heart. He and Ayers broke up in 1983, ending the band, and Stevenson moved to France, to study philosophy at the Sorbonne. Amet joined him.
“Dominic was in love with Davey from day one,” says Bilbão.
“Davey was everything to her,” Crow nodded. “They lived together in an apartment where you could see the Eiffel Tower from the balcony.” Stevenson died of AIDS in the early 90s. Amet later married, had a son, and died 20 or so years ago. “None of us know more than that,” sighed Crow. “She always told me she wanted a child. She didn’t make it out of her 40s.”
Meanwhile, Ayers moved into painting and photography. “His paintings were incredibly beautiful – figurative and symbolic,” says Strickland. “He did a beautiful picture of Ricky, from memory, after Ricky’s death. Jeremy was always so open. You felt like you were seen when you talked to him; you were listened to and listened to.”
Before she fled Athens, Bilbão would visit Ayers: “If I feel out of my mind and everything seems wrong. I would have a cup of tea in his garden and talk and we would be happy. It was like an oasis of peace, a big bamboo garden.” It was here that Ayers died of a stroke, on 24 October 2016. He was 68.
“It was so tragic, but poetic,” says Herbert. “He died in that garden that he loved so much.”
In the years following the Limbo Zone split, the B-52s and REM enjoyed multi-platinum success and acclaim. But the avant garde experiments that inspired both groups were “lost in time as an entity”, says Stipe. It took Henry Owings, unofficial historian of the Athens music scene, to rediscover their legacy, releasing three EPs of unheard studio material and a live album Live Limbo on his Chunklet Industries label (with more to follow); he is now organizing Carnival exhibitions around the world.
For years, Crow was the archivist of the Limbo District. “I carried all the studio recordings, live tapes, leaflets and posters from house to house, for years,” he says. “We always wanted to release our music, but we couldn’t afford it. I was about to give it up. Then Henry reached out. Henry care. Our music is now streaming. I can drive my car and listen to Limbo District on the stereo.”
Stipe is “pleased that there is a renewed interest in the Limbo District, that there is still some influence”. For Bilbão, the memories of the people who made the Limbo District are the most important. “The music was just an accessory – the most important thing was the people,” she says. “I think about Dominique, Davey and Jeremy all the time. They were incredible. I always kept them in my heart.”
Live Limbo is now available through Chunklet Industries. Carnival will be screened in the UK later this month.
