by Elise Barbin (@elisecbarb)
There’s a certain, sure, seemingly pre-programmed moment in a weirdo kid’s adolescence when a realization creeps in: no one’s going to teach you how to live the life you want to live. Not your mom or your English teacher or any other reasonable adult. There starts the choreography of scavenging such knowledge. Pouring over any and all disparate scrap of writing -- magazine pages, textbook poems, zines, web pages from the nascent Internet; Spending the night inches from the TV screen with the volume hovering above audible so none of your family members wake to whatever early morning movie programming you’re imbibing; Watching other people; Copycat-ing; Comparing notes with a trusted few. Overlay these blueprints, trace the intersecting territories. That’s how you get there.
New West Records’ Pylon Box compiles a new de facto history of the Athens art punks, finally making accessible the sounds and filling in the narrative blanks of the oft underlooked group. In step with examining Pylon’s legacy among their musical peers, the retrospective box set’s insightful, 209-paged companion booklet, gills packed with photos, posters, and other knick knack accoutrements, gives view to Randy Bewley, Curtis Crowe, Vanessa Briscoe Hay, and Michael Lachowski’s own blueprint as a collective unit. The hows, whys, and every other particular of the formation to the dissolution of the band are suffice to say both unflinching to their ideals then and presciently ripe for the following now.
Pylon formed in 1978 in a near perfect storm of Athens, Georgia’s quality state-afforded art education and cheap cost of living. Maybe these environmental conditions had something to do with it, or the drinking water, or simply impeccable instincts at play, but the band slipped out of the proverbial womb alive and kicking and screeching and making galvanizing, corporeal yet conceptual music, essentially immediately. Pylon’s first recording, the newly available Razz Tapes, captures this early days kineticism, the throttled up weird energy and the tumult that the band recycled into shambolic danceteria. Side one track one of the semi-live performance cut pummels in with a four alarm guitar and a zippy counter-beat sparring against each other. Thick bass plunks patch the percussion together while vocals fall out in an enjambed, metered yawp. After listening to the thirteen tracks, you might summon a feeling of phantom soreness in the shoulders, similar to waking up after a night in the pit.
To their advantage there’s not much common convention, punk or otherwise, Pylon felt necessary to heed. The four were artists first and musicians second, possibly even third or fourth to the signifiers ‘friends’ and ‘southerners.’ Democracy and harmony among the group was of top tier importance, with equal credence to their scene, their hometown, trees, cicadas, hot summer nights, and skinny dipping. Never beholden to careerism or the consumerist approach, the band agreed to break up once it all stopped being fun. In 1983 they split after creating Gyrate and Chomp two of the best, most lasting punk records of the century - all while remaining in Athens, values untarnished.
The work by New Westof anthologizing a completist view of Pylon’s first run is an integral addition to our collective memory of post-punk as a genre and philosophy, equally. The music, back in print and available again online, will continue to punch its (heavy heavy) weight among new listeners and old admirers alike. Most importantly, the band’s blueprint permeates the feasibility of DIY ethics, no matter what you do and how you decide the doing gets done.