Probably Vatican Rag is my favorite – I get up and dance around the room whenever that one plays – but DAMN! pretty much everything he wrote was hilarious, not to mention brilliant.
By the way, a few years ago the Boston Globe did an interview with Tom Lehrer, and it turns out that, while he’s no longer performing, his life has been a good one, and he was and still is happy in it.
Reading that made my day.
“It’s a sobering thought to realize that when Mozart, for example, was my age, he had been dead for three years.”
I’ve been using that line — with annual emendations — for nearly fifteen years now. I love it.
cher3 writes:
> Okay, it wasn’t our real fight song, but it should have been.
It appears to me that “Fight fiercely, Harvard” is indeed one of the several fight songs used at Harvard today.
I was shopping several years ago, around Christmas time. The store had a video playing; some sort of Broadway retrospective. I wasn’t paying much attention. But a few minutes later I heard Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, checked the TV, and there was someone playing the piano and singing. I knew the voice so well it was almost impossible to accept having a face to go along with it.
(The video turned out to be Hey, Mr. Producer, a tribute to Cameron Mackintosh, producer of many musicals in London’s West End. Lehrer’s best line in his intro was that after Cameron Mackintosh produced Tomfoolery, his next show was Cats, “and on the basis of those two shows, he became very wealthy, indeed.”)
I’m curious how many of the Lehrer fans here know what he looks like. And for those who are curious, a quick search turned up some video on YouTube. One of them has Lehrer doing some songs for a college math class, and includes some rarities even I hadn’t heard before.
Tom Lehrer looks (and actually sounds a bit) like Dr. Work, my US Military History prof from my sophomore year. That said, he sounds EXACTLY like a friend of mine who posesses a very similar sense of humor (though the friend in question has never sung when I’ve been within earshot).
Until I saw a picture to go along with it, I just visualized my friend tooling away on a piano, which is itself a highly entertaining mental image.
There are innocuous folk songs
But we regard them with scorn
The folks that sing them have no social conscience
Why, they don’t even care if Jimmy cracked corn …
I was brought up on Lehrer. Probably the first music I ever heard was his; the records (10" platters, which is weird) were rarely off the turntable during my childhood. My father does The Elements as a party piece. I was going to post the “sister” stanzas from Clementine - but I see kunilou already has - which is some of the cleverest rhyming ever written. I bow before his genius.
One wedding I worked last year had the bride and groom dancing to “When You Are Old and Gray” as their first dance:
That was one cool wedding.
Apparently he’s still alive . . . I wonder why he hasn’t released any new albums since the '60s?
When I was six a family from Venezuela rented a house in our neighborhood, for a few months. They had a girl around my age so my mother suggested/ordered that I invite her over to play. Since my Spanish was almost nonexistent and her English was minimal, once we finished swinging on the swings we had to do something. I suggested we sing to the record player. We spend 3 happy hours singing, mostly Send the Marines. For some unknown reason she was never allowed to play with me again. My mother tried to explain the concept of satire to me and that some people, who’s main language was not English, might not understand satire.
…For might makes right,
And till they’ve seen the light,
They’ve got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
'Till somebody we like can be elected
All we know for sure is that it evidently did not involve either Henry Kissinger or Werner Von Braun
Cite, from Wikipedia, the most reliable source known to academia.
I was a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz in the early 90’s. I sat in on a couple of classes in a non-major’s math course Lehrer taught. He also taught a course in musical theater – as I recall it required an audition to get in…
He has nothing against performing in public, he just didn’t like the life, the traveling and all… If I recall he felt that he made enough money from his albums in the 60’s that he could lead a quiet life. He once said that he liked college so much he went to graduate school, and teaching gives him the opportunity to hang out on campus (a pretty good life if you can get it…)
I’ve always dreamed of tying Mark Russell to a chair and forcing him to listen to Lehrer’s catalog over and over again until he gets it…
I remember hearing him interviewed on Dr. Demento 15 years ago (roughly). He stated that he has a hard time writing new satire, because now he just gets angry at society, and the anger shows too much in the songs, which to him, ISN’T good satire.
One of my favorite quotes, from “In Old Mexico”:
“Rover was killed by a Pontiac. And it was done with such grace, and artistry, that the witnesses awarded the driver both ears, and the tail.”
edited to add:
Oh, and you can count me as another person who was introduced to Tom Lehrer through his parents (who also brought Spike Jones and Mel Brooks/Carl Reiner’s 2013 into the house).
My parents had Tom Lehrer Revisited, even the cover and sleeve notes were hilarious. I had a road trip with a work colleague and he asked me to bring along some CDs. He’d never heard of Tom Lehrer and his reaction to I Hold your Hand in Mine was priceless.
Favorite line? Impossible, so many mentioned already. From Lobachevsky:
I was given first original paper to write.
It was on ::deep breath::
AnalyticandAlgebraicTopologyofLocallyEuclideanMetrizationofInfinitedifferentialbyRiemannianManifold.
This I know from nothing.
His version of The Elements seem to get a mention in any popular science book on the Elements or Periodic table, have a look 
Also Werner Von Braun get quoted in books about the Apollo program:
A man whose allegiance
is ruled by expedience
Call him a Nazi he won’t even frown
“Nazi schmatsie” says Werner Von Braun.
I often include Lehrer’s Pollution in concerts I give locally. I change the verse where he says…
Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink.
The breakfast garbage that you throw in to the Bay,
They drink at lunch in San Jose.
…to more appropriate local references. We have a bar/restaurant nearby called The Hitching Post, and Green Bay (city and body of water) is close, too, so the lyric goes:
Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink.
The breakfast garbage that you pitch,
They munch for lunch up at The Hitch.
or:
Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink.
The breakfast garbage that you throw away,
They drink at lunch down in Green Bay.
I hope Tom Lehrer appreciates my lyricism.
I’m sure he would - he did the same thing when HE performed Pollution.
For some reason, the line that’s been stuck in my head for about forty years is:
Or you might end up like Oedipus
I’d rather marry a duckbilled platypus
Then end up like old Oedipus Rex.
Anybody who can get a duckbilled platypus into a song, and make it rhyme with Oedipus, deserves to be beatified. At least.
I was in Jr High when the High School “cool dudes” that I hung out with (and idolized) took me to a local showing of Tom Foolery. I was hooked after that and spent many a late night listening to Dr Demento on the radio hoping to catch the fully orchestrated version of “Masochism Tango.”
Nowadays, I use Tom Lehrer songs to audition for musical farces (most recently, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) – the “smirk and a wink” quality of his songs is a huge winner with auditioners in that situation. My favorite audition piece is the last 16 bars of “Be Prepared!”…
If you’re looking for adventure of a new and different kind
And you come across a Girl Scout who is similarly inclined
Don’t be nervous, don’t be flustered, don’t be scared!
this is where I dig a condom out of my back pocket and throw it at the auditioners
Be prepared!
Oh yeah, and for all you musical types out there, I heartily recommend the book Too many songs by Tom Lehrer (with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle).
Good times =)
I don’t think this has been linked to before in this thread (at least not directly—there’s a link on the Wikipedia page), but yesterday I happened to find this video recording of Tom Lehrer performing five math songs, which is a must-see for any math geek Tom Lehrer fans.
OK, does anyone else wake up at night with a Tom Lehrer song running through his or her head?
Here’s a question that’s bugged me for some time…
What, exactly, is the omitted line in “My Home Town”? TL said he had to leave it out because the performance was being recorded. I’d love to know it. Can anyone supply it?