"Blue" Gene Tyranny

condition (record/cover): EX / VG+ (top and bottom seams splits with tape repair and light general wear)

Robert Sheff, the Texas-born composer-pianist who took the stage name "Blue" Gene Tyranny in the late 1960s, had been Robert Ashley's closest musical collaborator since the ONCE Group days in Ann Arbor. Out of the Blue, his first solo LP, was recorded September-October 1977 at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, where Ashley had brought him to teach. The record grew out of the Trust in Rock concerts Tyranny and Peter Gordon had presented at Mills in 1976, an experiment in fusing avant-garde composition with rock band instrumentation.

Four pieces: Next Time Might Be Your Time and David Kopay (Portrait), co-produced with Gordon, feature Maggi Payne on flute and Steve Bartek (later of Oingo Boingo) on guitar; Leading a Double Life, the song-form piece, has Lynne Morrow and Jane Sharp singing over Tyranny's piano and Polymoog; the side-long Out of the Blue / A Letter from Home is a 30-minute spoken-and-played meditation on "the Doppler effect as a metaphor for the development of consciousness." Additional recording by David Behrman, Kathy Morton and Peter Gordon.