'Cool Town' - how Athens, Georgia proved that cultural transformations can flourish anywhere

"Athens was key in taking this punk idea that anybody can play and showing that anybody can do it anywhere. I think that Athens is the place that makes it clear—mostly through the career of R.E.M. but not entirely—that you can make music that reaches an underground or even a mainstream national audience anywhere. And that these kinds of cultural transformations and bohemian cultures we think of as really only occurring in certain urban spaces can actually flourish anywhere" - author Grace Elizabeth Hale tells in Please Kill Me interview about her latest book 'Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture'.