[shivohum]

I love this guy! What a wonderful satirist and musician. He composed and performed briefly in the 60s and then stopped. If you haven't heard him, and you want smart, funny, melodic, intelligent songs (much better than Weird Al), try practically anything by him.

Any other Lehrer fans out there? Any recommendations for other musicians like this guy?

 

[Hirsch]

Yep. There's a recent box set that contains all of Tom Lehrer's recorded works...a must have. I remember him from way back (Anyone else remember the old show "That Was The Week That Was", which featured his songs occasionally?). My parents had his albums on old open reel tapes.

I can't think of anyone like him, but free association leads me to PDQ Bach, aka Peter Schickele. While Lehrer's humor comes from his lyrics and deadpan performance, the PDQ Bach albums take their humor from the music in its entirety, with hilarious arrangements of various forms of classical music.

 

[Cousin Eddie]

I think that he did a good job with MacNielle on the News Hour show on PBS. I really liked News Hour because they were both really serious all the time. They didn't mess around. They just told the news, that was it. It didn't matter if they were reporting on an earthquake or Congress voting on some obscure legislation, they showed no emotion whatsoever. But I'm a little ashamed to admit, even after all those years they were on, I never knew which one was MacNeille and which one was Lehrer.

 

[Wes]

Closest to Lehrer that I can think of is a British pair called Flanders and Swann, also briefly successful in the late '60's with maybe three or four albums out. They are less satirical than Lehrer, more in the pure nonsense vein. Nevertheless, they did a song based on "This Old Man" about de Gaulle that was devastating.

To raise the level of silliness still higher, I might ask if there are any "Goon Show" fans around here.

 

[neil]

My favorite Lehrer is when he moderated the vice presidential debates -- I mean, that guy was in rare form, and the way that he projected his voice -- makes my Grados boom.

Okedoke.. that's it for my dumb humor.

 

[dngl]

I have a songbook for piano with a bunch of his songs... i like his boyscout one the most

 

[Cousin Eddie]

I agree that Lehrer did a great job with the vice presidential debates. The questions he asked were tough, yet fair. I think those were the debates that Admiral Stockdale participated in. That made Lehrer's job even tougher because there were 3 people. And Admiral Stockdale kept going to sleep and saying thing like "I'm in a ping pong match". But I thought that is was MacNeille that did those debates. I never knew which one was which.

 

[shivohum]

The Lehrer who moderated the debates and is in the MacNeal/Lehrer show is Jim Lehrer, I think -- not Tom Lehrer.

 

[Cousin Eddie]

Thanks for the information, shivohum. So the Lehrer that Neil and I are big fans of is not even the same person as the one everyone else was talking about?! Anyway, I'm happy I found out before I went ahead and ordered the box set.

 

[chadbang]

I bought the Tom Lehrer box set last xmas. Loved his stuff since I was a kid, and the material still holds up today. I think it's because cynicism never dies! Even Tom Lehrer's voice has a slightly snide, intellectual bent (He was a graduate student at Harvard when he was sucked into entertainment). Even though his songs would be considered "tame" because of a lack of scatalogical humor, in these politically correct times, I don't think there's even any contemporary humorists who is as flippant about drugs, pedophilia, necrophilia, racism and all those good things as Lehrer was. He's great.

 

[shivohum]

Speaking of Jim Lehrer and the debates, I sincerely hope all of you had a chance to see the TRUE transcript of the debate between Bush and Gore... - see http://libpub.dispatch.com/cgi-bin/d...59:3:148762:6:

 

[Audio Redneck]

He is a riot! I have a Dr. Demento Show album that has part of an interview with him.

Other T.L. items to look for are recordings of "Tom Foolery". This was a musical/acting troop that made a musical play based on T.L. songs. William Conrad plays some of their skits on Weekend Radio on NPR/PRI stations sometimes (show is produced in Cinncinati).

Does anybody remember watching the Electric Company on PBS in the Late '70's-early 80's? Remember the song about Silent E? I would swear that was T.L. singing and its just wacky enough to be him. I think that show was produce in Boston and Tom was(is?) a math professor there at Cambridge (and he was when he made the 3 records he put out).

Other recommendations for Tom Lehrer fans:
Stan Freberg
Al Sherman

 

[shivohum]

Tom Lehrer did indeed write and perform for the Electric Company -- Silent E, the O-U song, a song about S-N, a song about LY, you get the picture. All great songs!

What surprises me about Lehrer is just how addictive his novelty stuff is. His hilarious lyrics and his wonderful tunes are deceptively light, for every time I listen to them I seem to discover something new and enjoyable about the performances.