Crasses et Voluptés

Trust in Rock is a recording of the final night of a concert given November 4-6, 1976, in Gallery A of the University Art Museum in Berkeley, California, featuring composer-performers “Blue” Gene Tyranny (Robert Sheff) on piano and synthesizer, and Peter Gordon on tenor sax.

Trust in Rock was Gordon’s media-satiric name for it, though it wasn’t exactly what most people thought of as “rock” at the time. The very use of the word was startling, though; even as rock dominated the music business, it was pretty much taboo in even the hippest college composition classes at the time, even those specializing in the intentionally vague label of “new music.” Gordon, who was 25 at the time, had bailed on academia and was hanging with Arthur Russell and Rhys Chatham in New York, while Tyranny, 31, had left Iggy Pop’s band three years previously. The East Village / SoHo scene was in its early stages, as was punk.

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