![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/pylon_rs.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPylon might not have achieved the fame and notoriety of fellow Athens-based bands like R.E.M. and the B-52’s, but the funky new wave group was a beloved part of the college town’s arts and music scene. After its initial run (1978-83), the band would reunite for awhile at the end of the decade, and then again in the mid 2000s, but the 2009 death of founding guitarist Randall Bewley ended Pylon for good.<\/p>\n
Yet that wasn’t the end of the story. In 2014, The Art Rocks Athens Foundation \u2013 an organization whose mission is to unearth and catalog and showcase the art that came up around the scene in Athens \u2013 wanted some music for its annual event. Executive committee member Jason NeSmith reached out to Pylon vocalist Vanessa Briscoe Hay, asking if she was interested in performing. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI had already been playing with Vanessa in a band called Supercluster,\u201d NeSmith says, \u201cand because she’s so integral to the scene \u2013 then and now \u2013 it would have been wrong if I didn’t offer her a place to make some kind of music.\u201d Hay agreed. \u201cShowing the connection between the Athens art and music scenes between ’75 and ’85, it would be appropriate to play [the music of] Pylon,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n
But the group she put together \u2013 which includes NeSmith plus Kay Stanton, Joe Rowe and Damon Denton \u2013 wouldn’t be called Pylon. Honoring the memory of Bewley meant that using the old band’s name \u201cwouldn’t have been right or fair,\u201d Hay says. Besides, she explains, \u201cwe were having to totally re-learn all this material, so we jokingly called ourselves the Pylon Historical Reenactment Society.\u201d <\/p>\n
After what was initially planned as a one-off gig, the band dropped the \u201cHistorical\u201d from its name. In July 2015, PRS played at a party celebrating the release of Pylon Live<\/i>, an archival live album documenting a high-energy 1983 set. The party show went so well that indie band Dressy Bessy approached Hay and her band mates and invited them to do a run of live dates together. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had so much fun doing those shows that we’ve intermittently booked some more,\u201d Hay says. PRS had traveled as far as Los Angeles, Detroit and Chicago. But the group isn’t likely to mount a full tour anytime soon. \u201cTwo members have full time jobs,\u201d Hay says. \u201cAnd almost everybody is involved in another project.\u201d <\/p>\n
Pylon’s music still sounds fresh in 2017, and not as dated as many other bands of its era. \u201cIt\u2019s quality, startlingly new music even today,\u201d NeSMith says. \u201cThat’s why DFA Records re-released their records.\u201d PRS does a superb job of conjuring the spirit of prime-era Pylon, and does it without slavishly copying the original music. \u201cI’m using Randy’s tunings, and we pay homage respectfully to that sound.\u201d NeSmith says. \u201cBut we’re different people, and we also have our own idiosyncrasies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hay agrees. \u201cIf you’re going to do it,\u201d she says, \u201cyou might as well have fun with it, right?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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