# Tom Lehrer lives! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 22, 2024, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905 "2024-05-22T07:45:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2024, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/1 "2024-05-22T07:45:39Z")
At ninety-frickin’-six (!) he hardly seems to have lost a step > **[‘My songs spread like herpes’: why did satirical genius Tom Lehrer swap...](https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/may/22/my-songs-spread-like-herpes-why-did-satirical-genius-tom-lehrer-swap-worldwide-fame-for-obscurity?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other)** > > In the 1950s and 60s, his songs stunned and delighted listeners with their irreverence, wit and nihilism. Then he gave it all up to teach mathematics. Lehrer is still alive at 96 – so I went in search of answers Anyone in London and able to see this show? I fondly remember seeing Tomfoolery in London in 1980, just a collection of his songs with some attempt at stagecraft. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2024, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/2 "2024-05-22T13:17:54Z")
Good grief. I had no idea; my first reaction was ‘no, he doesn’t, they must be saying that his music lives.’ Thanks for fighting my ignorance! And that’s a fascinating article. [ETA: I am nowhere near London and no will not be able to see the show. But I bet it’s a good one.] ---
**Author:** ![Roderick\_Femm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/roderick_femm/32/14875_2.png) [@Roderick\_Femm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roderick_Femm)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2024, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/3 "2024-05-22T15:36:25Z")
Nitpick on the linked Guardian article – he was already teaching math when he was writing and performing his songs. They were always a sideline, although he did a fair amount of in-person performing at his height of popularity. I have less tolerance now than I did at the time for the sort of satire that you find in many of his most popular (old) songs. Much of it seems mean-spirited to me, as if he is making fun of everyone who isn’t him. He was facile with the piano, certainly, and clever with words, and I liked him on That Was The Week That Was. Good for him for still performing. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2024, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/4 "2024-05-22T15:40:06Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > I have less tolerance now than I did at the time for the sort of satire that you find in many of his most popular (old) songs. Much of it seems mean-spirited to me, as if he is making fun of everyone who isn’t him. Seriously though, pigeons are the worst! ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2024, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/5 "2024-05-22T15:44:03Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > he was already teaching math when he was writing and performing his songs. They were always a sideline, although he did a fair amount of in-person performing at his height of popularity. From the intro to _Lobachevsky_: > I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don’t like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn’t as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, 3000 dollars a year, just teaching. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 22, 2024, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/6 "2024-05-22T20:52:33Z")
Wow, I’ve always thought of Tom Lehrer as the nicest author of biting incisive thought-provoking satire who ever lived. Well, maybe with the exception of Walt Kelly. [Here are all the song](https://tomlehrersongs.com/category/lyrics/)s, with lyrics, sheet music, and some audio. Including stuff I never heard, and I thought I was a fan. So maybe I’m missing some later stuff when he grew bitter. I’d need them specifically pointed out, though. I also think that any satirist who is not preceding “as if he is making fun of everyone who isn’t him” is by definition not a satirist at all. Can you give any examples of satirists whose work is worth listening to yet do not fit into this description? My first thought would be Walt Kelly, but at base he’s making fun of everybody who isn’t Pogo himself. Everybody is a character. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2024, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/7 "2024-05-23T23:58:18Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I also think that any satirist who is not preceding “as if he is making fun of everyone who isn’t him” is by definition not a satirist at all. This Satirists are the little boys who _shout_, not say, that the Emperor has no clothes and a laughably teeny penis. Tom was that guy for several years. To be sure, it’s easy to turn into a whiny curmudgeon from there. C.f. Andy Rooney & 60 Minutes. Still and all, Tom captured a counter culture zeitgeist that was waay out there at the time. We each could do a hell of a lot worse than to live that life. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2024, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/8 "2024-05-24T00:37:34Z")
This discussion has raised a question I’ve had for quite some time. When I was a kid, I enjoyed listening to my dad’s albums. And one of them was “Songs by Tom Lehrer” - I was initially intrigued by the cover, with a devilish Tom Lehrer at the piano, surrounded by flames, but the songs hooked me, particularly the “Hunting Song”: > [@](#): > > What a haul I made that day > I tied them to my fender, and I drove them home somehow > Two game wardens, seven hunters, and a cow > > The law was very firm, it > Took away my permit > The worst punishment I ever endured > It turned out there was a reason > Cows were out of season > And one of the hunters wasn’t insured and “I hold your hand in mine, dear”: > [@](#): > > The night you died I cut it off, > I really don’t know why, > Now every time I kiss it, > I get bloodstains on my tie. I didn’t really get “Fight Fiercely, Harvard”, and my mom wasn’t that enthusiastic about me listening to “The Old Dope Pedlar”: “Mom, what’s a dope pedlar?” But here’s the puzzle: where did my dad, in a little town in Saskatchewan, get a copy of the first pressing of Tom Lehrer’s songs? Dad did not attend Harvard, and it sounds like that’s where Lehrer peddled them, on his own dime. And I don’t think they’re the sort of thing that got a lot of mail-order advertising. So how did one of them end up in WeeTown Sask in the early 1960s? (I couldn’t find it when I was closing out Dad’s estate. No idea what happened to it.) > **[Songs by Tom Lehrer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_by_Tom_Lehrer)** > > Songs by Tom Lehrer is the debut album of musical satirist Tom Lehrer, released in 1953 on his own label, Lehrer Records. In 2004 it was included into the National Recording Registry. > Songs by Tom Lehrer was recorded in a single one-hour session on January 22, 1953, at the TransRadio studio in Boston for the total studio cost of $15. The first pressing was an issue of 400 copies, produced at Lehrer's own expense in the 10" LP record format. Records were sold for $3.50, and later $3.95. Later rel... ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2024, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/tom-lehrer-lives/1001905/9 "2024-05-24T01:02:40Z")
I have a 10" copy of it, too. A rare treasure? Don’t know. Were there multiple pressings of the 10"? It became ridiculously popular immediate. Were there any differences between them? Discogs says yes. Do I know where my copy is? Can I find it to look at the numbers in the runout? Discogs has no answer for this.