With the recent sad news that the Georgia Theatre has burned down, I decided to go ahead and post the review that never quite got done. Early on, before I'd even heard DCTR, I identified two Georgia venues that I wanted to see DC at: the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta and the Georgia Theatre in Athens. The Georgia Theatre was this wonderful club, which started out life as an actual movie theatre, but morphed into a club years ago. The Georgia Theatre was an important venue in the history of REM and the B52s, among so many other bands. On a personal level, this was the place where I saw my first concert in college, and the place where I saw my last concert in college. So, despite already having tickets to see DC in Macon, I immediately snagged a ticket to the Athens show.

The Athens concert was the day after the Race for Hope, so no one really knew how DC was going to be handling things emotionally. I hope that he got to enjoy being in and playing in Athens. For many a person who played for years in traveling bands, playing in a college music town like Athens has got to be a dream. Anyway, I don't know how DC was feeling about it, but to me, it was quite a thrill to see DC's name on the sign outside of the Georgia Theatre.

I got in line, and coincidentally ended up with an excellent view of Dublin stretching his legs. And, yes, he is a cute little furball. We also saw various band members wandering back and forth from the club to the buses. Got a call from Bumble, who turned out to be a few people ahead of me. We managed to get into the same spot in line (sadly enough, behind a group of women screaming to anyone within their considerable earshot that they'd driven a long distance to be there), and also got to chat briefly with Rheena. It was lovely to meet them both and to get to enjoy the concert with Bumble, whom I dragged up to the front of the balcony. Unobstructed views FTW. [Bumble may disagree with me, but she's very nice and probably won't publicly do so.] We were able to hold a couple of spots for sugarpie and her pieman (both as awesome as you'd expect), and accidentally ended up next to the fantastic southpaw, so it was a nice DCO row that we had there.

The stage was not large, and it was not clear to me how Ryan Star was going to maneuver into the little space available for him and his band. He did so, and really did a lovely set---better, I would say, than when I saw him in Macon. He dedicated Breathe to his "very good friend" DC, which was a truly lovely gesture. So, here's to Ryan.

It took a while to get everything set up on stage. There may have also been a sign-confiscation occurring, as the signs being made by the people who had been in front of us in line disappeared. DC was just in ridiculously good voice. Lie was (of course) gorgeous---and just beautifully lit---and I was intrigued to learn that I like Sleepy and Souvenir a lot better in person. But then there was the gift that DC gave: MitB. That was on my short list of songs that I had not heard live that I very, very much wanted to hear. And, damn, it was worth the wait. But really, all of the songs were so well done, which is particularly amazing when you consider the fact that DC was operating on little sleep and had had an emotional blow the day before. But we let him know just how very glad we were to see him, and he seemed pretty pleased that we were there, too. He spent several minutes throwing out picks to the crowd, and somehow got one up to the front row of the balcony... into my cup. Bumble let me have it. (Did I mention that she was quite nice?)

And here is the link to my youtube videos: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=FolkFan101&view=videos

Confession time: I sat down (despite express directions not to do so for the duration of the concert) to video Lie.