Just For the Record locates San Antonio, Ann Arbor, Oakland, and New York City as locations where Tyranny’s compositions and collaborations developed. Filmmaker David Bernabo takes a deep dive on the recently reissued Out of the Blue and the long lost Trust In Rock concert, on the long-gestating audio storyboard The Driver’s Son, and Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives. Interwoven with discussions on Tyranny’s music is a conversation about the nature of reissues and how distribution is survival for many aging musicians. Throughout the documentary, Bay Area filmmaker K. O. Beckman’s films with Tyranny, dating back to the 70s, provide rarely-seen performances and video projects. The film features conversations with Tyranny, composer/musicians Joan La Barbara, Peter Gordon, Kyle Gann, David Grubbs, Philip Perkins, Jeff Berman, and Bill Ruyle, writer Nicole Gagne, artist Pat Oleszko, and Unseen Worlds owner Tommy McCutchon.
Buddy "The World’s Greatest Piano Player"
An opera for television by Robert Ashley. Set in the American Midwest, it is “about” bank robbery, cocktail lounges, geriatric love, adolescent elopement, the changing of the light at sundown, et al. One of the definitive text-sound compositions of the late 20th century, it has been called "the most influential music/theater/literary work of the 1980s".
Music
The story of Willard from Ashley's opera Atalanta, recounted in 3 parts.
Musician
1000 years into the future, after the Great Neutron Wars, the world is divided into desert wastelands and isolated city-states. Notorious "Desert Ranger" Kaz is forced to fight in the DeathSport, dueling on futuristic motorcycle "Death Machines". With the help of renegade vixen Deneer, Kaz must face his past and fight to save himself and his people.
