Pylon - The Other Side of Athens

Four students

This story begins alongside a venue. Athens, Georgia: it's 1978, we're at 171 College Ave. It isn't a venue yet, just an apartment turned into a rehearsal space by Curtis Crowe. A place lit by a single small bulb: after a joke from friend Bill Tabor, the owner renames it the 40 Watt Club. Here two students from the University of Athens practice: Michael Lachowski on bass and Randall Bewley on guitar. Crowe - also a student and a former drummer - is mesmerized by their sound and asks to join the sessions. After a few promising rehearsals, the three find their singer: she's an art student too, named Vanessa Briscoe Hay. It's February 14, 1979, and the four decide to name themselves after a Faulkner novel recounting the dubious exploits of a group of barnstorming aviators. Pylon are born.

Birth of a scene

According to the sources, in 1980 Athens has around 43,000 residents, a bit more if you count the students of the prestigious university. As often happens, a very religious and traditionalist context (like the American South) gives rise, in reaction, to more progressive realities: small but intensely vibrant creative hubs like Austin, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin, and of course Athens, Georgia. "Little alternative pub town with a lot of live music venues", an American might say. Coming back to our Athens, today it's immediately associated with the cradle that produced Rem, B-52's, Vic Chesnutt, Of Montreal, Neutral Milk Hotel, Elephant 6 and many others: but who started it all?

After a few epic live shows, the B-52's leave their home base and set out to "color" New York. Pylon thus become the reference point and godparents of a nascent underground scene that is nothing short of extraordinary. A wonderful 1987 documentary called "Athens, GA: Inside/Out" - complete with its own soundtrack - will make you fall in love with these extraordinary performers. The 40 Watt Club nest is no longer a rehearsal space, but a proper venue. Over the years it changes locations and owners, first becoming the gathering spot for ever-bigger, wilder college parties, then taking on the role of heart and essential stop for all the bands in town, and beyond. A role it still holds today, with the most interesting names on the alternative scene continuing to pass through over there.

Art Project

Pylon have always had a very clear vision: they're artists far more interested in probing new creative approaches than in making the usual kind of music. They're an art project, not a band. Their goals? Get to New York, end up in some magazine, and then break up. At most, stay together as long as it's fun. Nothing else. The echo of no wave – the movement born in the Big Apple after the punk earthquake – had reached Georgia. The blend of atonality and contrast, unprecedented approaches and the involvement of artists from other fields (photography, painting, film), all shaken together with total creative independence, inspired the exploits of these young Georgians, whose rise toward that epicenter seemed unstoppable.

From their first show on March 9, 1979, to their third live gig – where Pylon convinced the by-then-famous B-52's to bring them to the city that never sleeps – it was a short step. After opening for Gang of Four (Gang of Four, with accompanying review) in the metropolis, the band released their first single, "Cool"/"Dub". Its impact is still strong forty years on, thanks to the relentless, vigorous pulse of the bass, the slashing cuts of the guitar, the pounding drums, and the irresistible arrival of Vanessa's voice: an additional instrument, a vocal hurricane capable of shaking any listener to the core with "Everything Is Cool". The backside "Dub" confirms Pylon's true calling: to make us dance, lodge itself in our eardrums and never let go. A mission triumphantly accomplished the following year.

A disco-punk party

Athens: a college town by day, parties and concerts by night. It needed something striking that wasn't Sex Pistols or Ramones; it needed someone who could get people dancing and having fun, but without strobe lights, sequins and glittering disco balls, someone able to stand apart with real personality from the B-52's recent triumphs. Pylon unveil their disco-post-punk debut with rare character: Gyrate. The distinctive sound of Lachowski's Aria Pro II bass – a style that would find countless disciples – proves an unshakeable sonic architecture, woven together with Crowe's precise, obsessive rhythms and the angular jabs of Randall Bewley's riffs. The energy of the opening track "Volume" practically bursts out of the amplifiers, building in intensity thanks to Vanessa's performance. More Gang of Four than B-52's, from here on Gyrate never lets up: the jagged riffs of "Feast On My Heart", the screams of "Precaution", the instrumental passage of "Wheater Radio".

Barely swallowed by the distorted fury of "Driving School", here comes the finishing blow of "Stop It", where “Don’t rock & roll, no/ Now rock & roll now/ Hey kids” nails itself into your ears from the very first listen. Go and check out the live performance of the track on YouTube to understand what it meant back then to get swept up by the Pylon hurricane...

1980 was also the year of another epic release in the history of alternative music, namely "Colossal Youth" by the Welsh band Young Marble Giants. A record and a band with real affinities to Pylon: ties to the art world, a brief recording life followed by a swift entry into rock's cult canon, the charismatic female figure of Alison Statton, a cryptic, minimal approach, the unprecedented sound of Philip Moxham's bass, and in November 1980 the Young Marble Giants also opened a show at New York's Hurrah (for Cabaret Voltaire)...

