Thursday, October 6, 2011

Tyrone's OC









Tyrones was a popular music club in Athens until it burned down in January 1982.  It was located on a site that is now part of the multi-modal station behind the Classic Center.  It was where I first saw R.E.M. – they played Tyrones regularly - in a crowd of maybe 50-100 people.  They were just coming up at the time.

The “OC” in the name stood for “Old Chameleon”, the club’s original name.  It was a jazz club then.   A change of ownership brought a new name and a move to rock music, but the new owner included the "OC" in the new name to honor the history of the original club.

I went to Tyrones after the fire and there were a couple dozen other people, like me, coming there to pay our respects and reminisce.  Some people had placed flowers on the ashes.  It sounds funny, but I felt like I had lost a good friend...

Some old concert posters:


Photographs from after the fire:





      

            

5 comments:

  1. I worked there for 3 years when it was Chameleon and, then, Tyrone's OC had another meaning too...."on coke", as drugs were prevalent at the club in those days!

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    1. I was there, but I guess I was always innocent beyond my years. Guess I didn't hang out in the right (or wrong) corners.

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  2. Thanks for the post. I too love Athens, to this day. I started going to visit friends out of HS in 1982. I lived there 84-85 and continued to visit friends there until 1991. I still visit and just ate at The Grill last week.

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  3. I just moved to Athens and have always been a big R.E.M. fan. As soon as I moved here I visited a lot of the obvious R.E.M. attractions but I recently remembered the old Live from Tyrone's bootleg I had and thought I'd look up where it was. Glad to have found this blog!

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  4. Was just listening to R.E.M. demos on YouTube and thought I'd look up Tyrone's. We were probably within feet of one another BITD. I was at the club just about every week from '78-'81, when I graduated. Saw a lot of high-energy gigs there. I remember Stipe reading from something like a 1949 Look Magazine one evening. Too bad those guys never amounted to anything.

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