PYLON! C or D?

update:

If you're not familiar with PYLON, they were contemporaries of The B-52's and R.E.M. in the Athens, GA scene in the early 80s -- this new double live album documents their incredible last show in 1983. DFA also reissued their two studio albums back in 2007 & 2009. They also released a split single with Deerhunter in 2011 where they covered each other's songs. This live album captured them at their peak as a band, absolutely essential for any post-punk fan.

PYLON - Live
Street Date, July 25th, 2016, Chunklet

"(PYLON) stands as shockingly modern and unparalleled these many years later.”
-Michael Stipe, R.E.M.

“PYLON is still my favorite Athens band, in fact, one of my favorite bands!”
-Fred Schneider, The B-52s

“Randy Bewley and Michael Lachowski’s simple lines display untoward rhythm and melody, respectively. Curtis Crowe bangs away so obdurately it’s hard to understand why he didn’t become rich. Vanessa Briscoe Hay barks and brays whatever incantatory phrases seem called for. Timeless. Cool.”
-Robert Christgau, Dean of American Rock Critics

1983 was a banner year for PYLON. The Athens quartet released their second album, Chomp, on Atlanta-based DB Records, toured the country extensively, and played several opening slots for then-up-and-comers U2. And then, without a hint of explanation, they quit.

Their final show at the Mad Hatter in Athens, Georgia, was, as was always the case, a frenzy of minimal disco thud, post-punk guitar scree, and deliriously inspired howl. Oh, and dancing – always dancing – both in the crowd and on stage. The gig was recorded (both audio and video) for a failed PBS pilot called Athens Shows, and the tapes were put away and forgotten. That is, until now.

Around three years ago, after PYLON’s DFA reissues hit the street, Chunklet CEO (and card-carrying member of the PYLON Fan Club) Henry Owings emailed the band bemoaning the lack of bonus material on the CDs(meaning "previously unreleased," I take it, since Gyrate Plus and Chomp More do add singles, prev album-ized only on Hits) which sparked a larger conversation. “My favorite PYLON is live PYLON,” said bassist Michael Lachowski, with which Henry wholeheartedly agreed. Following a cordial sit-down at Michael’s apartment over the New Year’s holiday of 2015, an exhaustive search began for live recordings by PYLON. More specifically, live recordings from Athens in the early ’80s. Oh, and that sounded as good, if not better, than their proper full-length albums.

Numerous dead ends followed, but finally, and somewhat fittingly, the multitrack recordings of PYLON’S final performance at the Mad Hatter in 1983 were unearthed. Once the tapes were transferred and subsequently mixed, the explosive and compelling sounds raised one very significant question: Why in the world did PYLON quit?

For a band whose legacy, in their original incarnation at least, was two full-length albums and a handful of singles, PYLON were first and foremost a live band who weren’t as interested in working in a studio. PYLON’s raison d’être was performing for a crowd, and now there’s conclusive validation.

PYLON LIVE is a double vinyl album recorded on the band’s home turf at the culmination of their powers, and the results could not be more stellar. An all killer, no filler set with nothing left on the cutting room floor, PYLON LIVE includes powerful versions of the PYLON canon from their first and second LPs and even the hard-to-find song “Party Zone” (previously available only on a DB Rec comp) and their never-before-released rendition of the “Batman Theme.”

When compared to the band’s prior body of work, PYLON LIVE bookends all of it; some might even say it’s a better representation of this Athens quartet, who thrived on bouncing around on stage infinitely more than sitting in a studio.

There’s little arguing that the Athens powerhouse trifecta of R.E.M., the B-52’s, and PYLON is peerless. And while all three bands have achieved great critical acclaim, only the first two had the commercial acclaim they deserved. PYLON LIVE intends to correct that.

Limited to 200 on magenta vinyl.
Limited to 200 on clear vinyl.
Unlimited on black vinyl.[
(also as downloads, maybe CDs)

Track List:

SIDE A
Working is No Problem
Driving School
No Clocks
Altitude
Gravity

SIDE B
Crazy
K
Cool
Italian Movie Theme
Buzz

SIDE C
Danger
Reptiles
Stop It
Feast On My Heart
Beep

SIDE D
M Train
Volume
Weather Radio
Party Zone
Batman

PYLON REENACTMENT SOCIETY TOUR DATES:

07/29 Atlanta, GA – The Earl
07/30 Athens, GA – 40 Watt

Listening now. Haven't heard a lot of their shows, but clear sound, music's cool & rough, not too dry, best for dancing, incl. vs. and with "Gravity": "Yew can't. Yew can't." Yes I can! Bumping into counts.

dizzy among "Reptiles," drawn into wet tunnel of pedals & bass

The gig was recorded (both audio and video) for a failed PBS pilot called Athens Shows

WANTWANTWANT VIDEO!

They have three studio albums, dagnabit!

Funny, all these years, I've been remembering a genius track on the Athens, GA: Inside/Out soundtrack, Golden as being Pylon and remembering/forgetting to search it out. Searched and now find it was Dreams So Real. Only available on the soundtrack and a bootleg cd comp Discogs lists.