Chomp

Between Gyrate and the following Chomp lie three rich, intense years. English label Armageddon Records releases the "!!" EP, international critics (from NME to Rolling Stone) praise Pylon's work, the new singles "Crazy" and "Beep" start appearing in the charts, and big-name rock acts are competing for the chance to tour the world with them. Chomp opens with the drum slaps of "K", steeped in cynical, ironic nihilism:

Life is nothing but death and taxes

And all the trees that get the axes,

I’m tired of moving my jaw

What follows, though, is a playful B-52's-style one-two with almost Dadaist touches: "Yo-Yo" and "Beep", where the lyrics become just another ingredient kneaded into the instrumental magma. We're close here to the approach to lyrics that a young, promising singer of those years was developing: Michael Stipe. "Italian Movie Theme" is the wild preview of one of Pylon's defining songs: "Crazy". In an atmosphere that turns epic after just a few guitar movements, Vanessa Briscoe Hay's solemn call arrives alongside Michael Lachowski's touch, spilling into a whirlwind of chants and riffs. The quintessence of Pylon, here we find the cornerstones of Vanessa Briscoe Hay's "poetics": the invitation to let loose, to live, to fall in love and become one with the notes and the beat. A theory put into practice in "M-Train", where Lachowski pushes his granite-hard work on the sound to its furthest extreme.

Closed by the one-two of "Gyrate" (where Bewley's whirling guitar takes center stage) and "Altitude", Chomp delivers the finest fruits of the band's conception of itself as an art project. As we said at the start of this story, Pylon aren't really a band, or at least they don't think like their peers, and they're not afraid to make choices many would find unthinkable. Once the album was out, they turned down the chance to tour with U2 and mutually decided to break up while things were "still fun".

Cult status

In 1987 Rolling Stone proclaimed R.E.M. America's greatest rock band. Bill Berry, however, was quick to set the record straight: that title on the cover really belonged to Pylon. In true R.E.M. fashion, Stipe and co. made sure to pay tribute to the name that, more than any other, had created the scene and the musical style they came from: something they'd already done in 1985, when they tucked their own version of "Crazy" onto the B-side of "Driver 8" – the first single from "Fables Of The Reconstruction" – a cover that also opened 1988's "Dead Letter Office".

A question arises at this point: how did Pylon reach such a status? However pivotal those two records were, the four of them had been inactive for years, and their audience never really spread beyond the underground, while plenty of other major names were stamping their mark on American rock history in those very same years. The credit goes to three factors: critical acclaim, support from fellow bands, and hardcore fans. Three forces that often feed into one another, reinforcing those directly involved and making the idea of a reunion feel more and more like a real possibility. In 1989 the band reformed and – wouldn't you know it – opened the final leg of R.E.M.'s Green World Tour, releasing the compilation Hits: a preview of Pylon's third studio effort, Chain.

Look Alive

It's 1990, and the scene has changed: Chain is almost a reboot of the Pylon project. The incendiary charge of their early days has given way to a mature indie-rock sound, fuller and more fleshed-out, with the odd flash of their old "violence" still showing through. The opening track "Look Alive" is a fine way to get back in the game, and if you're worried about what's become of Lachowski's bass hits, here come "Catch" and "There It Is" to set your mind at ease. In between sits "B-Complex", an instrumental track that's become a trademark of the band's output. "Chain" is steeped in self-deprecating humor, and the first single "Sugarpop" makes that plain for all to see, pairing it with a fizzy, sunny – and disarming – musical makeover. "Outside" – very much à la Pixies, especially in the guitar work – and "Springtime" are among the most enjoyable moments, and if ten years earlier everything was "cool", now on "Very Right" we find the situation... "upside down!"

The release of Beley in 1991 follows an incredibly long silence, unable to dim the myth of Pylon. In 2004, when no one was expecting it anymore, the musicians returned to the stage, reminding the rock world once again of their importance — so much so that Mr. LCD Soundsystem James Murphy's Dfa Records decided to reissue their first two seminal works. Thus came out Gyrate Plus (2007) and Chomp More (2009), and on the wave of the operation's success, the label released in 2011 a split single with Deerhunter and The Calvinist called "Cover – Remix", in which the bands excellently revisit "Cool" and "Yo-Yo".

The End and the New Beginning

After a handful of shows in the following years, the musical story of Pylon came to a definitive end, in the most painful way possible: on February 25, 2009, two days after suffering a heart attack, Randall Bewley died. With the consistency and unity that always characterized them, Vanessa Briscoe Hay would declare: "Pylon died when Randy died". But not their legacy.

On July 25, 2016, Bewley's birthday, "Pylon Live" was released on Chunklet Industries, a recording of the live show held at the Mad Hatter in Athens on December 1, 1983. A hugely important release through which we can relive all the energy, euphoria and musical drive of Pylon on stage, embraced by their "home" crowd and at the peak of their career. A genuine celebration that delivers the full impact of the songs, in a best-of setlist that closes with the fittingly titled "Party Zone" and the brilliant reworking of the theme tune from the "Batman" TV series!

And since journalists, bands and fans around the world keep confirming just how far the cult of Pylon still is from fading away, we tracked down the "guilty" voice herself: Vanessa Briscoe Hay, whom we asked to revisit some key moments in the Pylon story and fill us in on some very interesting news.

Ride the wave of great music

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