I first heard his songs when I was still in high school. They remain relevant to this day. I keep a cassette tape of Lehrer's in my fishing car. Alicia sent me this:
http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html

If you locate tapes of some of his great "poems" (The Vatican Rag, Pollution, National Brotherhood Week, Be Prepared, Rickity Tickity, Tin, etc.), please submit.

Tom's AT LEAST a master of the pop lyric, yet I think he was less well-known than, say, Randy Newman.

Bob

I've just run a Google search on "Tom Lehrer" and "audio files" and gotten a ton of hits. I'll just post a few here;
I urge you all to run the search.

There's so much great stuff of his out there. I just listened to "Lobachevsky" and my sides ache.

Tom Lehrer

Send the Marines

Pollution

Enjoy!

He's also one of the best rhymers going--"cyanide" & "try and hide", etc.

Actually I spent some time pondering one of his rhymes in "Lobachevsky": plagiarize/...evade your eyes.../shade your eyes/...made your eyes.

When he sings it, it sounds terrific, but it depends completely on what casual speech does to the final -d/initial -y combination.

I would be too inhibited to use a rhyme like that, but Lehrer's outrageousness is a huge part of the laugh.

Bob,
It's too late here for me to linger but I wanted to say thanks for this thread. Lehrer has long been one of my idols. He said what we needed to hear when we really needed to hear it and he was so funny and intelligent. He lives in my heart with Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll but more, he helped to make me feel safe because he was proof that sanity is possible.
Janet

This guy is amazing! Thanks to Shameless for starting this thread, and to Maryann for bothering to Google. I'm going to have to buy the boxed set.

Chris

In his day, Lehrer was bigger than Randy Newman in his dreams, then he just turtled in teaching at Harvard and Santa Barbara. For decades I harbored the fantasy that he would reemerge...

Gen-Xers may also remember Leher's wonderful "Silent E" song from the Electric Company...

His power lives on. My six-year-old nephew and niece (twins) are both huge fans. You should see them sing along with "pah-LOO-shin"!

Thanks!
Where others had mother goose, my brother and I grew up on Tom Lehrer.
I'm already singing his Christmas Carol around the house. Some of his
images--"Sliding down the razor blade of life"--what can I say?

His explanation of why he stopped was: "How can one write satire after
Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize?".

Janet, do you know his "Clementine"?

Has Tim heard the hunting song? Etc., etc.! Something for everyone,

Thanks again!

Martin

Martin, he wrote "That's Mathematics" in 1993, long after Kissinger's Nobel prize, to the tune of "That's Entertainment," perhaps moved by the Wiles proof of Fermat.

It's a shame, though, that he largely lost interest in writing any more songs, or possibly lost the mojo that allowed him to write them. I simply don't buy the jokey explanation that he "chose" not to write any more because Kissinger won the Nobel Prize. Like there was nothing to satire since then, right?

Bob,
of course you are right, it is a joke; he just lost his inspiration,
I guess. I have seen the wonderful video of his for Kaplansky's birthday
where he plays "That's mathematics" among other things, but I thought
that most of those compositions are older; he just added a verse for
Wiles.

Christmas time is here by golly
disapproval would be folly...

Martin

p.s. Check it out: http://www.archive.org/details/lehrer (nerd warning)

p.p.s Another link for Lehrer fans: http://www.casualhacker.net/tom.lehr.../lehrhtml.html



[This message has been edited by Martin Rocek (edited December 17, 2007).]

Martin, by the way, Lehrer was not the only singer-songwriter than Kaplansky hung out with. His daughter, Lucy Kaplansky, is a very fine singer-songwriter herself, and has pushed on despite the follies of the Nobel committee.

Martin,
Yes I do know Clementine and I agree with him about Kissinger's Peace Prize.
Janet

And don't forget the one about the nuclear arms race (still eerily relevant), "Who's Next?":

"We'll try to stay serene and calm
when Alabama gets the bomb"

So delighted that you started this.
I loved Lehrer's political songs, but also the morbid nonpolitical ones like the Irish Ballad, and this one that we used to sing at drunken parties in New Orleans:

I hold your hand in mine, dear,
I press it to my lips.
I take a healthy bite of
Your dainty fingertips.
My joy would be complete, dear,
If you were only here,
But still I keep your hand
As a precious souvenir.

The night you died I cut it off,
I really don't know why,
For now each time I kiss it
I get blood stains on my tie.
I'm sorry now I killed you,
For our love was something fine.
Until they come to get me,
I will hold your hand in mine.