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Tom Lehrer
I'd like to introduce now the featured artist of this evening's... ordeal. I'm sure that you'll all agree without any hesitation that Tom Lehrer is the most brilliant creative genius that America has produced in almost 200 years, so perhaps a few words of biographical background might not be amiss. Endowed by nature with perhaps the most glorious baritone voice to be heard on an American stage since the memorable concert debut in 1835 of Millard Fillmore; endowed also with twelve incredibly agile fingers; Mr. Lehrer has had a long and varied career in the field of entertainment starting with nine years at Harvard University... where it was that he first decided to devote his life to what has since become a rather successful scientific project - namely, the attempt to prolong adolescence beyond all previous limits.
Even before he came to Harvard, however, he was well known in academic circles for his masterly translation into Latin of The Wizard of Oz, which remains even today the standard Latin version of that work. A few years ago he was inducted... forcibly... into the United States Army and spent most of his indenture in Washington as sort of Army liaison to the Office of Naval Contemplation. About his service record he is justifiably modest, but it is known that in a short time he rose to the rank of brigadier general. However, before he could acquire a tenure, he was discharged, and owing to nepotism and intrigue, he emerged with only the rank of specialist 3rd class, which was roughly equivalent to the rank of corporal without portfolio.
But to return to his career in show business: for several years he toured vaudeville theaters with an act consisting of impressions of people in the last throes of various diseases. I'm sure that many of you here tonight still recall with pleasure his memorable diphtheria imitation. He is generally acknowledged to be the dean of living American composers, and is currently working on a musical comedy based on the life of Adolf Hitler.
Seriously, Tom Lehrer is one of the great satirists of the modern age, although he claims that the reason he no longer pens his sarcastic, misrhymed melodies is that satire is dead. It died, he claims, "when Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize." It's hard to argue with that, so I won't even try. Instead, here are some of Tom's best-known and -loved lyrics. Mostly, they still seem as fresh and relevant today as ever, but where elucidation is required, I have, in places, added some notes to aid understanding.
So, without further ado... Tom Lehrer!
Tom Lehrer Revisited
| I Wanna Go Back to Dixie | The Wild West is Where I Wanna Be | Lobachevsky | The Irish Ballad | I Hold Your Hand In Mine |
An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer
| Bright College Days | It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier | The Masochism Tango | Poisoning Pigeons in the Park | We Will All Go Together When We Go |
I Wanna Go Back to Dixie
Well, what I like to do on formal occasions like this is to take some of the various types of songs that we all know and presumably love, and, as it were, to kick them when they're down. I find that if you take the various popular song forms to their logical extremes, you can arrive at almost anything from the ridiculous to the obscene, or - as they say in New York - sophisticated. I'd like to illustrate with several hundred examples for you this evening - first of all, the southern type song about the wonders of the American south. But it's always seemed to me that most of these songs really don't go far enough. The following song, on the other hand, goes too far. It's called I Wanna Go Back To Dixie.
I wanna go back to Dixie,
Take me back to dear ol' Dixie,
That's the only li'l ol' place for li'l ol' me.
Ol' times there are not forgotten,
Whuppin' slaves and sellin' cotton,
And waitin' for the Robert E. Lee.
(It was never there on time).
I'll go back to the Swanee,
Where pellagra makes you scrawny,
And the Honeysuckle clutters up the vine.
I really am a-fixin'
To go home and start a-mixin'
Down below that Mason-Dixon line1.
Oh, poll tax, how I love ya, how I love ya,
My dear old poll tax.
Won'tcha come with me to Alabammy,
Back to the arms of my dear ol' Mammy,
Her cookin's lousy and her hands are clammy,
But what the hell, it's home.
Yes, for paradise the Southland is my nominee.
Jes' give me a ham hock and a grit of hominy.
I wanna go back to Dixie,
I wanna be a dixie pixie,
And eat cornpone 'til it's comin' outta my ears.
I wanna talk with Southern gentlemen,
And put that white sheet on again,
I ain't seen one good lynchin' in years.
