It's his wonderfully laconic tone, leaning back into the Barca-Lounger of Absurdity. Was he ever around Greenwich Village? Instead of teaching math at Santa Cruz you can see hm in the Gaslight Cafe making Dave Van Ronk sound square and giving Bob Dylan an idea. And he's still around.
The Village was not his world -- and the only rooms with pianos were places like the Village Vanguard and Village Gate, where he would have been following Mingus or Coltrane, and would himself have sounded square. (Or who knows... the Kingston Trio played two weeks at the Vanguard on a double bill with Thelonius Monk, so maybe he would have fitted in.) In any case, Van Ronk was a fan of his songwriting and Pete Seeger even recorded one of his songs, back in the 1950s, but he had no interest in Van Ronk, Seeger, Dylan, or any of "that crowd."
Did you ever see Daniel Radcliffe sing “The Elements?” He does it as a party trick but he’s really good at. I was the weird kid who listened to Tom Lehrer and Alan Sherman and even old Spike Jones records at my house. My Dad liked Sinatra and Basie and my mom loved Judy Garland. I’m pretty sure that East Coast kids who liked Tom Lehrer records also listened to Jean Shepherd on WOR-AM.
I have been thinking about the songs of Tom Lehrer, too. It turns out I don't have to play them on YouTube or anything--I just flip the switch in my head and they play in my mind.
My favorite baseball book ever was Jim Bouton's Ball Four, about the 1969 baseball season, and released in 1971. He gets traded to the Astros, and they ride in the bus singing "It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be An Astro," their own re-write of It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier. All my worlds collided, and I was only 13.
I’m not familiar with Tom Lehrer, but I can confirm that I saw Bob Dylan at the Albert Hall recently and the two gents next to me spent much of the evening discussing their imminent golf holiday, and the printing of the souvenir T-shirts. I report this with no judgment.
Lehrer’s songs were the soundtrack to my elementary school years. I, too, didn’t know some of the words/concepts. EG: MLF, Transubstantiate, Masochism. A friend’s father was the inspiration for “Poisoning the Pidgins.” He was a Lehrer college roomie. Dad’s family owned a movie theater. Pidgins would gather on its roof. Their shit was eating a way at it, so Dad put poison traps to kill them.
Similarly, those albums were always on the turntable when I was growing up, I know them all by heart. Weirdly when I was actually going to UCSC I never took any classes from him, that was a major oversight on my part—I mean, I knew he was there!
He also relatively recently put all his music on his website for free, you know!
I also listened to those albums growing up — my older brother introduced me to them. And I also went to UC Santa Cruz. And I DID take a math class from Lehrer. It was math for liberal arts majors, basically. He was a good teacher. He was a witty guy who would occasionally crack a joke about how hard the math was or wasn't, but it wasn't like he was a comedian in the classroom.
It's his wonderfully laconic tone, leaning back into the Barca-Lounger of Absurdity. Was he ever around Greenwich Village? Instead of teaching math at Santa Cruz you can see hm in the Gaslight Cafe making Dave Van Ronk sound square and giving Bob Dylan an idea. And he's still around.
The Village was not his world -- and the only rooms with pianos were places like the Village Vanguard and Village Gate, where he would have been following Mingus or Coltrane, and would himself have sounded square. (Or who knows... the Kingston Trio played two weeks at the Vanguard on a double bill with Thelonius Monk, so maybe he would have fitted in.) In any case, Van Ronk was a fan of his songwriting and Pete Seeger even recorded one of his songs, back in the 1950s, but he had no interest in Van Ronk, Seeger, Dylan, or any of "that crowd."
Did you ever see Daniel Radcliffe sing “The Elements?” He does it as a party trick but he’s really good at. I was the weird kid who listened to Tom Lehrer and Alan Sherman and even old Spike Jones records at my house. My Dad liked Sinatra and Basie and my mom loved Judy Garland. I’m pretty sure that East Coast kids who liked Tom Lehrer records also listened to Jean Shepherd on WOR-AM.
Wow! Thanks for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs
I have been thinking about the songs of Tom Lehrer, too. It turns out I don't have to play them on YouTube or anything--I just flip the switch in my head and they play in my mind.
My favorite baseball book ever was Jim Bouton's Ball Four, about the 1969 baseball season, and released in 1971. He gets traded to the Astros, and they ride in the bus singing "It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be An Astro," their own re-write of It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier. All my worlds collided, and I was only 13.
https://open.substack.com/pub/johnnogowski/p/in-another-lifeme-as-rock-critic?r=7pf7u&utm_medium=ios
I’m not familiar with Tom Lehrer, but I can confirm that I saw Bob Dylan at the Albert Hall recently and the two gents next to me spent much of the evening discussing their imminent golf holiday, and the printing of the souvenir T-shirts. I report this with no judgment.
Lehrer’s songs were the soundtrack to my elementary school years. I, too, didn’t know some of the words/concepts. EG: MLF, Transubstantiate, Masochism. A friend’s father was the inspiration for “Poisoning the Pidgins.” He was a Lehrer college roomie. Dad’s family owned a movie theater. Pidgins would gather on its roof. Their shit was eating a way at it, so Dad put poison traps to kill them.
Did he ever write anything about Alexander Portnoy who, after all LOVED his liver.
Similarly, those albums were always on the turntable when I was growing up, I know them all by heart. Weirdly when I was actually going to UCSC I never took any classes from him, that was a major oversight on my part—I mean, I knew he was there!
He also relatively recently put all his music on his website for free, you know!
I also listened to those albums growing up — my older brother introduced me to them. And I also went to UC Santa Cruz. And I DID take a math class from Lehrer. It was math for liberal arts majors, basically. He was a good teacher. He was a witty guy who would occasionally crack a joke about how hard the math was or wasn't, but it wasn't like he was a comedian in the classroom.
https://tomlehrersongs.com/albums/