Tom Lehrer: Search and Destroy

Find an album with that on and buy it.

He is a cult figure! Everything he did was pretty much great, so start anywhere!

This man is a hero

(not that i'm a powell subscriber either, but i do find his career slightly weirdly intriguing)

Whenever you attend a funeral
It is sad to think that sooner 'r l-
-ater those you love will do the same for you...

--"We Will All Go Together When We Go"

Didn't Rhino put out an authoritative box set a few years back?

my personal favorites are his two self-released 10" eps. without the giveaway of the laugh track that comes with the live albums, they sound like quaint, silly parlor music, until you clue into the lyrics, at which point your head snaps.

the eps are compiled on this CD: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00000340N/102-1806050-8552167?v=glance

lyrics to "I Hold Your Hand In Mine" here:
http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/holdhand.htm

Preach it. I just went through a Tom Lehrer rediscovery phase a few months back, I hadn't listened to him in several years. All of the stuff is pretty great. I can't think of anyone besides Spike Jones who's in his league as a satirist/musician/songwriter/performer. That Was the Year That Was is more topical than the other stuff, to the extent that you might occasionally have to do a little research to figure out what he's on about (not that having to research recent American history is a bad thing), but it's still hilarious more often than not. I love his Irish murder ballad. And the hunting song. Yeah, get it all.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0037/kogan.php

There's also an unrecorded song by him that's a mnemonic for the central stations on Boston's Red Line, sung to an obvious tune--opinions vary on the exact wording, but it's something like:

H is for my alma mater, Harvard
C is for Central, next stop on the line
K is for the cozy Kendall station
C is for Charles, which overlooks the brine
P is for Park Street, mighty urban center
And W for Washington, you see
Put them all together, they spell HCKC-PW--
Which is just about what Boston means to me.

--"We Will All Go Together When We Go"

Part 3 follows immediately:
And you may have thought it tragic,
Not to mention other adjec
-tives, to think of all the weeping they will do...

Mention also needs to be made of the following verse, from "The Ballad of Hubert [Humphrey]":

"We must protest this treatment, Hubert"
Says each newspaper reader;
As someone once remarked to Schubert:
"Take us to ... your Lieder"

...he's not as funny being a social satirist as he is being a suave and refined gross-out artist... Anyway, having used gross and refined as virtual synonyms...

Come to think of it, that's also exactly the formula I use in my Analog Baroque period material. If you invent a fastidious aristocratic dandy narrator, you're doomed to end up narrating muck. Because fastidiousness and much are obviously obsessed with each other, and mutually defining, just as the extraordinarily intelligent is drawn to the incredibly stupid.

(he added fastidiously)

Gorgeously perverse music to play to the kids.

Hearts full of youth,
Hearts full of truth,
Six parts gin to one part vermouth"

Box set is worthwhile and indispensible. You really DO need all of the Tom Lehrer you can get, you just may not have realized it yet.

In honor of the season:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtZR3lJobjw

Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly,
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say "when."
Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens,
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.

On Christmas Day you can't get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore,
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.

Relations, sparing no expense'll
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
"Just the thing I need! How nice!"
It doesn't matter how sincere it
Is, nor how heartfelt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
What's important is the price.

Hark the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
God rest ye merry, merchants,
May you make the Yuletide pay.
Angels we have heard on high
Tell us to go out and buy!

So let the raucous sleigh bells jingle,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky.
Don't stand underneath when they fly by.

Brilliant!
I was singing "That's Mathematics" to myself while waiting for the tram just this morning.