Before anybody heard of R.E.M., or the “Athens, GA music scene” for that matter, there was Pylon, who in the late 1970s pioneered the post-punk college rock scene in Athens along with The B-52s (much more on them later) and many others whose work has faded from the memories of anyone who wasn’t there when it all happened. Anyway, if you can’t appreciate the music on its own, the crass and cheeky lyrics should help you come around to this stellar body of work.
The songwriting epitomizes epitomize the attitude of those of us who grew up to become Generation X, particularly in the peculiar and insular world of Athens, Georgia, in the late 1970s and 1980s.
Working is no problem
Just as long as I keep my mind
Working in a factory
Science is so fun
There must be more than this
I need to make some home improvements
I’ll call some guys that know about it
I got to work tomorrow morning
I’ll be clean but not neat
I’m not a race car driver
Everything looks the same
I’m an advanced pronoun
I get my lessons in the rain
Putting things in boxes
I look at them and pack them
I’m not a smart person
But I try to have my fun
Destination Unknown is a story within the larger story, broken down into segments with the same basic plot structure as the entire story. Damron takes one piece of bad advice and ignores one piece of good advice (namely, the theme of the book) and runs himself into deep trouble.
In late 2017 (around the time of Chapter 9, Crazy), the minister of the church I attend, who is thanked in the Acknowledgements, gave a sermon on the Book of James, Chapter 1. After the sermon, I printed James 1:2-4 on a small piece of paper early one morning at the office and tacked it to the wall of my “work station.” This scripture served me well as time and events wore on, and became the epigraph for the story.
The Work Stations scene lays out the conclusions reached and the strategy for dealing with the post-diagnosis return to the working world. As a general rule, the dialogue in each scene is contrived except where specifically noted to the contrary. The preceding sentence demonstrates how being a lawyer never completely goes away.
The Pylon song titles as chapter titles came together beautifully, somehow, at a Starbucks in a Target store in Atlanta one afternoon in October, 2019. I had short amount of time and was struggling with the band/titles for use with Part One. I think each song captures the mood of the plot at the time within each chapter.
Combing through the old Athens ‘music scene’ videos and songs made me come to realize how much my hometown means to me. Athens has its faults, and is ‘a silly place’ (as with Camelot in Monty Python and the Holy Grail), but I say “I’m from Athens, Georgia” with pride every time someone asks.
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