
Tom Lehrer - jacquesm
http://www.casualhacker.net/tom.lehrer/
======
ZacharyPitts
While at UCSC in the early 90s, one morning I fell asleep in the front row of
desks in an empty classroom (after a long night of studying).

I was awoken some time later in a quite full of students class room by Tom
Lehrer. He stated with a smile that while my snoring had a nice rhythm, it was
drowning out his lecture.

~~~
dekhn
I took Tom's Nature of Mathematics course. Lots of fun.

------
to3m
'I know some people feel that marriage as an institution is dying out, but I
disagree and the point was driven home to me rather forcefully not long ago by
a letter I received which said: "Darling, I love you and I cannot live without
you. Marry me, or I will kill myself." Well, I was a little disturbed at that
until I took another look at the envelope and saw that it was addressed to
occupant.'

------
dang
I highly recommend this long article about him:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7580638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7580638).
The story of the master tapes in his basement is striking, but the whole
portrait is striking.

~~~
jacquesm
Ah, thanks for that! Great article.

------
dreamfactory2
I have fond childhood memories of poisoning pigeons in the park

~~~
jacquesm
The song I hope?

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mhartl
Some of you may be amused to know that Lehrer's "Fight Fiercely Harvard" [1],
written as a parody of his (and my) alma mater's traditional football fight
songs, has been enthusiastically and affectionately adopted by Harvard
students themselves, and is frequently played at games by the Harvard Band.

[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27PSHASlGUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27PSHASlGUU)

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zem
> Tom Lehrer is a comedian who has found a large group of fans all over the
> world, but embarrassingly few good webpages. This page is supposed to be
> pretty good. I even manage to update it from time to time. Thanks to
> everybody who's been sending me e-mail. I really appreciate it!

nice! i hadn't realised it, but he's absolutely right; given how popular he is
among geeks, lehrer has startlingly little about him on the web.

~~~
ghaff
He pretty much dropped out of the public eye so long ago--and did it
absolutely. In the late 70s, we tried a variety of good personal connections
to persuade him to perform at MIT and the answer was a resounding no. Add to
that a relatively small body of songs and there's just not a whole lot more to
say past a certain point.

Edit: That said, there have been a couple of in-depth articles relatively
recently. I suspect the issue is that they needed a lot of research that went
beyond easy-to-find sources.

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varelse
I got the crap kicked out of me in music class when I was 12 for playing
"National Brotherhood Week" as an example of a song I liked...

~~~
jacquesm
I'd have happily stood with you, that's my favorite by far. Be grateful that
it doesn't last all yeaaaarrrr...

Fantastic song, super sharp and as applicable as the day it was written.

~~~
hugh4
Whatever happened to National Brotherhood Week as an institution?

It seems like the sort of thing which the US could do with more of, given how
much race relations have deteriorated since the 60s.

~~~
cafard
Race relations have deteriorated since the 1960s? I agree that they aren't
superb now. But watch a little footage of what happened to protests back then,
or the reaction to Freedom Summer.

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juliangamble
Members of the corps

All hate the thought of war

They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means

Stop calling it aggression

We hate that expression

We only want the world to know

That we support the status quo

They love us everywhere we go

So when in doubt, send the Marines

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhZF66C1Dc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhZF66C1Dc)

~~~
cafard
The day after the US invaded Panama, some NPR affiliate led off a piece with a
snippet of the piano work from that. I wonder how much of the audience got
that.

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jtheory
When I was 15 or so, a teacher asked us to bring in a song making a political
statement. In class we traded and discussed them.

The kid I traded with had brought in NWA's "Fuck Tha Police." I'd brought in
Tom Lehrer's "Pollution," which I thought was funny and knew by heart already;
my parents had a moderately diverse collection of vinyl records that I'd
listened to for years, playing them low and just sitting against the speaker.

[http://www.casualhacker.net](http://www.casualhacker.net)
/tom.lehrer/the_year.html#pollution

It was an eye-opening moment -- I was a fairly solitary kid who hadn't
realized how out of step I was from most of my peers.

~~~
to3m
When I was at school we were on occasion obliged to perform musical numbers
for parents and visiting dignitaries. And thus I discovered Tom Lehrer: for
one year, one of my friends was drafted in to such a performance, that time of
`Masochism Tango'.

Heaven only knows what the parents thought about that! - since my friend
couldn't sing for shit.

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astazangasta
I was remembering Tom Lehrer fondly the other day after seeing BAM's new
production of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which has a
hilarious fight song from "Old Ivy", sending me back to TL's "Fight Fiercely
Harvard", the only Harvard 'fight song' I ever learned.

[http://www.casualhacker.net/tom.lehrer/revisited.html#harvar...](http://www.casualhacker.net/tom.lehrer/revisited.html#harvard)

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technofiend
Tom featured heavily in Dr. Demento's radio show, which is how I learned of
him. My dear aunt just emailed me about the glowing blue orc sword in a
British museum and we both agreed the only good orc is a dead orc.

We finished the email thread with a lyric repurposed from Tom's classic
_Poisoning Pigeons in the Park_ :

    
    
        We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment,
        Except for the few we take home to experiment.
    

He and his music are timeless.

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doktrin
My favorite songs of his, in no particular order :

Who's Next?, National Brotherhood Week, The Elements, The Vatican Rag,
Pollution, Send the Marines, Wernher von Braun, Be Prepared

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pdonis
One song appears to be missing: "Selling Out", which is on the first CD of the
3-CD set "The Remains of Tom Lehrer".

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sjcsjc
"It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had
been dead for two years."

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer)

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sriram_malhar
Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter actor) did Lehrer's periodic table song not too
long ago. Earnest and cute!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs)

~~~
cafard
My son was looking for something he could play to accompany a report in 8th
grade chemistry class, and after he failed to download more than the intro to
some song or another, I suggested that song. He reported that it was a hit.

~~~
sriram_malhar
8th grade? That's an impressive bit of memorization. Kudos.

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pdkl95
Tom Lehrer sang a new song a few years ago: _Sociology_

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB97Qe2D4V0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB97Qe2D4V0)

~~~
muglug
Apparently that was filmed in the '90s, at MIT.

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Moshe_Silnorin
Odd fact about Tom Lehrer, he was a mathematical prodigy who got into Harvard
at 15.

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evanpw
All of his stuff is on Spotify, in case you're not into MIDIs.

