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Howard L. Kaplan
Songwriter and Occasional Performer
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I have been writing songs since the late 1970s. I
have now written about 100, depending on how you count them. My first
few significant songs were all about frogs, before I learned I could also
write about other subjects. The left-hand image above was one I commissioned
for the cover of a very limited-edition, not very good cassette in 1982; I
added colour to the outline when I created the web site.
These are some of the recurring themes in my songs:
- Frogs
- Other animal species (e.g. earthworms, starfish, dung
beetles, porcupines)
- Safe sex
- The environment
- Changes of the season (especially winter solstice)
- Science and medicine
- Growing older
- Reworkings of traditional ballads
I have posted lead sheets, MIDI files, and .mp3 files for many of these songs
on the general songsheets page.
I often like to write songs that are heavily researched.
I cite the references on the songsheets and sometimes
even in the song itself, as in this example from "The ex-arboureal porcupine
blues":
I've a major reference to cite for you before I close:
The North American Porcupine, by Uldis Roze.
I don't perform in public very often. My most regular appearances are at
1001 Friday Nights of Storytelling
in Toronto, a weekly event where I contribute something perhaps 20 times
each year.
I recorded two cassettes in 1998. I'm not seriously trying to
sell the few remaining copies of the first one, but I will sell them
if asked. There are no copies of the second one left. As I post the lead
sheets for these songs on the web site, I also post the .mp3 files from
those cassettes, to save us both the trouble of moving physical product
around unnecessarily. You can find the links to those .mp3 files on
either the lyrics page or the product order page, following the links below.
ELEVEN SONGS that I'm not planning to release on CD
during the remainder of the second millennium (ITCFS001)
[Note: as of January 2000, I do not yet have any plans
to release them on CD during this millennium, either!]
View the lyrics
Order the cassette
-- three-and-a-fraction scientifically respectable frog songs (ITCFS002)
View the lyrics
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