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Pylon (band)

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Pylon
Pylon performing at AthFest 2005 in Athens, Georgia, USA, June 24, 2005.
Pylon performing at AthFest 2005 in Athens, Georgia, USA, June 24, 2005.
Background information
OriginAthens, Georgia, United States
GenresNew wave, post-punk, jangle pop, alternative rock, funk rock
Years active1978–1983, 1989–1991, 2004-2009
LabelsDB Records, Armageddon Records, Sky Records, DFA Records, Chunklet Industries
Past membersRandall Bewley
Curtis Crowe
Vanessa Briscoe Hay
Michael Lachowski

Pylon were an American rock band from Athens, Georgia.[1] The band's danceable sound, a blend of new wave, post-punk, jangle pop, alternative rock and funk rock,[2] influenced the Athens music scene and the 1980s American pop underground. AllMusic wrote that Pylon's "role as elder statesmen of the alternative rock explosion is unassailable".[3]

History

Formation, early years and breakup 1979-83

All four members of Pylon were art students at the University of Georgia in Athens.[4] Guitarist Randall Bewley and bass guitarist Michael Lachowski began playing music and attempting to form a band in 1978. They practiced in a studio in downtown Athens which Lachowski rented from Curtis Crowe, upstairs from the later location of the Grill on College Avenue. The room was lit by a single 40-watt light bulb, so the band referred to it as the "40 Watt Club". Crowe soon joined the band as a drummer. On February 14, 1979, the three held auditions for a singer. Vanessa Briscoe (now Vanessa Briscoe Hay) was chosen.[3] The group was named for a novel by William Faulkner.[3] Their influences included Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, the No New York compilation and the soundtrack to Eraserhead.[5]

Pylon onstage, 1981.

Pylon played their first live show at a party on March 9, 1979.[6] Members of the B-52's attended Pylon's third show. Fred Schneider and Kate Pierson of the B-52's were particularly supportive and helped promote Pylon's music in New York City, getting them a gig at Hurrah.[7] Soon after, Pylon opened for Gang of Four in New York.

Pylon's debut single, "Cool", backed by "Dub", was released on DB Records in 1979,[8] and received many positive critical reviews. It was followed by their first full-length album, Gyrate, in 1980.[9]

The !! 10" EP, released in 1980 on the UK label Armageddon Records, included both sides of the debut single plus "Driving School" and "Danger!!" from the album.[10] Two further singles followed, "Crazy" (1981),[11] which charted at No. 61 for club play in Billboard,[12] and "Beep" (1982).[13]

From 1980 to 1983, Pylon toured parts of the U.S., Canada and the UK, playing with groups such as the B-52's, Gang of Four, Mission of Burma, Love Tractor, R.E.M., Talking Heads and U2.

Their second album, Chomp, was released in 1983.[14] By that time, the members of Pylon were beginning to feel that playing together was becoming less fun and more like a business, and after turning down an offer to open for a major U2 tour, they decided to break up the band in late 1983,[1][5] their final show being at Athens' Mad Hatter club on December 1. Hay later said, "For whatever reason it was our decision. We were like, 'Let's just quit while we're having fun.' That was kind of the idea in the first place. We were just going to perform as long as it was fun. So we broke up and it was a decision we all made together".[5]

Legacy and influence

With some help from the members of R.E.M., Pylon's reputation as one of the great underground bands of the new wave era was solidified in 1987. Numerous musicians from the Athens rock scene publicly attested to their deep reverence for Pylon in the film Athens, GA: Inside/Out, released in February 1987.[15] In April, R.E.M. released the compilation album Dead Letter Office, which opened with a cover version of Pylon's "Crazy", previously issued as the B-side of their 1985 single "Driver 8".[4]

When Rolling Stone named R.E.M. "America's Best Band" in November 1987, R.E.M. drummer Bill Berry said, "We're not the best rock 'n' roll band in America", declaring that Pylon was instead the best.[16] "That was (R.E.M.) just being gracious and honoring the scene that they came out of and the scene that they obviously contributed to," said Lachowski in a 2016 interview in New York Observer. "R.E.M. became so successful and successful in a different way. They were true musicians and had all kinds of historical knowledge about musical forms and different kinds of music. They were just very adept and confident and had so much more range. We were truly just art students assembling things with sound and instruments".[5]

Reunions 1989-2009

After a six-year hiatus punctuated with a smattering of reunion shows, Pylon officially reformed in 1989,[17] coinciding with the release of a compilation of the band's work from 1979–83, Hits (1989).[18] They opened for the final leg of R.E.M.'s Green tour.

