https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Playlist
Tom Lehrer Died last weekend, more than four decades after rumors of his death were first broadcast. He did not bother to contradict them, affirming publicly that he thought they would “reduce the spam”. This joke proved not only that he was still alive, but that his mind was intact. And it was his mind, combined with an installation on the piano, which made it famous: all merciless who has just saturating the Boys Scouts has Harvardher Alma Mater, to New math has Vatican II has Second World WarHis animated spectacle pastiches have become pieces of comedy from the era of the Cold War – or in any case, defining pieces of comedy from the cold era of the Cold War.
Professor of mathematics for most of his career, he played and recorded music mainly in the nineteen fifty and 60s, starting with his first concert, given as a student graduate in 1950, and ending with Another in Copenhagen in 1967.
There was also a Coda from the beginning of the 1970s in the form of a few songs written for the PBS children's show Electric company and a performance during a rally by George S. McGovern. But at that time, the framework of American culture had changed. “The Vietnam War is what changed it,” said Lehrer in 1981. “Everyone has become serious. My goal was to make people laugh and not applaud. If the public applauded, they simply show that they agree with me”: an observation that the potential satiristes of today would do well to keep in mind.
Whether or not you have aspirations to you in this tradition, you can listen to the entire recorded work of Lehrer The youtube playlist above And understand why his comic book star burned so brilliantly – and, for the almost sixty years that have followed, never completely exhausted. Although clearly written in the spirit of the liberalism of the eisenhower era, these songs (Released by their author in the public domain a few years ago) Do not fear the absurdities of what Lehrer himself would not be able to call the human condition. Tested for the first time on campus, they also developed an early form of what we have considered the sensitivity of “college” in popular music. In a certain sense, Lehrer has never left this way of seeing the world behind – nor, like a real student, he never managed to finish his doctorate.
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Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.