Pylon Play Mercury Lounge November 7

I'm not one for "heritage rock" but I must admit I got excited today when I saw that Pylon were playing Mercury Lounge next month. They, along with the B-52s and R.E.M., put Athens, GA on the musical map and are still considered royalty there today. In fact, if you were to ask Peter Buck or Fred Schneider who the best band in Athens was, they would both probably say Pylon.

Someone else who might agree with that is James Murphy who has played their song "Danger" in his DJ sets for years. He's such a fan that DFA is reissuing Pylon's 1980 debut, Gyrate, on CD next week for the first time ever. Now called Gyrate +, it's been given the remaster-bonus-tracks treatment. Maybe they'll do the same for Pylon's 1982 album, Chomp, which features their best-known song (thanks to R.E.M.'s cover) "Crazy." We can hope. Pylon reformed in 2005 and have been playing scattered shows ever since. While they were just a little to noncommercial sounding  at the time -- maybe the only American band at the time to successfully recreate the post-punk sound on these shores -- to make it big like their Athens neighbors, but a song like "Danger" or "Cool" sound better today than most records of that time.

MP3: Pylon - Danger

MP3: Pylon - Cool

Both of those MP3s are from the non-remastered, now out-of-print Hits comp that was released in the early '90s.  Pylon play Mercury Lounge on November 7. Tickets are $12 and available at the ML box office (before 7pm) and through Ticketmaster. And you can pre-order Gyrate +.

Comments

[eddy]

melbourne (australia) band love of diagrams did a pretty good cover of "cool" on an EP released by matador earlier this year.

[Erich S]

I saw Pylon play in Austin back in '89 or '90. I have the original 7" of "Crazy." Great song and one of my favorite REM tracks...

[Gordon Lamb]

Good post but keep in mind that Pylon was not "recreating" anything. They were doing this stuff either simultaneously with other bands or, in many cases, before the big bands of the post-punk era were formed.

[m]

um, I'm guessing you don't know what "remastered" means. if it wasn't remastered, how did they get it into digital format? wow!

[bill p]

um, m, lots of the first cds (including most of the bob dylan catalog) were transfered straight from vinyl. and you can take the original masters and put that onto cd too.