The folks heading up the Athens Popfest just released the first round of band announcements for this year's fest set to run October 11-15, 2011 in my favorite town east of the Mississippi.

Featured headliners include Olivia Tremor Control, Bob Mould, Throwing Muses, The Dead Milkmen, and Man Or Astroman? (with 65 more bands still to be announced!) and they will surely turn heads, but usually it's the lesser known bands that end up making big splashes in Athens. Need I remind you that we heard both Black Kids and Pains of Being Pure at Heart for the first time when they played opening daytime slots at the 2007 fest?

One of those lesser known bands on this year's PopFest schedule is Eureka California, an Athens, GA hometown band who has piqued my attention with their garage-rock-brit-pop songs.  My particular favorite song today is "Baby, I'm Your Garbage Man," recorded live at Slaglefest earlier this year.

{photo from the Eureka California facebook page}

at Athens Popfest

Featuring Tendaberry (your new favorite band), One Happy Island, Hat Company, and one giant Elephant 6 orgy.

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at Athens Popfest

Athens Popfest is like summer camp for indie pop and rock nerds.

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All weekend I lived vicariously through our friends in Athens at the Popfest (I'm still waiting for those Nana Grizol YouTube postings!). Jon Manning was down there and posted some fine photos of the Music Tapes performance to the TIG Sparkly Indie-Pop Photos group.

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at 40 Watt

The Athens PopFest ruled... a helicopter shirt dance AND Daniel Johnston AND Japanese Pop AND horns? YES!

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at 40 Watt

I missed the day shows (Atlanta traffic sucks big time and it took 7 hours to pick up a friend at the airport!), but no mind, the night shows more than made up for it.

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at 40 Watt

That Ted Leo a smooth mofo! His flawless set took the fest up a notch with as he oozed with enchanting conversation and cool-kid moves.

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You'd think I'd take this opportunity to point you to a bunch of Cars Can Be Blue songs, right? Nah, let's talk about Fishboy.

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Today I'm especially looking forward to High Water Marks from Lexington, Kentucky. They have a fetching Mangum-esque slightly muttled pop with Rentals keyboards style.

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Next Thursday night's line up at the Athen's Popfest is going to cause mass hugging hysteria. Darlings like Ted Leo, Darron Hanlon, Patience Please, and nine other cutable bands will be gracing the PopFest stage over the course of the day and night.

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