Athens wouldn’t have acquired its status as a great music town if it were not for the abundance of venues that enable countless acts to perform on a given night. And at the heart of these venues stands the Georgia Theatre.

Many people who have never attended a show at the Georgia Theatre still know of its downtown location, mostly due to its nostalgic outward appearance of an old cinema.

And, not surprisingly, the Georgia Theatre opened as a movie theater in 1935.

“The Theatre was built in the late 1880s, and was the first YMCA in the South,” said owner Duck Anderson. “The basement was actually a swimming pool. After that, it was, at various times, a department store and a morgue until they converted it into a theater in the 1930s.”

It wasn’t until early 1978 that the Theatre began to showcase live entertainment. Bands like The Police and the B-52′s played in the early years of the Theatre’s music-showcasing tenure. In order to play its very first concert, the B-52′s personally sold out the venue to obtain the right to play.

After a few years, however, the Georgia Theatre suffered financial trouble and returned to film as the Carafe and Draft Movie Theater.

In 1984, current owners Duck Anderson and Kyle Pilgrim purchased the theater and began to craft one of the premier music venues in Athens.

And the Georgia Theatre shows no signs of slowing down. Anderson said the past year has been the venue’s finest thus far, and in order to maintain the momentum. In April, a brand new $120,000 P.A. system was installed. “(The P.A. system) is as good, or better, than any system in any club this size in the entire country,” Anderson said.

Anderson listed surprise shows by R.E.M. and Widespread Panic’s New Year’s Eve and Halloween shows, as well as performances by Jane’s Addiction, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wynton Marsalis, The Ramones and Phish as some of his favorite shows at the Georgia Theatre over the past 20 years.

But he said there is one show that he could pick above all others.

“To tell the truth, the most memorable show to me was the first time Dave Matthews played here,” he said. “It was a Tuesday night, and the show was essentially a fraternity function. The cover charge was only $3, and no one had ever heard of the Dave Matthews Band at the time.”

Anderson and company said their only future plans are to “carry on as always.”