"Without knowing it, “Blue” Gene Tyranny provided my first education in American 20th Century Classical music. Many evenings in high school were spent cross-referencing musicians listed in allmusicguide.com where Tyranny’s album reviews took up a lot of real estate. I would tab over to Audiogalaxy to see if the music that I was reading about was available for download. Much of it was! This process changed my life. Many of these musical finds are still with me today, albeit in multiple physical, legally purchased forms on the bookshelf. I knew “Blue” was a composer, but I thought of him as a writer first and, thus, frequently passed up his records at the record store. I bought Robert Ashley’s Celestial Excursions. I didn’t understand it. I was attracted to the Phil Makanna photograph on the cover of The Somewhere Songs/The Invention of Memory. I looked at it for years before buying it. Popping it in the car CD player, I was disappointed, thinking, “I didn’t sign up for stories about aliens.” Then the fourth track came on, and I melted, overwhelmed by the beauty and grace of the chords, the sequence and pacing. That song--“Now Minus One”--was the key. It unlocked an intense appreciation for all of “Blue”’s music and the music of Robert Ashley and Jacqueline Humbert and Sam Ashley and others. And that’s the song that opens the film."
