The rusty, tin roof is still standing, but not much else remains of the so-called Love Shack, made famous by the B-52s’ 1980s pop music hit.

There’s just a steeple left from the church where one of the world’s biggest bands, R.E.M., once lived, recorded and threw rollicking all-night parties.

Other landmarks in a town some say still boasts the world’s highest per-capita number of rock musicians are long gone or threatened by projects ranging from new apartment complexes to extra parking spaces for college football tailgaters.

Still, the tourists flock to Athens to see them.

Every year visitors from as far away as Japan arrive in this college town of about 100,000, looking for their own slice of the scene that has launched R.E.M., the B-52s, Widespread Panic and hundreds, if not thousands, of other bands.

Dan Wall shows off copies of the first T-shirts ever made for R.E.M. and the B-52s at his Athens Music Museum in Athens, Ga. The modest space, which Wall opens several days a week, features rare albums and CDs, posters promoting classic Athens music shows and other items.

“We get people who come take pictures of the steeple or take small rocks from the base of it,” said Bob Sleppy, director of the nonprofit music resource center Nuci’s Space. “There are people who go to the cemetery still to see (former B-52s guitarist) Ricky Wilson’s grave. There were people who went to Allen’s (a defunct diner mentioned in the B-52s “Deadbeat Club”) to eat a greasy cheeseburger just to say they were there.”

At the Athens Welcome Center, officials say at least 10 percent of the 1,100 visitors who stop in each month are in town strictly because of the music scene. They estimate thousands more music tourists visit on their own and others who arrive to live, work or attend the University of Georgia first heard about the town through its rock legacy.

“We had two women from Germany in here last week and one of them said, ‘The reason we’ve come to Athens is because of R.E.M.,'” said George Granade, who has volunteered at the welcome center since he retired in 1998.

Landmarks disappearing

Bob Sleppy, director of the nonprofit music resource center Nuci's Space and head of the Athens Music Preservation Society, talks about the music scene in Athens, Ga. Nuci's is a nonprofit musicians' resource center started in memory of Nuci Phillips, a 22-year-old guitarist who shot himself on Thanksgiving Day in 1996. The Athens Music Preservation Society seeks to archive obscure and hard-to-find recordings of the town's music scene.

But some locals fear the landmarks of a music scene that exploded into the consciousness of the nation and world in the 1980s are disappearing.

Visitors can still eat at Weaver D’s Delicious Fine Foods, the soul food eatery with the “Automatic For the People” slogan that inspired the name of a 1992 R.E.M. album. They can check out bands at the famous 40 Watt Club – albeit in its sixth location since it opened in 1978 – and take a walking tour of spots where seminal acts such as Pylon, Love Tractor and Guadalcanal Diary once performed.

The years haven’t been kind to other spots.

In December, fire gutted a five-room cabin on the outskirts of town where the B-52s’ Kate Pierson once lived, and which is considered the inspiration for the group’s Top 40 hit “Love Shack.”

“The Church,” where R.E.M. lived, recorded and appeared in the 1986 documentary “Athens, Ga.: Inside/Out,” was torn down in 1990 to make way for condominiums. The steeple is all that remains of the old St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. It’s beginning to crumble and owners of the Steeplechase Condominiums have found no takers willing to adopt the landmark, with its liability concerns and thousands of dollars in needed repairs.

The steeple is all that remains of the church where the group R.E.M. once lived, recorded and threw rollicking all-night parties in Athens, Ga.

“There’s a real sense of urgency,” said Jeff Montgomery, co-owner of athensmusic.net and a member of the government-backed Athens Music History Project. “That thing is starting to show its age.”

After years of haggling, the Athens-Clarke County government bought a historic railroad trestle pictured on the cover of R.E.M.’s 1983 album “Murmur.” They plan to incorporate it into a series of bike and hiking trails, but some supporters feel Tailgate Junction, a parking area being built nearby for Georgia Bulldog football fans, threatens the site’s appeal and the integrity of the old trestle.

Preservation efforts

In a town where they say you can’t swing a guitar without hitting a musician, plenty of individuals and groups are taking their own small cracks at preserving and promoting Athens’ rock history.

Sleppy, the Nuci’s Space director, heads the Athens Music Preservation Society, which seeks to archive obscure and hard-to-find recordings of the town’s music scene. AthFest, an annual summer music and arts festival, frequently features historic exhibits and early plans have been made for a “Walk of Fame,” with plaques noting sites significant to the town’s rock history.

But few of the groups have coordinated their efforts and none have the big money backing for projects such as an official rock history museum, which has been discussed for years.

“It sort of ebbs and flows,” Montgomery said of the Athens Music History Project. “We’re a little bit dormant now.”

He says the group has talked about an official repository for music memorabilia, but the discussions have never gotten far. “That’s something that’s always on the back burner that we’d like to see down the road, but right now it’s not extremely tenable for us to do,” Montgomery said.

The closest the town has now is an annex at Wuxtry Records – a downtown landmark in its own right since 1976 – which owner Dan Wall has dubbed the Athens Music Museum.

The modest space, which Wall opens several days a week, features rare albums and CDs, posters promoting classic Athens music shows and other items, such as copies of the first T-shirts ever made for R.E.M. and the B-52s.

“It started out as just a little showcase of Athens music,” Wall said. “That case multiplied and multiplied until we couldn’t keep up with it and became so overflowing we had to get an entire building for it.”

Tourism officials in Athens say the benefits of music tourism are clear. Folks who flock to town pay for hotel rooms, meals, cocktails and souvenirs. But they say the prospects of getting government money to restore old sites or build new ones seem slim.

“There’s a disconnect between music heritage and the history of the community,” said Art Jackson, executive director of the Athens Downtown Development Authority. “It falls through the cracks.”

Still, those devoted to preserving the town’s musical past remain optimistic.

“We all have a very strong desire to not forget the past,” Sleppy said. “We understand that change happens, but to just disregard the past is something we all want to make sure doesn’t happen.”