An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer

An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer is an album recorded by Tom Lehrer, the well-known satirist and Harvard lecturer. The recording was made in March 20-21 of 1959 in Sanders Theater at Harvard.

Track listing

"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" - 2:38
"Bright College Days" - 3:03
"A Christmas Carol" - 2:54
"The Elements" (Music by Sullivan) - 2:16
"Oedipus Rex" - 3:41
"In Old Mexico" - 6:26
"Clementine" - 4:40
"It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier" - 4:50
"She's My Girl" - 2:53
"The Masochism Tango" - 3:30
"We Will All Go Together When We Go" - 5:32

Song Highlights

"Poisoning Pigeons in the Park"

The lyrics parody springtime songs.

Spring is here, a-suh-puh-ring is here.

Life is skittles and life is beer.

As is common with Lehrer's songs, the self-described "corncrake-voiced" delivery is accompanied by a series of dire rhymes. The poison names produce rhymes such as "try an' hide" with "cyanide", and "quickening" with "strychnine".

"The Elements"

The lyrics are a recitation of the names of all the chemical elements that were known at the time of writing, up to number 102, nobelium. (There are now 116.) It can be found on his albums More Songs by Tom Lehrer as well as An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer. The song is sung to the tune of Sir Arthur Sullivan's "Major General's Song" ("I am the very model of a modern major-general...") from The Pirates of Penzance. Here are the opening and closing lines:

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,

And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,

....

And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium.

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,

And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered.

Indeed, since that time, 14 more have been discovered (or synthesized, technically), and 9 of those have been named. Those 9 are lawrencium, rutherfordium, dubnium, seaborgium, bohrium, hassium, meitnerium, darmstadtium, and roentgenium.

At some concerts he also played a version he claims is based on Aristotle's elements, which goes like this:
There's earth and air and fire and water.

As a note, the final rhyme of "Harvard" and "discovered" is delivered in an exaggerated parody of a Boston accent.

"Clementine"

Clementine is a parody of how the old folk song, My Darling Clementine, might have turned out if it had been written by various composers in widely different styles of music. The first verse was in the style of Cole Porter, the second verse in the style of Mozart, the third verse in the style of the Beatnik "Cool School," and the rousing finale that was, in Lehrer's paraphrase of Shakespeare, "full of sound and fury but signifying nothing," in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan.

"The Masochism Tango"

To the tune of a traditional tango, that generally asks the singer's dancing partner to "consume you in a kiss of fire", the lyrics form a love note to the sadistic inflicter of such glorious pain.

The song ranges from comical:

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.

To somewhat exaggerated:

Blacken my eye,

Set fire to my tie,

As we dance to the Masochism Tango.

And even a little violent:

Bash in my brain,

And make me scream with pain,

Then kick me once again,

And say we'll never part.

But all the while keeps its mocking tone common of the works of Tom Lehrer.

External links

1959 albums | Tom Lehrer albums | Live albums

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