Glass, Anderson, Reed, and More Join Tuli Kupferberg Benefit, 1/22

Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, and Lou Reed will join a host of others in the January 22nd concert to benefit Tuli Kupferberg. Kupferberg is an American singer songwriter and found of the band The Fugs who suffered a series of strokes in April and September 2009, leaving him blind and in need of full time nursing care. The concert will take place at St. Ann's Warehouse, Friday, January 22 at 7:30 P.M.

The full lineup will include The Fugs, John Kruth and an All Star Band, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Pete Stampfel, John Zorn. More performers have yet to be announced.

Tuli Kupferberg has been widely celebrated for writing songs such as "Nothing," "Morning Morning," "Carpe Diem," "Kill for Peace," "The Ten Commandments," "When the Mode of the Music Changes," and "CIA Man," which was featured in the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading. In 1965, he co-founded the Fugs with Ed Sanders; the band released a number of albums now considered classics before breaking up in 1969, and when they re-formed in 1984.

Beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Kupferberg became a leading Beat poet and underground publisher, with periodicals such as Birth, Swing, and the magazine Yeah. His famous 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft was published by Grove Press in 1967; and his 1001 Ways to Make Love was published by Grove in '69. He was arrested at the historic Exorcism of the Pentagon in October of 1967. Along with his songs, his poems made him an integral part of the social revolutions of the 1960s and '70s. He became a noted political cartoonist beginning around the late 1970s, and has a long running bi-weekly television show on public access in New York City. At the time of his stroke, the Fugs were completing a new album, Be Free, which the band plans to release this year.

As he convalesces at his home in New York City, Kupferberg continues to write songs. His old friend, the author Larry "Ratso" Sloman, says, "Tuli Kupferberg was a mentor to all of us who grew up in the '60s and sensed there was more to life than shuffling off to Vietnam and, if you returned, getting a job as an accountant and paying off a white picket fenced home in Levitttown. Like a Colossus he bridged the worlds of the literary Beats and the hedonistic hippies and infused his gentile, pacifist worldview into everything he did. His work would make you laugh out loud and cry inside. Watching him perform his incredible songs like "Nothing," "Morning Morning," and "Kill for Peace" with The Fugs was a cultural revelation and more mind-altering than any psychedelic. The fact that Tuli continues to make his voice heard, via You Tube, at 86, and after two debilitating strokes, makes him an American treasure and puts all of us who can still feel greatly in his debt."

Philip Glass is a composer who has written both operas and music for the Broadway stage. He composed incidental music for the Broadway productions of The Elephant Man and In the Summertime. Glass was recently honored by the Nashville Opera for holding the most successful run in their history for his opera, The Fall of the House of Usher.

Laurie Anderson, who originally trained as a sculptor, is known throughout the world as the experimental performance artist and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. She has 11 albums to her credit. www.laurieanderson.com

Tickets, whose proceeds will contribute to Kupferberg's medical expenses, are $75-$125 and are available online at www.NothingConcert.com and by phone at 718.254.8779 (Tuesday-Saturday, 1:00 P.M.-7:00 P.M.) or 866.811.4111 (extended hours Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M.-9:00 P.M.; Saturday and Sunday, 10:00 A.M.-6:00 P.M.). Tickets can also be purchased at the St. Ann's Warehouse Box Office at 38 Water Street Tuesday-Saturday, 1:00 P.M.-7:00 P.M.

 

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