Listings 34 ZIPPO SONGS: AIRS OF WAR AND LUNACY SAT., AUG. ...

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ZIPPO SONGS: AIRS OF WAR AND LUNACY

SAT., AUG. 28

PHOTO-OP

MON., AUG 30

AS NEW YORK prepares to welcome our RNC guests (or pack a suitcase and flee), artists of all sorts will be putting up shows that let the delegates, the political activists and the rest of us know exactly what's on their minds.

Don't even think about skipping town until you've seen the reprise performance of Phil Kline's Zippo Songs: Airs of War and Lunacy at Joe's Pub on Saturday. Joined once again by prime talents Theo Bleckmann (vocals), Todd Reynolds (violin) and David Cossin (percussion), the song cycle is an insightful look into the physical and mental trauma of war via the phrases Vietnam vets inscribed on their lighters. So blunt, the words are a fist in the gut, from the defiant "Been to hell/Lived to tell," to the aching, "My beloved wife/Away from you/I so much hunger/For your touch."

Connecting the events to present day, the set opens with Three Rumsfeld Songs, using actual texts from our favorite Secretary of Defense's briefings. You know, the ones that clarify so well that there are things we don't know we don't know. As Kline tells it, "I was looking for a Great Prevaricator from the Vietnam War (like General Westmoreland) to use as a prelude to the Zippo songs but I wasn't finding anything attractive to set. Meanwhile, the Iraq war was gearing up and there was Rumsfeld with his delirious circumlocutory, a veritable Gertrude Stein in the Pentagon. I couldn't resist."

Before Kline and company take the stage, Bleckmann will demonstrate all that we still haven't learned from history with performances of a few classic songs from the Weimar era by Hanns Eisler, Kurt Weill and Paul Dessau, among others.

I don't think Joe's Pub is on the approved "peaceful protester discount list," but visitors sporting RNC credentials will get a $5 discount to Monday night's performance of Conrad Cummings' Photo-Op (lyrics by James Siena) at Cornelia Street Cafe. Two singers take on the guise of a pair of political candidates and through their double speak (literally—they're often saying the same thing at the same time), the sound bites are deconstructed. Though penned in 1989, the work's satirical bite has probably only strengthened. Who can't imagine either '04 candidate standing at the podium confessing, "I believe in something/But I've forgotten what that was"?

Joe's Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. E 4th St. & Astor Pl.), 212-539-8778, 7, $15; Cornelia St. Cafe, 29 Cornelia St. (6th Ave.), 212-989-9319, 6:30 & 8:30, $15 w/a one-drink min.