Phil Kline, NYC, Jan 20
c a n t a l o u p e m u s i c,
the record label created by the founders of Bang on a Can,
presents a special performance of
Phil Kline's ZIPPO SONGS
Protest Music for 2004...A deeply moving, intense look at the poetry that
American GIs inscribed on
their lighters in Vietnam. Plus, songs on texts by Donald Rumsfeld.
at Joe's Pub
Tuesday, January 20 at 7:30 pm
Concert coincides with the 1/13/04 release date of the "Zippo Songs" CD on
Cantaloupe (CA21019), which is already making waves across the country
Admission: $15
Tele-Charge: 212-239-6200 or www.telecharge.com
Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St.: 212-539-8770 or
http://www.joespub.com/">www.joespub.com
Dinner reservations: 212-539-8778
"Zippo Songs" in the Press:
"Best of 2003" - Time Out NY 1/8/04
"Eloquently hits the mark" - Seattle Stranger 12/24/03
"Some of the most disturbing and compelling [songs] I've heard in ages" -
Philadelphia Inquirer 12/21/03
"It is memorable stuff with a pointed sense of humor.... almost cinematic" -
Tucson Citizen 12/25/03
"It all makes for a confused, unsettling and often dizzying atmosphere,
surely appropriate to the texts and the times." - New York Times "Arts & Leisure"
1/11/04
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Passionate, timely, and politically committed, composer Phil Kline's "Zippo
Songs" breathe new life into the tradition of using music as a vehicle for
social protest. "Zippo Songs" sets to music the texts that American GIs scratched
onto their lighters in Vietnam. Kline has set these profound and desperate
poems with a calm and sacred spaciousness, and they echo through the listener
as if the soldiers themselves are singing them.
Coupled with the "Zippo Songs" are Kline's "Rumsfeld Songs," music written to
texts by the blustery current Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. These
texts are taken from an infamous underground email forwarded round the globe,
called "The Poetry of Donald Rumsfeld." Kline's plainspoken settings draw a
straight line from the political speech of today back to the Vietnam era. The
performance concludes with "The End," Kline's rewriting of the landmark song by
The Doors, a milestone of Vietnam era protest music.
Kline's All-Star band includes vocalist Theo Bleckmann, percussionist David
Cossin, and violinist Todd Reynolds. Kline performs on guitars.
"A few years ago I read a story about the poems that American GIs inscribed
on their lighters in Vietnam. It seemed to me that buried somewhere in this
small body of literature was the basis for a song cycle. Since military issue
Zippos are highly collectible, they were easy to find and there were hundreds
of poems to work with. Of course, a poem on the side of a lighter can only be
so long, two or three lines, a dozen or sixteen words, and one can only extend
them so far in song. My solution was to group them by theme. Two or three
poems about hell became one lyric, four or five poems about dying became
another. Zippo Songs then began to take shape as a sequence of varied moods and
activities—getting bummed, getting high, getting horny, getting bored, dying,
finding god."
— PHIL KLINE