In 1990, the group released a new album, Chain, on Sky Records.[4] They played several more shows, including the South by Southwest Festival in 1990 and 1991, but when guitarist Bewley decided to leave in 1991, the band broke up again.[17]

Pylon came out of retirement again in 2004, and played their first set in more than a decade in August 2004 at the then-fledgling Little King's Shuffle Club in Athens. They played the 2004 New Year's Eve show[17] at the 40 Watt Club, headlined the first night of the Athens music festival AthFest in June 2005, and recorded an untelevised segment for Pancake Mountain in 2006.

On April 4, 2007, Pylon performed an impromptu show at Little King's to announce the reissue of Gyrate on DFA Records. Expanded with extra tracks and retitled Gyrate Plus, it was released on October 16, 2007. They performed several key shows in 2008, including the Part Time Punks Festival in Los Angeles,[19] a show taped for Georgia Public Broadcasting in Athens, and the Revolve Film and Music Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.[20]

On February 25, 2009, Bewley died, two days after suffering a heart attack while driving his van.[21]

Bewley's death brought the band's career to a close; Hay said, "Pylon died when Randy died".[5]

Subsequent developments

DFA reissued the band's second album in expanded form as Chomp More in 2009.[3]

In October 2011, DFA issued a two-track 7" split single called Cover + Remix. The A-side featured a cover of Pylon's "Cool" by Deerhunter, while the B-side consisted of a remix of "Yo-Yo" by Calvinist.[22]

On July 25, 2016, Chunklet Industries released Pylon Live, a double album recorded at their "final" gig on December 1, 1983 at The Mad Hatter in Athens.[23] Pitchfork called it "an all-business, no-banter set that sees them streamroll through 20 songs in 70 minutes with assembly-line precision: bassist Michael Lachowski and drummer Curtis Crowe lay the foundation, Bewley sculpts it into strange shapes with his surgical guitar lines, and singer Vanessa Briscoe-Hay splatters her mantric messaging on the walls like a spraycan-wielding prophet" .[24] It was previewed by Chunklet's April 20 release of a 7" single, "Gravity", taken from the live album.[25]

Pylon's 1979 song "Cool" was used in a TV commercial for the 2016 Lexus RX.[26]

Other projects

Hay is a member of the Athens band Supercluster, formed in 2007, as was Bewley prior to his death.

Since 2014, Hay has fronted the Pylon Reenactment Society, a Pylon tribute act featuring members of more recent Athens bands like the Glands and Casper & the Cookies.[27] In a 2016 Portland Mercury interview, Hays said, "It's been inspirational, if that's the right word, to be able to play this music again. I really don't want people to forget Pylon. These are different people and we are re-enacting this experience, so it's not exactly Pylon, but it's fresh and done in the same spirit".

Members

Former members

Discography

Studio albums

Singles and EPs

  • "Cool / Dub" 7" single (April 1980, Db Records) Db53 [31]
  • !! 10" EP , (February 1981, Armageddon Records) AEP10214 [32]
  • "Crazy / M Train" 7"/12" single , (March 1982, Db Records) Db61 [33]
  • "Beep / Altitude" 7" single (September 1982, Db Records) Db62 [34]
  • "Beep / Altitude / Four Minutes" 12" EP (September 1982, Db Records) Db62 [35]
  • "Sugarpop / Sugarpop remix / Interview" promo CD single (1990, Sky Records) No catalogue no. [36]
  • Cover + Remix 7" single (split single with Deerhunter, Calvinist), (June 2011, DFA Records) DFA2279lp [37]
  • "Gravity / Weather Radio" 7" single (April 2016, Chunklet Industries) CK7010 [38]

Live albums

  • Pylon Live (July 25,2016, Chunklet Industries) CHKLP020 [39]

