"Trust in Rock", 1976, photo by Pat Kelley
1976: multilateral uncertainty—economic, cultural, civic, political—a period of hiatus and inception and attendant malaise. A blur of sorts replaces the dissipating haze of the sixties, and the portent of a calcifying materialism looms shiny on the horizon. Damour, Soweto, Kampuchea and The Blanket Protest notwithstanding, the fanfare surrounding the US Bicentennial sets a high water mark of self reflexive Yankee chuff at once brazen and tone-deaf.
Amidst a whorl of upheaval, the popular (visible) music vanguard would vacillate. Miles’ tireless early seventies (de)evolutionary campaign, courting oblivion, had ground to a halt by late '75, precipitating a five year hiatus, whilst Little Stevie’s own conspicuous year-long absence ended with the arrival of the decidedly populist (and TONTO-less) Songs In The Key Of Life in Sept '76. That April had seen the recorded debut of a heretofore unknown group from Forest Hills calling themselves The Ramones (“emanating from a sullen adolescent basement of the mind”). And at the Record Plant in Sausalito, the 10th incarnation of Fleetwood Mac would transmogrify the blithe white decadence of their Imperial phase into Rumours, an album whose concisely rendered coke/soap whatsis would come to rep the decade as much as any other.
For less outsized practitioners, the climate was a might more temperate, if no less aswirl. In situ, a certain undertaking of concert-cum-vernacular music was embarked upon by two fledgling West coast composers operating on the fringes of academia with a certain theatrical bent. What resulted was something of an understated coup of affectless cross-pollination, though it was destined to be by and large forgotten, until now. The multi-evening concert presentation in question, billed evocatively as TRUST IN ROCK by co-conspirators Peter Gordon and "Blue" Gene Tyranny has been catalogued here by Unseen Worlds, and for those daft/diligent enough to investigate the results, there are dividends.
"Blue" Gene Tyranny, 1976, photo by Pat Kelley
Both Tyranny and Gordon were entwined with Robert Ashley throughout his fabled tenure at the Mills College Center for Contemporary Music, itself a defining microcosm of the post Cagean sea-change from which performance art/studies would emerge. And while their own early works via Ashley's Lovely Music imprint evince an avant-pop nexus as yet unthunk, TRUST IN ROCK's ethos seems of a different ilk, with an odd anachronistic ebb as much in play as any prevailing progressive tendencies/"me decade" zeitgeist flow. Here, a honky reduction of barrelhouse/gutbucket post-serialism is favored over faux-Carnatic drone or free jazz blurt, providing the setting for a series of rock-based and largely lyric-driven vignettes. And though there are indications of the "intellectual, sensual, whimsical information" of Ashley's work to come, a directness anterior to any overt media objective is what sets these pieces apart. The whole thing is certainly more Hoboken Saturday Night than Church of Anthrax, and recalls Rebecca and the Sunnybrook Farmers or The Terminal Barbershop as much as any seeming avant-ism preceding it.
The ensemble, fronted by vocalist Patrice Manget (whose own sardonic 'Nasty Band' were Bay Area blues rock mainstays) perform a sort of integrated songform which is in the service of neither assertion nor affirmation nor catharsis, conversely illuminating the meta qualities of the TiR appellation itself, and collectively indicating a kind of secular gospel imperative. Seamlessly integrated are poet/novelist Kathy Acker's lyrics on her then paramour Gordon's compositions, lending the proceedings a hint of prurient rhapsody which recalls Sara Kernochan's RCA albums from a couple years prior, though to call any of this personal would be misleading. It is as far removed from then au courant singer-songwriter monomania as can be (see Taxi Driver's Jackson Browne scene for a juxtaposition of context here). Rather a kind of workmanlike anonymity in service to the songs pervades, with cirrocumulus instrumental outros subsuming any conventional shape or structure on all but two pieces. In short, it is a musical theater of sorts, without a cast or narrative per se, though adhering to a script and vouchsafing a certain experience predicated on trust (rather than faith) and repeatedly culminating in a phased, almost cinematic dissolve.
Peter Gordon, 1976, photo by Pat Kelley
Although lacking the centrifugal force that was Dylan at his most messianic, it is not insignificant that the inaugural TiR presentation transpired in the wake of the second (and decidedly less celebrated) iteration of the Rolling Thunder Revue, Dylan's medicine show-styled cross-country caravan tour. What had begun as an outgrowth of the sprawling Desire sessions in NYC in '75 ended up snowballing into an insular theatrical jalopy of sorts, combining elements of vaudeville, pantomime, and a parochial yankee glam haphazardly refined. And whilst perhaps Leon Russell's Mad Dogs And Englishmen, Delaney and Bonnie/Derek & The Dominos or Sal Valentino's Stoneground had all set a kind of precedent/bar for such white rockist gaggling, there is something in the diffuse hegemony of RTR that sets it apart. At its core a loose amalgam of musicians led by Bobby Neuwirth and collectively known as GUAM functioned as a kind of house band, performing the dual duty opening set/s with sundry guests and culminating each night in extended, radically reworked, and often ecstatic full-tilt renditions of Dylan material with Bob at the helm. That GUAM, which would evolve (sans Dylan/Neuwirth) into The Alpha Band, shares a certain stylistic conceit with the post-Prime Movers pre-Love Of Life Orchestra iteration of Tyranny and Gordon's TiR is food for thought.
The idea of “Rock” today lives on primarily in the form of superlative or cliché. Long gone is the dichotomy of mods and rockers, or the idealized (if objectionable) “Sweet Little Rock & Roller”, and the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park did little more than to put the self-replenishing parade of philistines on full view (and not for the last time). But where the rock festival of yore begat Bonnaroo, Burning Man, and finally Fyre, the exclusive/internal Gresham-esque carny trappings of RTR seem simply to have dissolved into myth, at once quaint and cringey, a feature perhaps built-in to its weird, fleeting, Manifest Destiny-like ethos.
Whilst the myth of RTR, as with all things Dylan, has become part of an accepted sprawling narrative (one best received via the ‘76 NBC TV special or the closeted opus Renaldo and Clara, rather than the criminally stupid 2019 Scorsese misfire), the fate of TiR is something other, parcel to a futur antérieur, less a footnote than a bookmark. The context in which the attendant circumstances were created will be foreign to us now, though it be increasingly tempting to believe that all can be inferred. Certainly to “Trust in rock, your new concept in music” can only be taken now as anachronistic at best. Or is there more to it? Some of this music (“Machomusic”, “Intervallic Expansion”, the beautiful “Next Time Might Be Your Time”) would achieve relative permanence on future releases by Tyranny/Gordon, and time’s piling on, with the dustbins of history following suit. But Trust in Rock remains an Event, a decision to differentiate, a nexus-within-a-nexus indicating change as well as simultaneity. And we, who may still place that Trust here, endure accordingly.