Pylon – Volume

It should come as no surprise that I spent an inordinate amount of my time in college, following leads and going down rabbit holes in the pursuit of knowing as much as possible about anything R.E.M. related. One of those leads was Pylon.

First, there was the cover of Crazy that appeared on the B-side of the Driver 8 single. It appeared again on Dead Letter Office. I was obsessed with this song. Still am. If there were more songs like that, I needed to know them.

Then there was the movie, Athens, GA: Inside/Out. I took the train into Philadelphia and saw it at the Theater of the Living Arts, back when it was still a movie theater. I think I might have gone twice. I saw it one more time at the Waverly Theater in New York when the semester was over and I stayed with my sister at her NYU dorm for a couple days. I didn’t take notes but I had all of the bands featured in the film burned into my brain.

I am pretty sure I bought Gyrate first. To me, it lived up to the hype. It sounded totally different and I found Vanessa’s way of singing, sometimes screaming, emphasizing the wrong syllables, totally infectious.

I was amazed that these songs were created by the people I’d seen in the movie. Michael Lachowski and Vanessa Briscoe Hay looked like the most ordinary people, not people you’d expect to be praised by R.E.M. and the B-52’s as being the best live show they’d ever seen.

I also found a copy of Chomp some months later. Hearing the original version of Crazy was like discovering the song all over again. I really can’t tell you how much that song meant to me at that time in my life. Seeing Pylon live, during their reunion in 1989, at City Gardens in Trenton, NJ felt like everything had come full circle.

It doesn’t end there though. I bought the CDs Chain and Hits, then Pylon Live in 2016, and then Box, the four album box set with a fabulous accompanying book. I will be a fan and supporter for as long as I live.