inspiration, you might gimme' a fat lip.

"The first public perfomrance of the orchestra of noise instruments took place the evening of April 21, 1914, at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan. The public pressed, thronged into the vast theater, but not to listen.--The immense crowd was already in an uproar half hour before the performance began; the first projectile began to rain upon a still closed curtain.--Thus, the audience heard nothing that evening, simply because they preferred to make their own--non-instrumental--noises!

That they whistled, howled, even that they threw things (certainly no act of heroism) after hearing something that they did not like, that could be understood..But it is difficult to understand why they should go to the theater, paying for seats, so that they could refuse to listen. But it was not reallt thepublic, that is, not the general public.

At the Dal Verme evening, it was principally the professors of the Royal Conservatory of Milan and some musicians who started the distrubance and who were the most violent in invective and insolence! They were overwhelmed, hoewever, by the formidable and infallible fists of my futurist friends, Marinetti, Boccioni, Armando Mazi, and Piatti, who plunged into the orchestra while I was onducting the last piece, The Meeting of Automobiles and Airplanes, and engaged in a terrible battle that continued even outside the theater. Eleven persons required medical attention, while the futurists, triumphant and completely unscathed, went off to sip their drinks quietly at the Cafe Savini."


(Luigi Russolo, in Polemics, Battles, and the First Performances, from The Art of Noises, Penragon Press, New York, 1986.)