Album Review: Pylon Live by Pylon

Every scene has a spirit. In New York and Los Angeles, it’s all about competition, turf wars fought with guitar riffs and unique aesthetics, while San Francisco runs on free love and open-mindedness. In Athens, Georgia — the laid-back, Southern college town that may have midwifed alternative rock as we know it — community and respect are everything, especially in a town full of talented musicians.

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The B-52s were the first band to break out of the Athens, Georgia new wave scene in the late '70s, and R.E.M. would become the city's greatest musical ambassadors. But in many respects, Pylon were not only the best Athens band, but one that truly reflected the very individual aesthetic behind the city's music scene. Pylon's deep, bass-heavy rhythms made them an ideal dance band for the smart and idiosyncratic, qualities that have always marked the town's best music.

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In the 33 years that have passed since their initial dissolution, the Athens, Georgia post-punk outfit Pylon have become one of the best-remembered forgotten bands, a group that initially survived through namedrops—notably, from their far-more-famous local contemporaries in R. E. M.

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Pylon—Live (Chunklet World Industries)For a really important band, Pylon didn’t leave much behind — two full-lengths from the heyday, a smattering of singles, a reunion album, the best-of retrospective Hits and the DFA reissues. That was it, up to now, for an outfit that a lot of people considered the very best of a 1980s Athens, Georgia post-punk scene whose more commercially successful denizens included R.E.M. and the B-52s.There is, particularly, not much public record of the band’s live performance, though a couple of videos from 1980 (see “Volume” and “Danger”) give an inkling of the band’s feral energy.

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