From the liner notes by Bob Ostertag: “All the Rage was developed from a recording I made of a riot in San Francisco in October 1991, which followed California Governor Pete Wilson’s veto of a bill designed to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination… Kronos parts were developed directly from the recorded material. In some cases, this took the form of a minutely detailed transcription of the pitch inflections of the recorded sounds. In other sections, the process from tape to string parts was more complex, and the relationship between the two less obvious. Much of the peculiar sound of this music comes from the whistles that many queers carry as a basic self-defense tool, and which emerged from peoples’ pockets by the hundreds during the riot. The whistles used in performance by the Kronos Quartet are provided by Community United Against Violence, a San-Francisco-based organization which assists victims of queer-bashings.”