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MIKE WHITE deadlydesigns.com
ft! June 25
year after the Georgia Theatre burned, downtown
Athens is losing another of its live-music landmarks
this week when Tasty World hosts its last live con
certs. AthFest will mark the bookend for a 13-year run
for the erstwhile club, a venue that has weathered
more change, both from within and from without, than almost
any other club in town this decade. Through it all, though,
owner Murphy Wolford has remained a constant presence on
the scene, encouraging young acts and struggling with the
shifting tastes of a fickle town.
Initially just a club on the bottom floor at 312 E. Broad
St. without even a stage, Tasty World built itself one of those,
struggled with sound issues in a brick-and-glass space, opened
a second floor a year later, promoted shows on both floors,
closed up the downstairs stage and turned that space into a
college-girl bar called Magnolias, and revamped its upstairs
as Tasty World Uptown to create a great-sounding room. Tasty
World recently brought on Secret Squirrel DIY guy Mercer West
to book shows, reviving briefly what had become a lackluster
lineup over the past year or two. Tasty World saw its neighbor
One Love close, and High Hat Music Club close, and now that
it's going, too. And without the Theatre, live local music will
have been effectively banished to the western side of down
town, while Bad Manor's emphasis on local acts remains to be
Seen.v^.:^
"The dedsion to close is purely business," says Wolford. "My
new partner, Paul DeGeorge, and I analyzed the numbers from
the past year and dedded that the location would profit more
as a bigger bar. We need more space for Magnolias and the
clientele that so heavily supports the area of town where the
space is Iqcated," - - * * /
Wolford was just... actually, let's dispense with the formal
ity and conventions of print media, because here in Athens,
it's Murphy—just Murphy, always Murphy—that people know
him by. So. Murphy was just one year out of his 20s when he
opened the club in September of '97. He'd graduated from UGA
a few years back and had a day job working at the university—
a job he hung on to for the first few years of Tasty Wortd's
life in order to pay all the bills. Now, though, he's in his 40s,
is a father, and is ready for the next phase in his relationship
with Athens. "While there are no plans in the works to relocate
Tasty World, I will jump on an opportunity to stay involved
with music and art in any way," he says. "Meanwhile, if the
right situation comes along... a space property located for the
business I know how to run; I would take a long look. When
the bug hits..."
It was the club's openness to give untested local bands a
shot—generally provided they could bring in a couple hand
fuls of friends, enough to keep the bartenders interested—that
made the venue unique in town. "We did not and do not want
to be pigeonholed to a specific clientele or musical genre,"
he told Flagpole 10 years ago, and that has held true. That
willingness to give young bands a shot generated a lot of
good will in the community—particularly among that small
percentage of bands who went on to make a bigger name for
themselves. The Glands, for instance, played a semi-secret,
it's-not-a-reunion-because-we-won't-admit-we-broke-up.
Christmastime show a few years back. And let the 40 Watt and
the Georgia Theatre keep their unannounced R.E.M. shows!
The Whigs have often used the space for their own surprise
gigs, performing under ridiculous fake names—a 2002 gig
when Blues Traveler frontman John Popper joined in for an
impromptu harmonica solo was one particularly singular and
unpredictable event.
Of course, Murphy's any-band-goes philosophy also had its
downside: many a night you'd show up to see your friend's
band, or a band you'd read about in these pages, only to find
another band or two had been added to an already packed bilL
It could be a frustrating situation for the audience, and a num
ber of local bands wrote the place off due to the unpredictabil
ity of playing a gig at Tasty World. (Or maybe they just never
liked lugging gear up that Everest of a staircase.)
"Well, Tasty World's success and failure are one in the
same," says Murphy, whose club also played host to weekly
events over the years. DubConscious got its start doing
Thursday night residencies, and Tasty World was the home to a
vibrant bluegrass night in the middle of the decade. "The place
had no niche. It has been a place where anyone can come
make their noise, show their film, throw their party, swing from
the rafters, skateboard to thrash metal, bellydance or even lec
ture on entomology with a drink. Of course, the lack of focus
left a lot of people scratching their head over the years. In
1997, Athens needed a place like Tasty World. As the nightlife
downtown has grown, all the little situations that kept the
business thriving for so long have found new and even better
places."
Murphy says there have been too .many high points over the
past decade to go into, but that he can link them all through
his experience. Of that moment, he says, "I have dragged my
sorry ass downtown, mailing it in, purely there to drink my way
through another night and lock it up. I am on a 70-day run of
totally ignoring the sounds coming through the shitty P.A., in
a room ill-suited for live entertainment, when out of the dark
ness comes some beautiful new sound exploding everything.
That moment makes all the drudgery worthwhile, and I will max
out all my credit cards to keep the place open so it can happen
again."
The name itself came from a defunct local music publica
tion of the same name. Murphy moved to Athens in '85, and
played in a few bands, including Ruben Kincaid, in which his
bandmate was Lunch Paper owner Monte Koster, another band-
guy-tumed-club-owner-tumed-former-club-owner. "There is
certainly a sense of loss because I love Athens music as much
as anyone I know. I have lived my entire adult life here, and
in the last 13 years, the Tasty World experience has been very
important to me, my family, friends and staff."
Tasty Wortd's AthFest shows have always been high-energy
(end higher-attendance). The club goes out this weekend with
a 1 a.m. Saturday-night performance from The Dumps—noise-
mongers who'll be sure to give the club a proper sendoff.
V,'- ■ • V:..v-' V;^
3 Chris Hasslotis
346 fast ” Broafc St.
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JUNE 23,2010 FU
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