he music of Athens, Georgia, includes a wide variety of popular music and was an important part of the early evolution of alternative rock and new wave, the The city is well known as the home of chart-topping bands like R.E.M., an American rock band that formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by which lead singer?
R.E.M. R.E.M. was an American rock band that formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by lead singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist/backing vocalist Mike Mills, and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first alternative rock bands, R.E.M. was noted for Stipe's particular vocal quality and obscure lyrics, Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style, and Mills' melodic basslines and backing vocals. R.E.M. released its first single—"Radio Free Europe"—in 1981 on the independent record label Hib-Tone. The single was followed by the "Chronic Town" EP in 1982, the band's first release on I.R.S. Records. In 1983, the group released its critically acclaimed debut album, "Murmur", and built its reputation over the next few years through subsequent releases, constant touring, and the support of college radio. Following years of underground success, R.E.M. achieved a mainstream hit in 1987 with the single "The One I Love". The group signed to Warner Bros. Records in 1988, and began to espouse political and environmental concerns while playing large arenas worldwide.
List of blues festivals The following is an incomplete list of blues festivals, which encapsulates music festivals focused on blues. This list may have some overlap with list of historic jazz festivals and list of historic rock festivals, both later genres dependent on elements of the blues. The blues is a genre and musical form that originated in African-American communities in the "Deep South" of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre is a fusion of traditional African music and European folk music, spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a wide variety of styles and subgenres, such as country blues, Delta and Piedmont, Chicago, West Coast blues. World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a hybrid form called blues rock evolved, which was featured prominently in the Summer of Love, for example, and became ubiquitous at rock festivals.