pylon
The Reissue Section: November 2020
This month’s edition of the Reissue Section bounces all around the globe: from Athens, Ga. to Wales, from Berlin to Sacramento (and back to Athens again). Seriously, this COVID year continues to yield some of the best archival titles since they first started telling us that CDs were a dead scene. As if… Pylon – Pylon Box (New West Records) / Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth (Domino) If we’ve learned anything from the recent barrage of TV show revivals, anniversary stories and video game nostalgia, we know the early 80s brought a major cultural sea change — especially on modern rock radio, as punk took on bolder forms against the backdrop of New Wave. Pylon (of Athens, Ga.) and Young Marble Giants (of Cardiff, Wales) were way ahead of their time at that pivotal p...
Vanessa Briscoe Hay Looks Back at 40 Years of Pylon
Vanessa Briscoe Hay remembers the evening of Aug. 25, 1980, like it was yesterday. Her fledgling post-punk combo Pylon opened for its fellow Athens, Georgia trailblazers The B-52’s at no less a daunting location than Central Park for a Dr. Pepper Summer Festival. And talk about innocents abroad, she laughs. “I had to quit my job to do that concert,” the 64-year-old recalls. “We all got in a van and drove straight there, and when we got to the gates in Central Park and said we were playing with the B-52’s, they pointed us vaguely in one direction and said, ‘It’s over there, past the carousel.’ So there we were, tromping over the grass in Central Park until we finally found backstage. It was the biggest show we’d ever played, and at that point in time nobody was the least bit interested in u...
Pylon to Release Box Set With 18 Unreleased Recordings
Pylon, who emerged from Athens, Georgia as part of the early ’80s college scene that also spawned R.E.M. and the B-52s, will release an all-encompassing set titled Pylon Box on Nov. 6 via New West Records. The 47-song, four-LP box set includes their studio albums Gyrate (1980) and Chomp (1983), which have been remastered from their original tapes and will be available on vinyl for the first time in nearly 35 years. Eighteen songs on the Pylon Box are previously unreleased. The collection also includes Pylon’s first-ever recording, Razz Tape. The previously unreleased 13-track session predates the band’s 1979 debut single “Cool” (backed with “Dub”). The Pylon Box trailer can be viewed below. [embedded content] Also included is Extra, an 11-song collection featuring a recordin...
