Happy New Year, y’all. In the interest of starting off on the right foot and prioritizing efficiency, I went ahead and wrapped up the whole year for you. Sure, you can keep on reading every week, and I’d appreciate that, too, but this is basically all you need to know about what happened in 2025. And, as in years past, this news is so surprising it’s literally unbelievable!*
JANUARY: In an effort to stave off feelings of doom and, you know, just to do something, local punks and hippie types quickly assembled a compilation album in protest against the inauguration of Donald Trump. While the tunes themselves were actually pretty rock solid, the effort was about as effective as the 2004 “Rock Against Bush” project spearheaded by Fat Wreck Chords.
FEBRUARY: Because, magically and out of absolutely nowhere, Athens has become a town of hockey fans, local slapstick troupe the Rock Lobsters went all-in for its Valentine’s Day promotion. Temporarily changing its team name to “The Classic City Love,” attendees at its game on Feb. 14 were edified by being able to chant, finally, “LOVE WINS!”
MARCH: For the first time in several years, Athens bands decided not to make the trip to Austin’s South By Southwest en masse this year, citing the general music-industry pullback from dropping tons of cash at the 38-year-old event. One local spoke anonymously regarding this saying, “There’s, like, not even any free stuff anymore. Used to be you knew you’d leave with a month’s worth of free T-shirts. Last year all I got was a taco coupon and some weird international disco compilation I had to download myself.”
APRIL: Students in the UGA Music Business Program began working on their final projects this month in anticipation of graduation. So, we were treated to the formation of three new dance music “collectives” vying for booking dates at Live Wire, an acoustic song-swap live show at the Foundry, a paper zine to be found around local coffee shops and such, and a brand new label populated by bands that all broke up by the end of summer.
MAY: Buoyed by his successful lawsuits against both Napster and Spotify, David Lowery launched his own streaming platform named Beacon, its name inspired by Camper Van Beethoven’s 1989 track “The Light from a Cake.” While music selections were restricted to music exclusively created, owned and/or published by Lowery, subscribers were assured that he was paying himself appropriate royalties.
JUNE–AUGUST: This summer was, for the most part, a blur. Locals continued to ask when AthFest was happening, complained that it wasn’t happening at some other time, and wondered aloud how exactly that one band got booked instead of some other band they would have preferred but still would have wound up missing somehow. So much energy was spent discussing these items that the scene just laid low until fall semester came back around.
SEPTEMBER: In order to stem the inevitable tide of new students starting new bands on a whim without really considering the pros and cons, local musical instrument stores implemented a three-day cooling off period for all new guitar purchases. Athens sage Kevin Sweeney was seen standing outside the Nowhere Bar shouting, “From my cold, dead hands!” while hoisting a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard above his head.
OCTOBER: After growing by proportions of magnitude since its inception in 2018, the Historic Athens Porchfest began running out of neighborhoods to populate with bands. In a forward-looking move, the Athens-Clarke County Commission passed a resolution requiring all new development applications to include a plan for accommodating this annual event.
NOVEMBER: This month was spent preparing for the annual Downtown Parade Of Lights, which had an unprecedented number of local musicians joining the lineup this year. Considered by most to be a glowed-up version of busking, this swell of participation accomplished two things: First, bands could be reasonably assured of actually getting booked and, second, this was by far the largest audience for which any of these folks had played.
DECEMBER: Ah, December—the time of near-endless celebration of myriad things. More effort was expended this year into declining invitations than accepting them but, as always, there seemed to be a concentrated effort on packing as many events into a single night than could ever be reasonably accommodated. Thus, New Year’s Eve turned into New Year’s Week and, by its conclusion, a singularly bleary-eyed Dan Geller, who’d been deejaying for seven full days, lifted his skinny fists like antennas to heaven and asked, “Are we there yet?”
*Literally as in literally. Nothing here should be believed.
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