The land of the boll weevil,
Where the laws are medieval,
Is callin' me to come and nevermore roam.
I wanna go back to the Southland,
That "y'all" and "shet-ma-mouth" land,
Be it ever so decadent,
There's no place like home.
1: The Mason-Dixon line was the line that divided North from South during the American Civil War
The Wild West Is Where I Wanna Be
Now if I may indulge in a bit of personal history, a few years ago I worked for a while at the Los Alamos scientific laboratory in New Mexico. I had a job there as a spy. No, I guess you know that the staff out there at that time was composed almost exclusively of spies... of one persuasion or another. And, while I was out there, I came to realize how much the Wild West had changed since the good old days of Wyatt Earp and Home on the Range, and here then is a modern cowboy ballad commemorating that delightful metamorphosis, called The Wild West Is Where I Wanna Be.
Along the trail you'll find me lopin',
Where the spaces are wide open,
In the land of the old A.E.C.1 (yea-hah!)
Where the scenery's attractive,
And the air is radioactive,
Oh, the wild west is where I wanna be.
'mid the sagebrush and the cactus,
I'll watch the fellas practice,
Droppin' bombs through the clean desert breeze.
I'll have on my sombrero,
And of course I'll wear a pair o'
Levis over my lead B.V.D.'s.
I will leave the city's rush,
Leave the fancy and the plush,
Leave the snow and leave the slush,
And the crowds.
I will seek the desert's hush,
Where the scenery is lush,
How I long to see the mush-
room clouds.
'mid the yuccas and the thistles
I'll watch the guided missiles,
While the old F.B.I. watches me. (yea-hah!)
Yes, I'll soon make my appearance,
(Soon as I can get my clearance),
'Cause the wild west is where I wanna be.
Lobachevsky
For many years now, Mr. Danny Kaye, who has been my particular idol since childbirth, has been doing a routine about the great Russian director Stanislavsky and the secret of success in the acting profession. And I thought it would be interesting to stea... to adapt this idea to the field of mathematics. I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, 3000 dollars a year just teaching. Be that as it may, some of you may have had occasion to run into mathematicians and to wonder therefore how they got that way, and here, in partial explanation perhaps, is the story of the great Russian mathematician Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky.1
Who made me the genius I am today?
The mathematician that others all quote?
Who's the professor that made me that way?
The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat.
One man deserves the credit,
One man deserves the blame,
And Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name, hoy!
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachev--
I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics:
Plagiarize!
Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize...
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.
And ever since I meet this man,
My life is not the same,
And Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name, hoy!
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachev--
I am never forget the day I am given first original paper to write.
It was on analytic and algebraic topology of locally Euclidean parameterization of infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifold.
Bozhe moi!
This I know from nothing.
But I think of great Lobachevsky and get idea - ahah!
I have a friend in Minsk,
Who has a friend in Pinsk,
Whose friend in Omsk,
Has friend in Tomsk,
With friend in Akmolinsk.
His friend in Alexandrovsk,
Has friend in Petropavlovsk,
Whose friend somehow,
Is solving now,
The problem in Dnepropetrovsk.
And when his work is done -
Ha ha! - begins the fun.
From Dnepropetrovsk,
To Petropavlovsk,
By way of Iliysk,
And Novorossiysk,
To Alexandrovsk to Akmolinsk,
To Tomsk, to Omsk,
To Pinsk, to Minsk,
To me the news will run,
Yes, to me the news will run!
And then I write,
By morning, night,
And afternoon,
And pretty soon,
My name in Dnepropetrovsk is cursed,
When he finds out I published first!
And who made me a big success,
And brought me wealth and fame?
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name, hoy!
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachev...
I am never forget the day my first book is published.
Every chapter I stole from somewhere else.
Index I copy from old Vladivostok telephone directory.
This book was sensational!
Pravda - ah, Pravda - Pravda said: Russian gibberish... it stinks.
But Izvestia! Izvestia said: Russian gibberish... it stinks.
