This is one
of my favorite songs from Tom Lehrer, one of the great satirists of the 1950’s
and 1960’s. His best known song (I think), which I remember hearing on “Dr.
Demento” in 1974, was “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”.
In Chicago,
Dr. Demento was on WSDM (98FM, now the Loop) which used a couple different
slogans in the early-to-mid 1970’s. They were either “Smack Dab
in the Middle” (WSDM) or “the station with the girls”, because
all the DJ’s were ladies. WSDM played an interesting mix of rock, interspersed
with comedy cuts. I first heard Monty Python there as well.
Lehrer was
a very interesting character in the 1950’s and early 60’s, a Harvard educated
professor of mathematics at MIT, Harvard, and Wellesley, he wrote and performed
his quirky songs in Boston nightclubs in the early 50’s and recorded an album’s
worth of songs at his own expense, selling them at concerts and by mail.
He was
lumped in with the “Sick” comics of the late 50’s due to his racy double
entendres. Time magazine wrote about “the Sickniks”, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl,
Shelly Berman, Jonathan Winters, Nichols and May, and Tom Lehrer. They were
only sick in that they tackled subject matter left untouched by the lame,
mainstream comedians of the era, i.e. Bob Hope, Joey Bishop, Joey Adams…
“Mort Sahl, 32, the original sicknik,
now makes $300,000 a year, but still manages to see the worm in the golden
apple. Right alongside Sahl in the hierarchy of disease is Jonathan Winters,
33, a roly-poly brainy-zany who has spent most of the past two months as a
patient in his favorite subject for humor: the funny farm. While these two once
seemed more or less alone in their strange specialty, it is now clear that the
virus has spread…
“The sicknik mood and method range
all the way from the wistful social desperation of Elaine May and Mike Nichols,
who are barely sick at all—just an occasional mild symptom—to the usually
vicious barrage of Lenny Bruce. Where Elaine and Mike meditate on the problem
of a stranded motorist who has lost his last dime, or a boss quietly trying to
drink a secretary into submission. Newcomer Bruce, 33, likes to defend Leopold
and Loeb: ''Bobby Franks was snotty…
"Lehrer is that rare amateur who turned
professional and who did so successfully; in his last engagement he threatened
the sanity of S.R.O. crowds at London's Royal Festival Hall. Sample Lehrer
lyric:
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 the masochism tango.
In
1964-1965, Lehrer wrote topical songs for the American version of “That Was the
Week That Was”. These songs had a little more political bent.
“So Long,
Mom (a song for World War III),” “National Brotherhood Week,” and “The Folk
Song Army.”
He also
contributed “New Math”:New Math
“Hooray for New Math
New-w-w-w-w Math
It won’t do you a bit of
good to review math
It’s so simple, so very
simple
That only a child can do
it.”
And “Vatican Rag,” Link a somewhat
sacrilegious take on the Second Vatican Council reforms, which my Blackburn
(and later Western and later still in Cary) roommate, Kevin K. did a great
rendition of…
“First you get down on
your knees,
Fiddle with your
rosaries,
Bow your head with great
respect, and
Genuflect! Genuflect! Genuflect!”
“Be Prepared” is prefaced by Lehrer…
“…this one is a little song
dedicated to the Boy Scouts of America…those noble little… bastions of
democracy, and the American legion of tomorrow…”
“Be prepared! That’s the
Boy Scout’s solemn creed,
Be prepared! And be
clean in word and deed,
Don’t solicit for your
sister, that’s not nice,
Unless you get a good
percentage of her price.”
OK… I guess that could be considered
a little sick…
