Great songs from Tom Lehrer
Bookworm on Mar 04 2008 at 8:44 pm | Filed under: Silly Stuff
I was disappointed to read that he’s an Obama man, but in his heyday, there were few like Tom Lehrer. Here are a couple of my favorites. The first is the The Elements:
And here is one of the lesser known songs, but one of my favorites, Oedipus Rex:
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4 Responses to “Great songs from Tom Lehrer”
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Lehrer is brilliant, inspite of being annoyingly liberal. I think he was a math professor at MIT.
Partially due to my own time in the military, my favorite songs of his are in ascending order “MLF” (Multilateral Force) “Whose Next?” and “Nostalgic Songs for World War III”.
Al
I had a Tom Lehrer album many years ago. I still remember “Poisoning Pigeons In The Park” fondly.
I loved the video for the Elements song! Did you notice Silicon and Plutonium? The Elements song is about the only one of his songs that I never memorized.
I grew up on Tom Lehrer. My parents always skipped the song about Oedipus Rex, but I listened to it when they weren’t around.
When I was in grad school, and sang one of Tom Lehrer’s songs (Poisoning Pigeons in the Park ??) my roommate said that I had bad parents to have exposed me to such songs! My point of view was that Tom Lehrer songs were as cherished a childhood memory as were birthday parties or visits from grandparents.
Someone asked Tom Lehrer why he stopped composing his songs, and he replied that he did so because his satirical songs had become reality. The Old Dope Peddler had a different reality in the 1950s than it did in later decades, for example.
I read another commentary which said that with the bursting of the liberal consensus in the 1960s, and the rise of the New Left, there was no longer a common point of reference.
While I didn’t like it at the time, his song The Folk Song Army, perhaps because it hit too close to home, the following is still relevant today.
We are the folk song army,
Every one of us cares.
We all hate poverty, war, and injustice
Unlike the rest of you squares.
I have often thought of these lines in recent years. It describes the self-righteousness of many on the left to a T.
I grew up on Tom Lehrer. I memorized all his songs except for The Elements. Great video- did you notice Silicon and Plutonium?
When I sang a Tom Lehrer song around the house, a roommate during my grad school days, shocked by the lyrics ( Poisoning Pigeons in the Park?) remarked to me that my parents had neglected their parental duties by exposing me to such music