I need to hear this

the live Pylon album and the Dreams So Real track

ooooh, i always forget i have a copy of inside/out, it gets buried down in the soundtracks/comps. will pull that out for today's listening, thanks.

Report back to us on that, please.
They have three studio albums, dagnabit! Yep, and Chain is worthy, but the press release is all about hyping Phase One: this is "the last show" until reuniting and it sure felt goood.

dizzy among "Reptiles," drawn into wet tunnel of pedals & bass On headphones, now think they're all fingers, fingers, fingers

Good interview--- maybe source for the press sheet's backstory of Pylon Live, but other good bits too, like debunking the source of their name, also another name they considered. w visual deal, both still worth another band/solo artist's consid:
http://www.eldredgeatl.com/2016/07/01/art-punk-perfection-deerhunters-bradford-cox-interviews-pylon/

Vanessa & Michael make a mixtape of early 80s Athens bands, comment on 'em too---some deep out-of-catalog listening here:

http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2016/07/22/pylon-a-sonic-reminiscence-of-1980s-athens-ga/

Yep, remember the names of many of those groups (the Squalls, etc.) but not the songs

Interview with Vanessa and Michael
http://observer.com/2016/07/americas-other-best-band-pylons-brilliant-punk-minimalism-lives-on/

Nice. I remember them opening for U2 at the U of MD in 83, and eventually I will find the never published interview I did with them then that was going to go in my fanzine's next issue, but we ended the zine before that could happen.

The dancing crowd shots in that Side Effects footage make me so nostalgic. That's how I spent my early 20s too.

Saw Pylon Reenactment Society the other night. The band is not quite Pylon, but they re-do the tracks pretty well, and Vanessa still powerfully switches between her screetch and a more melodic tone

In addition to the Reenactment Society tour, the Pylon Live in 83 album is out, music from "Cool" is in a Lexus commercial, and they're namedropped by young hip Baltimore post-punk artist Sneaks (recently signed to Merge)

PRS is touring again this summer.

http://www.slicingupeyeballs.com/2018/06/12/pylon-reenactment-society-tour-dates/

Chomp More disappeared from Apple Music! Gah.

Spotify too. Main thing left seems to be live album

Chomp More was on DFA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_3sPmTRsFs

live 1981

thank yoouuuu

every time this thread is revived i hope it's with footage like that

haha, were bewley and lachowski toying with the idea of coordinated stage dancing during that era? (see 7:10 in for a glimpse)

How do you guys feel about the quality of the reissues? I liked them but maybe sound a bit more dense than they should? I haven't heard the originals. Feel like I should have enjoyed these albums more.

Top 3 tracks: Yoyo, Human Body, Cool.

Kinda wish there was more stuff with the sound of the Cool/Dub single.

A Tourist in the Land of Rock 'n' Roll: Vanessa Briscoe Hay

A long interview that includes a lot of details about the early history of the band

Wow, thanks

Here's my ancient review, with a little update added to the blog archive clip:

Originally published in Village Voice,Tuesday, OCTOBER 9, 2007 AT 4 A.M.

Pylon, Gyrate Plus (DFA)

"Cool" begins with a march, which Pylon's guitar propeller finely chops, letting the chips fly and fall where they may. No hurry. But nothing too laid-back, either—not in a small Southern town, where everybody who isn't dead is aware that too-easy fuh-un is as boring as everything else. So, despite not being as biz-adaptable as Athens, GA neighbors and admirers like the B-52s and R.E.M., Pylon were and are practical, in their own way. Their lyrics have been called surreal, but it's all part of the protocol, as vocalist (and registered nurse) Vanessa Briscoe often murmurs her way into a surgical strike, around which Michael Lanchowski's bass, Curtis Crowe's drums, and Randy Bewley's guitar channel a sinuous, sensuous, yet non-anesthetic groove, on Gyrate Plus: Pylon's 1980 debut album plus bonus tracks, including earlier singles ("Cool" and the equally voracious "Dub"), now opening Gyrate's first appearance on CD. They both sneak up on "Danger," which has often infiltrated DFA/LCD Soundsystem co-founder James Murphy's DJ sets. A few tracks here are too arty-mundane, which can happen when you're flying DIY through another date with "Gravity," like this brainy slam band did around the dawn of the big '80s, briefly in the '90s, and several times since '04. But, as Vanessa growls on the previously unreleased "Functionality": "There's something to be written on the air," always, and never much room for typos.

(update: Briscoe later told an interviewer that her combo's name came from the stripey road cone, not Faulkner's novel, Still, the way that his stunt-flying crew's inner tumult added to the momentum of their unified front always has appealed as a rockband description too.)

For some reason Gyrate Plus got pulled from Spotify.

Got pulled back in June from Spotify as was noted earlier in this thread. Still not there.

