{"id":976,"date":"2016-06-22T21:05:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-22T21:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=976"},"modified":"2026-06-27T21:07:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T21:07:26","slug":"pylon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=976","title":{"rendered":"Pylon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

December 2007, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say I knew about Pylon; I was never hip enough to do that. No, the first time I heard about Pylon was from a Bill Berry interview from the early 1980s, where he said one of his favorite bands was Pylon. We don\u2019t always love the bands the bands we love love (it makes sense), but after hearing Pylon, I was smitten.<\/p>\n

I got hold of a beaten up cassette of Gyrate<\/em> and listened to it for a week straight. The music of the time was changing \u2014 college radio had filtered through and the ubiquitous top 40 was not as dominant as it once was \u2014 but nothing was like Pylon. Rhythmic, pounding, relentless. Short of Black Francis, there is no better screamer than Vanessa Briscoe Hay, who can change the dynamic of a song in an instant. Listening to Gyrate<\/em> was like seeing a UFO, it was so original and new you can\u2019t be sure it was real.<\/p>\n

Pylon had two other albums, Chomp<\/em> and Chain<\/em>, but I was never in a situation where I could see the band live. And then I moved to Athens, the band\u2019s hometown, and while a Pylon show wasn\u2019t a common occurrence, it was a possibility. In December 2007, at the 40 Watt (which was founded by Pylon drummer Curtis Crowe), it was.<\/p>\n

Some 25 years after first hearing about the band here they were in front of me, wearing red T-shirts with \u201cCool\u201d written on the front. Vanessa, Randy, Michael and Curtis, pumping out sounds as good as I imagined.<\/p>\n

All the songs I wanted to hear were there \u2014 \u201cWorking is Not Problem,\u201d \u201cRead A Book,\u201d \u201cCool,\u201d \u201cCrazy,\u201d \u201cBeep,\u201d \u201cVolume,\u201d \u201cGravity\u201d. The band was tight, what you expect from a band playing together for nearly 30 years. When \u201cStop It\u201d started the room, which was full but wasn\u2019t packed, was moving to the beat. The song starts with Vanessa singing low before her voice explodes in sharp punctuated jabs. There\u2019s nothing like it.<\/p>\n

It was one of my favorite shows, one I waited a long time to see, and one that did not disappoint. I would see the band again at Athens\u2019 Melting Point, the final Athens show before Randy died in 2009 from a heart attack. The world lost a true talent, I was just fortunate enough to see him, and his band, before he was gone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

December 2007, 40 Watt, Athens, Ga. I can\u2019t say I knew about Pylon; I was never hip enough to do that. No, the first time I heard about Pylon was from a Bill Berry interview from the early 1980s, where he said one of his favorite bands was Pylon. We don\u2019t always love the bands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":499,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[45,172],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-40-watt","tag-pylon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":977,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/976\/revisions\/977"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}