Metro-Goldwyn-Moskva buys movie rights for six million roubles,
Changing title to 'The Eternal Triangle',
With Brigitte Bardot playing part of hypotenuse.
And who deserves the credit?
And who deserves the blame?
Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky is his name.
Hoy!
1: Nikolai Ivanovitch Lobachevsky was a real Russian mathematician. His most famous acheivement was to publish a revolutionary paper, entitled "Geometriya", on non-Euclidean geometries - that is, geometries such as the surface of a sphere, on which parallel lines intersect and the angles of a triangle do not add up to 180 degrees. It was later discovered that he had been in correspondence with the famous scientist Karl Gauss, who had formulated many of these ideas, but had been afraid to publish them in the face of the mathematical orthdoxy of the time, which held up Euclidean geometry as infallible. Lobachevsky is still respected, both for mathematical discoveries made in his own right, and for having the courage to publish "Geometriya". Accusing him of plaigarism makes for a very funny song - however, it is very unfair.
The Irish Ballad
Now I'd like to turn to the folk song, which has become in recent years the particularly fashionable form of idiocy among the self-styled intellectual. We find that people who deplore the level of current popular songs - although I admit they do seem to be recording almost anything these days. Have you heard Sesue Hayakawa's record of Remember Pearl Harbor? These same people who deplore the level of current popular songs and yet will sit around enthralled singing Jimmy Crack Corn and I Don't Care or Green Grow The Rushes, Oh! - whatever that means. At any rate, for this elite I have here an ancient Irish ballad, which was written a few years ago, and which is replete with all the accoutrements of this art form. In particular, it has a sort of idiotic refrain, in this case 'rickety-tickety-tin', you'll notice cropping up from time to time, running through, I might add, interminable verses, the large number of verses being a feature expressly designed to please the true devotees of the folk song, who seem to find singing fifty verses of On Top Of Old Smokey is twice as enjoyable as singing twenty-five. This type of song also has what is known technically in music as a modal tune, which means - for the benefit of any layman who may have wandered in this evening - that I play a wrong note every now and then.
[Begins to play the piano, then stops]
This song though does differ strikingly from the genuine folk ballad in that in
this song the words which are supposed to rhyme - actually do.
[Piano again]
I, ah, I really should say that I do not direct these remarks against the vast army of folk song lovers, but
merely against that peculiar hard core who seem to equate authenticity with artistic merit and illiteracy with charm.
[And more piano...]
Oh, one more thing. One of the more important aspects of public folk singing is audience participation,
and this happens to be a good song for group singing. So if any of you feel like joining in with me on
this song, I'd appreciate it if you would leave - right now.
About a maid I'll sing a song,
Sing rickety-tickety-tin,
About a maid I'll sing a song,
Who didn't have her family long.
Not only did she do them wrong,
She did ev'ryone of them in, them in,
She did ev'ryone of them in.
One morning in a fit of pique,
Sing rickety-tickety-tin,
One morning in a fit of pique,
She drowned her father in the creek.
The water tasted bad for a week,
And we had to make do with gin, with gin,
We had to make do with gin.
Her mother she could never stand,
Sing rickety-tickety-tin,
Her mother she cold never stand,
And so a cyanide soup she planned.
The mother died with a spoon in her hand,
And her face in a hideous grin, a grin,
Her face in a hideous grin.
She set her sister's hair on fire,
Sing rickety-tickety-tin,
She set her sister's hair on fire,
And as the smoke and flame rose high'r,
Danced around the funeral pyre,
Playin' a violin, -olin,
Playin' a violin.
She weighted her brother down with stones,
Rickety-tickety-tin,
She weighted her brother down with stones,
And sent him off to Davy Jones.
All they ever found were some bones,
And occasional pieces of skin, of skin,
Occasional pieces of skin.
One day when she had nothing to do,
Sing rickety-tickety-tin,
One day when she had nothing to do,
She cut her baby brother in two,
And served him up as an Irish stew,
And invited the neighbours in, -bours in,
Invited the neighbours in.
