(A) Introduction
A 13-year-old Frank Zappa got interested in Varese because he’d read an article describing his music as “weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds”. Funny, that’s more or less what got me interested in Zappa’s stuff…
Here’s what Zappa has to say about his first Varese record, which he’d hunted high and low for: “I would sit there every night and play it two or three times and read the liner notes over and over. I didn’t understand them at all. I didn’t know what timbre was. I never heard of polyphony. I just liked the music because it sounded good to me. I would force anybody who came over to listen to it.”
I don’t know what timbre or polyphony are either, but I’m willing to give the music a shot. Here we go!
