“Frank Zappa Presents Edgard Varèse” — a poem by Martin Agee

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Heinrich Klaffs, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Frank Zappa; December, 1971

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Frank Zappa Presents Edgard Varèse

Inspired by Alan Dugan’s “On Flowers. On Negative Evolution.”
Based on actual events

In the winter of 1981 we were hired to play Downtown—
a performance in Greenwich Village billed “Frank Zappa Presents:
a Musical Tribute to Edgard Varèse.” I sat on stage,
wearing black, tuning my violin, warming up,
looking out at the audience milling around, most of them
covered in tattoos and piercings of every body part
waiting for Frank to take the stage while the smell of weed
wafted through the hall from somewhere in the back. Frank
was nowhere to be seen, but we started playing Offrandes:
avant-garde music for Soprano and Chamber Orchestra
that Varèse wrote in 1921. Some think it sounds less like music
and more like noise, and our audience wasn’t having it.

They were there to see Frank on stage belting out
Who are the Brain Police or some other Mothers
of Invention tune and what was this classical bullshit
we were playing? Three minutes in, the smell of pot
getting thicker, they started—boos, catcalls, heckling,
bellowing: Frank! we want Frank!
Well, out walks Frank in a black tuxedo and the crowd goes nuts.
He cuts us off right in the middle of it and turns to them,
yelling back: You’re all a bunch of fucking assholes!

No Varèse, no jazz; no jazz, no Elvis; no Elvis, no Dylan;
no Dylan, no Beatles: none of us would be shit without them.
No Beatles, no Frank Zappa; no Zappa, no Mothers of Invention:
you fuckers wouldn’t have nothin’ to listen to but church hymns—
sit your loser asses down and listen to some real fucking music
with the same reverence you’d pay your own mother
for the day she labored to give birth to your sorry ass!

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Martin  Agee’s career as a professional violinist has brought him to the major concert venues, recording studios, and theatres of New York City for over thirty-five years. During his years as a professional musician, he has remained active as a writer of poetry, fiction and critical essays. His works have appeared in  Belle Ombre,  Idle Ink  and  Allegro, among others.

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Listen to the 1981 recording of Edgard Varèse’s 1921 composition of Offrandes, which Frank Zappa introduces.  The piece was written for soprano voice and chamber orchestra, which is performed here by Maureen McNalley and the Orchestra of Our Time.

 

 

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