And when at last the police came by,
Sing rickety-tickety-tin,
And when at last the police came by,
Her little pranks she did not deny,
To do so she would have had to lie,
And lying, she knew, was a sin, a sin,
Lying, she knew, was a sin.
My tragic tale, I won't prolong,
Rickety-tickety-tin,
My tragic tale I won't prolong,
And if you do not enjoy the song,
You've yourselves to blame if it's too long,
You should never have let me begin, begin,
You should never have let me begin.
I Hold Your Hand in Mine
One more love song. I generally like to include at least one or two love songs in the evening's program, partly perhaps to convince people that even at the Harvard University Graduate School, that hotbed of celibacy that I used to call home, we did have our moments. This one is a tender ballad entitled simply I Hold Your Hand In Mine.
I hold your hand in mine, dear,
I press it to my lips.
I take a healthy bite,
From your dainty fingertips.
My joy would be complete, dear,
If you were only here,
But still I keep your hand,
As a precious souvenir.
The night you died I cut it off,
I really don't know why.
For now each time I kiss it,
I get bloodstains on my tie.
I'm sorry now I killed you,
For our love was something fine,
And till they come to get me,
I shall hold your hand in mine.
Bright College Days
Thank you. For my first encore I'd like to turn to a type of song that people like myself find ourselves subjected to with increasing frequency as time goes on, and that is the college alma mater. You'll find yourself at a reunion of grads - and old undergrads - and somebody will start croaking out one of these things and everyone will gradually join in - each in his own key, of course - until the place is just soggy with nostalgia. Well, a typical such song might be called Bright College Days, and might go like this.
Bright college days, oh, carefree days that fly,
To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high.
[Takes off his glasses and holds them up]
Let's drink a toast as each of us recalls
Ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.
Turn on the spigot,
Pour the beer and swig it,
And gaudeamus igit-
ur1.
Here's to parties we tossed,
To the games that we lost,
We shall claim that we won them some day.
To the girls young and sweet,
To the spacious back seat
Of our roommate's beat-up Chevrolet.
To the beer and benzedrine,
To the way that the dean
Tried so hard to be pals with us all.
To excuses we fibbed,
To the papers we cribbed
From the genius who lived down the hall.
To the tables down at Morey's (wherever that may be)
Let us drink a toast to all we love the best.
We will sleep through all the lectures,
And cheat on the exams,
And we'll pass, and be forgotten with the rest.
Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife.
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life.
[Much laughter from the audience]
Ready?
But as we go our sordid sep'rate ways,
We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden college days.
Hearts full of youth,
Hearts full of truth,
Six parts gin to one part vermouth.
1: 'Gaudeamus igitur juvenes dum sumus' is the Latin motto of Havard University - it means, 'Let us enjoy ourselves while we are young.'
It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier
I have only comparatively recently emerged from the United States army, so that I am now of course in the radioactive reserve and, the usual jokes about the army aside, one of the many fine things one has to admit is the way that the army has carried the American democratic ideal to its logical conclusion in the sense that not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, and color, but also on the grounds of ability. Be that as it may, some of you may recall the publicity a few years ago about the army's search for an official army song to be the counterpart of the navy's Anchors Aweigh! and the airforce's Up In The Air Junior Birdman song. I was in basic training at the time and I recall our platoon sergeant, who was an unfrocked marine - actually, the change of service had come as quite a blow to him because it meant that he had to memorize a new serial number, which took up most of his time... At any rate I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, "didn't have no official song," and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time. Well, I submitted the following song which is called It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier which, I think, demonstrates the proper spirit you'll agree. However, the fact that it did not win the contest, I can ascribe only to blatant favouritism on the part of the judges.
The heart of every man in our platoon must swell with pride,
For the nation's youth, the cream of which is marching at his side.
For the fascinating rules and regulations that we share,
And the quaint and curious costumes that we're called upon to wear.
Now Al joined up to do his part, defending you and me.
He wants to fight and bleed and kill and die for liberty.