Pylon founder Michael Lachowski remembers the punk band's rise and fall

https://www.redandblack.com/culture/uga-employee-and-founder-of-pylon-michael-lachowski-discusses-the/article_b5c1f5e4-efd7-11e9-8ccf-3fc7ef6cc833.html?fbclid=IwAR2oZSeqh-BhSzImZLvtsrthRmEG3eEw-F6j5MSJ2l7ki64T-RQtfB2HREo

Vanessa has been working on a Pylon timeline and asks for help filling in gaps

Nice

https://vimeo.com/411617086

part of the video from the 1983 show released as Pylon Live

Haven't had time to read all of this yet, but good, brisk-not-breathless detail so far (lots of it I didn't know), also video links:
https://slate.com/culture/2020/07/pylon-band-athens-georgia-history-video-cool-town.html
Adapted from
Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture by Grace Elizabeth Hale, in stores now from the University of North Carolina Press. Yes way overselling past the colon, but may not have been her idea---got to watch those university presslords.

https://vimeo.com/411617086

part of the video from the 1983 show released as Pylon Live

― Brad C., Thursday, May 14, 2020 7:32 AM

yes, i've had too much to drink and shit has been weird, but yes, that brought me to tears by the end. jfc

I've had Cool Town on the shelf for months and am finally three chapters in. I'm struggling here and there with Hale's romanticism and nostalgia, but that reaction has more to do with my personal perspective on the early Athens scene than with the way her utopianism occasionally drifts over the top.

As history, it's excellent, meticulous on details and documentation and (judging from what I've so far) the best account yet of how the scene evolved from the B-52s to Pylon to R.E.M. I thought Lurie's Begin the Begin was exhaustive, but Hale's broader context lets her show better how skeptically R.E.M. were received by the Pylon-centric faithful and why R.E.M. became so much more successful (tl;dr Pylon didn't have the same industry connections and weren't willing to tour pizza parlors to build a regional audience).

Pylon rules.

I somehow missed news of this book. I'm pretty much a romanticist and a nostalgist when it comes to stuff like this, so count me in.

I am torn on the romantic and nostalgic approach but want to read the book to hear more about the early days of Pylon, and yes to cherish my memories of seeing them back then and playing their music on my college radio show.

Hale was in Athens in the 80s, so some of her romantic/nostalgic tone is that of a memoir ... it combines a bit oddly with the research-backed reportage, but it's earned and she maintains a careful balance between those voices

More difficult for me are some strong claims (suggested by the subtitle) about the Athens scene's unique influence, rarity, creativity, freedom, etc. ... as a cranky old townie, my first reaction to these is rmde, but she frames her arguments in ways that are making me reflect on my skepticism, so I'm enjoying that cognitive dissonance as much as the factual content

it's too close to home for me to be objective, but just based on the quality of the writing and research, I'd recommend it to anyone into Our Band Could Be Your Life and similar books

Dissatisfaction, what?
Let's take a look at that ink
B-L-O-T

I'm tired of moving my jaw
Gonna call and pa and ma
M-A, 10 points
Mamamamamamamamamamamamama, 10 points

Life is nothing
But death and taxes
And all the trees
That get the axes
A-X-E-S
Ohhhhhh, 22

You aren't the status quo
I just thought that you
Wanted to know
N-O, 8 points
Nonononononononononononono, 8 points

Let go of my sleeve
Or I'll turn you over my knee, knee
K-N-E-E
K!

The Camaro has a
D-E-N-T
Dissatisfaction
What!

is "K" about scrabble?

Y-E-S, 6 points

https://creativeloafing.com/content-161391-vanessa-briscoe-hay-s-top-5-pylon

haha, that's awesome! the whole anecdote about the making of that song is cool:

2) "K" from the album Chomp

This song that fell together by chance. The lyrics came from a scrabble game that bassist Michael Lachowski and I played together in a session where we were consciously trying to write lyrics. When we first performed this song live, it fell completely apart. We were sort of embarrassed, but our friend John Seawright came up to us after the show and was raving about that new song. We went back and listened to the tape of it and realized that it was better than what we were originally trying to do. So we spent hours dissecting that tape and learning the song the way it accidentally happened. Chris Stamey and Gene Holder from the DBs worked with us at Mitch Easter's studio to make it happen in an interesting way.

vanessa hay is a lovely person

From Rolling Reissues, re 2020 Soul Jazz comp The World of Keith Haring: "Danger" certainly held its own among stiff competition (these are the ones I liked):
3. Pylon – Danger£0.99
6. John Sex – Bump and Grind It£0.99
8. The Girls – Jeffrey I Hear You£0.99
10. Talking Heads – I Zimbra (on CD version only)
12. Class Action – Weekend (Larry Levan Mix)
13. Adiche – Chuka-Ja (Get Ready)£0.99
15. The Golden Flamingo Orchestra – The Guardian Angel Is Watching Over Us
16. Gray – Cut It Up High Priest£0.99
19. Yoko Ono – Walking On Thin Ice

That's almost half, better than I thought.

― dow, Monday, July 27, 2020 6:41 PM (five days ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAOILacn8Dw&t

Video of full show, Cleveland, 6/22/90

let's try that YouTube link again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAOILacn8Dw&t

bah, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAOILacn8Dw&t

sigh ... search YouTube for "pylon cleveland"