Athens in Georgia, USA, sits about 70 miles outside of Atlanta. A college town, it has a population of around 120,000 people which, were Athens in Scotland, would place it on a population graph somewhere between Paisley and Dundee. Athens’ Chamber of Commerce proudly tells you it’s a city ‘famous for great music, delicious food and the Georgia Bulldogs’, the collective noun for the city’s twenty-odd sports teams who all compete as Bulldogs; the basketballing Bulldogs, footballing Bulldogs, soccering Bulldogs…you get the idea. Its most famous musical exports are undeniably R.E.M. and the B-52s, acts who made proper impressions on both music fans and sales charts the world over. But Athens is also home to a whole raft of groups, some of whom you’ll know and love, some of whom you may keep dear to you as your own hidden favourites, some of whom will have come to your ears only via the patronage of their more-famous and influential city brethren.
R.E.M. were always generous in interviews, especially early-on, selling the entire scene they’d burst from as something to invest your listening time to, not just whichever release it was that they were supposed to be promoting at the time. They’d give local acts support slots, they’d namecheck them in print and now and again they’d cover one of their songs and put it on a B-side.
Pylon was one such group. I know nothing of Pylon other than their track Crazy, which R.E.M. covered on the flip side of Driver-8 before choosing it to open their B-sides and rarities compilation Dead Letter Office. What I do know though, is that their original version of Crazy is fantastic.
Pylon – Crazy
It’s a terrific track – surly, moody, huffy in the verses, uplifting yet melancholic in the chorus and, in its many impenetrable vocals and thick and murky jangling, something of a proto-R.E.M. track. That snaking and sliding repeating riff that plays underneath the chorus has, you’d think, exactly the sort of angle to its jangle that would make Peter Buck sit up and take serious note. I can only imagine the guitar player when they landed upon it – I bet the group played it in circles for hours, getting off on its nagging insistence and hookiness, keen to slay an unsuspecting musical landscape with its avant-Beatles majesty. Well, here they are, 40-odd years later, slaying the ears of this slow coach in a small and insignificant town on the west coast of Scotland.
When I bought Dead Letter Office (1986, maybe – it certainly wasn’t on the day of release like any of those lying internet bores who’ll try and pretend they were in from the start whenever Band X or Group Y is mentioned), I had no inclination to seek out Pylon…or Aerosmith, whose Toys In the Attic gets a glorious barroom band kicking…or even the Velvet Underground, come to that – I mean, I thought Psychocandy was wholly original FFS, but it’s since become easier than ever to find any music that was once on record. I just can’t believe it’s take me so long to find Pylon. They were there all along, patiently waiting with their Gang Of Four angularity and freeform and scraping post-punk noise…and moody, noirish 12-string thick Crazy, a song so instant and loveable that it’s now suddenly high up in my ever changing list of greatest tracks ever.
While it plays, listen out too for another R.E.M.-ish influence when, a minute and a half in, the girl’s vocals shake free from the loose and ragged duet she’s tangled in and goes full-on Patti Smith for a bit. You can see why both Buck and Stipe might enjoy it.
In Peter Buck’s liner notes for Dead Letter Office, he says of Crazy:
‘A song by Pylon. I remember hearing their version on the radio the day that Chronic Town came out and being suddenly depressed by how much better it was than our record.’
By the time R.E.M. had got around to covering Crazy (during the sessions for what would become Fables Of The Reconstruction), Pylon had been split for the best part of two years, so here were R.E.M.’s resident pop scholars, drawing attention to a group they felt hadn’t quite got the attention they deserved. Chapeau! Berry, Buck, Mills and Stipe. Chapeau!
R.E.M. – Crazy
Swimming in reverb and gothic jangle, it’s a faithful take on the original, sounding not unlike something that you might find on Fables, or even Murmur, if you hone in on its soupy quality. Mike Mills soars in parts. Stipe is suitably obtuse and mumbling. Or murmuring, even. Peter Buck though. He foregoes that magic jangling riff that underpins the original and instead plays some pleasant but pretty insignificant open-chorded shit instead. That, Peter – because I know you’re reading this – is crazy. Or not Crazy, as it goes.