With the hell of war he's come to grips,
Policing up the filter tips,
It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier!
When Pete was only in the seventh grade, he stabbed a cop.
He's real RA1 material and he was glad to swap
His switchblade and his old zip gun
For a bayonet and a new M-1.
It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier!
After Johnny got through basic training, he
Was a soldier through and through when he was done.
It's effects were so well rooted,
That the next day he saluted
A Good Humour man, an usher, and a nun.
Now Fred's an intellectual, brings a book to every meal.
He likes the deep philosophers, like Norman Vincent Peale.
He thinks the army's just the thing,
Because he finds it broadening.
It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier!
Now Ed flunked out of second grade, and never finished school.
He doesn't know a shelter half from an entrenching tool.
But he's going to be a big success.
He heads his class at OCS2.
It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier!
Our old mess sergeant's taste buds had been shot off in the war,
But his savory collations add to our esprit de corps.
To think of all the marvelous ways
They're using plastics nowadays.
It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier!
Our lieutenant is the up-and-coming type.
Played with soldiers as a boy you just can bet.
It is written in the stars
He will get his captain's bars,
But he hasn't got enough box tops yet.
Our captain has a handicap to cope with, sad to tell.
He's from Georgia, and he doesn't speak the language very well.
He used to be, so rumor has, the Dean of Men at Alcatraz.
It makes a fella proud to be,
When as a kid I vowed to be,
What luck to be allowed to be
A soldier. (At ease!)
1: Regular Army.
2: Officer Cadet School.
The Masochism Tango
Another familiar type of lovesong is the passionate or fiery variety, usually in tango tempo, in which the singer exhorts his partner to haunt him and taunt him and, if at all possible, to consume him with a kiss of fire. This particular illustration of this genre is called The Masochism Tango.
I ache for the touch of your lips, dear,
But much more for the touch of your whips, dear.
You can raise welts
Like nobody else,
As we dance to the Masochism Tango.
Let our love be a flame, not an ember,
Say it's me that you want to dismember.
Blacken my eye,
Set fire to my tie,
As we dance to the Masochism Tango.
At your command
Before you here I stand,
My heart is in my hand. Euch!
It's here that I must be.
My heart entreats,
Just hear those savage beats,
And go put on your cleats
And come and trample me.
Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany,
That's why I'm in such exquisite agony.
My soul is on fire,
It's aflame with desire,
Which is why I perspire
When we tango.
You caught my nose
In your left castanet, love,
I can feel the pain yet, love,
Ev'ry time I hear drums.
And I envy the rose
That you held in your teeth, love,
With the thorns underneath, love,
Sticking into your gums.
Your eyes cast a spell that bewitches.
The last time I needed twenty stitches
To sew up the gash
That you made with your lash,
As we danced to the Masochism Tango.
Bash in my brain,
And make me scream with pain,
Then kick me once again,
And say we'll never part.
I know too well
I'm underneath your spell,
So, darling, if you smell
Something burning, it's my heart.
Hic! 'scuse me!
Take your cigarette from its holder,
And burn your initials in my shoulder.
Fracture my spine,
And swear that you're mine,
As we dance to the Masochism Tango.
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park
I'd like to take you now on wings of song, as it were, and try and help you forget perhaps for a while your drab, wretched lives. Here's a song all about spring-time in general, and in particular, about one of the many delightful pastimes the coming of spring affords us all.
Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don't you? 'Course you do.
But there's one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev'ry Sunday a treat for me.
All the world seems in tune,
On a spring afternoon,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev'ry Sunday you'll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.
When they see us coming, the birdies all try an' hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun's shining bright,
Ev'rything seems all right,
When we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
La la la
We've gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society1
With our games.
They call it impiety,
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it's not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.
So if Sunday you're free,
Why don't you come with me,
And we'll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we'll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we're poisoning pigeons in the park.
We'll murder them all amid laughter and merriment.
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin'
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon.
It just takes a smidgin!
To poison a pigeon in the park.