Compilation albums

  • Hits, Cassette, CD (1989, Db Records) DB91 [40]

Filmography

References

  1. ^ a b Pareles, Jon (20 May 1989). "New Pylon Exhibits Its Old Drive". New York Times. Retrieved 2011-01-09.
  2. ^ George-Warren, Holly; Romanowski, Patricia, eds. (2001). The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. p. 792. ISBN 0-7432-9201-4. Like an apolitical answer to England's Gang of Four, Pylon played a brutally physical, stripped-down form of funk rock
  3. ^ a b c d Jason Ankeny. "Pylon | Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
  4. ^ a b c Strong, Martin Charles (2003). The Great Indie Discography. Edinburgh UK: Canongate. ISBN 1-84195-335-0. Retrieved 2011-01-10.
  5. ^ a b c d e "America's (Other) Best Band: Pylon's Brilliant Punk Minimalism Lives On". 25 July 2016.
  6. ^ "Pylon: Biography". Perfect Sound Forever. Retrieved July 17, 2013.
  7. ^ Reynolds, Simon (2006). Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984. London: Penguin Books. p. 264. ISBN 0-14-303672-6. Retrieved 2011-01-10.
  8. ^ "Cool / Dub by Pylon".
  9. ^ "Pylon (4) - Gyrate". Discogs.
  10. ^ "Pylon (4) - !!". Discogs.
  11. ^ "Pylon (4) - Crazy / M-Train". Discogs.
  12. ^ Billboard May 15, 1982 Dance/Disco Top 80
  13. ^ "Pylon (4) - Beep / Altitude". Discogs.
  14. ^ "Pylon (4) - Chomp". Discogs.
  15. ^ Maslin, Janet (29 May 1987). "'Athens, GA.,' On Rock Bands". New YorkTimes. Retrieved 2011-01-09.
  16. ^ "Taking Fun Seriously: Pylon's Last Hurrah". 2 August 2016.
  17. ^ a b c Julie Phillips (26 February 2009). "Guitarist for famed Athens band Pylon dies". Online Athens.com (cred. Athens Banner-Herald). Retrieved 2011-01-10. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  18. ^ "Pylon (4) - Hits". Discogs.
  19. ^ "Partying Like It's 1983: Part-Time Punks Announce Post-Punk Fest Featuring A Certain Ratio, Pylon, Savage Republic, Vivian Girls and More". 29 October 2008.
  20. ^ "Festival revolves around film and music". 6 August 2008.
  21. ^ Lesemann, T. Ballard (27 February 2009). "R.I.P. Pylon guitarist Randy Bewley". Charleston City Paper. Charleston SC. Retrieved 2011-01-10.
  22. ^ "Pylon (4) - Cover + Remix". Discogs.
  23. ^ Mark Deming. "Pylon Live - Pylon | Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 2016-07-29.
  24. ^ "Pylon: Pylon Live Album Review - Pitchfork". pitchfork.com.
  25. ^ "Pylon (4) - Gravity b/w Weather Radio Live". Discogs.
  26. ^ "Pylon's 1979 Song "Cool" Used for New Lexus RX Commercial - Georgia Music". georgiamusic.org.
  27. ^ "The Pylon Reenactment Society Revives the Past".
  28. ^ https://www.discogs.com/Pylon-Gyrate/master/87183
  29. ^ https://www.discogs.com/Pylon-Chomp/master/199021
  30. ^ https://www.discogs.com/Pylon-Chomp/master/199021
  31. ^ https://www.discogs.com/artist/264419-Pylon-4
  32. ^ https://www.discogs.com/artist/264419-Pylon-4
  33. ^ https://www.discogs.com/artist/264419-Pylon-4
  34. ^ https://www.discogs.com/artist/264419-Pylon-4
  35. ^ https://www.discogs.com/artist/264419-Pylon-4
  36. ^ https://www.discogs.com/artist/264419-Pylon-4
  37. ^ https://www.discogs.com/artist/264419-Pylon-4
  38. ^ https://www.discogs.com/artist/264419-Pylon-4
  39. ^ https://www.discogs.com/Pylon-Live/master/1031416
  40. ^ https://www.discogs.com/Pylon-Hits/master/859853
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