Pros: witty intelligent songs (some of the funniest ever written)
Cons: some references lost due to the passage of time
The Bottom Line: Tom Lehrer songs require thought and attention to appreciate fully. If you enjoy witty songs that poke fun at almost everyone, this album is for you.
quasar's Full Review: That Was the Year That Was by Tom Lehrer
When I was a youngster I was encouraged to leaf through box after box after box of my dad's records and stack them up for a listen on the 1958 Wurlitzer furniture stereo in the living room. His collection ranged from opera to classical music to original Broadway cast albums to folk music to oldies (well, they were new when he bought them). There were literally boxes of 45s, cases of 78s, and several hundred LPs. One day I when I was about 10 I came across this sort of plain looking white album with a red keyboard the text "Songs by Tom Lehrer" splayed across it.
I'd never heard of Tom Lehrer, and I had no idea what type of music he sang - with my dad's collection it could have been anything. I decided why not? and put it on. That simple accident introduced me to some of the wittiest songs ever written sung by "the most brilliant creative genius that America has produced in almost 200 years" (his own words).
I listened to that album over and over and over, especially the song Lobachevsky, a song sure to induce belly laughs from any scientist ("plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize. Only be sure always to call it please, research"). As time wore on I made my way to college to learn how to plagiarize, err, to study physics. Further time elapsed and I found myself perfecting that craft in graduate school in Philadelphia. At about that time I finally gave in and bought my first CD player. I discovered a Sam Goody about two blocks from my apartment and from the Physics Department. I often stopped in to browse on my way to class. One day I was looking through the showtunes section which was right next to comedy. My eyes strayed and I saw a familiar and welcome name - Tom Lehrer.
I immediately grabbed That Was the Year That Was. Luckily I was on my way home from class because if I had been on my way to class I'm fairly certain I still would have taken the CD home immediately to listen to it (a girl has her priorities, you know).
That Was the Year That Was was recorded live at the hungry i in San Francisco in 1965. It has fourteen songs, nine of which were written for the television show That Was the Week That Was. The other five Lehrer considered too controversial for the show. Most of the songs are overtly political, although some deal with the politics of the education system or organized religion or the military rather than more traditional politics. Since this album was recorded from live shows, all of the tracks have introductions that are themselves engaging gems.
Although very short (one side of a flipout sleeve) the liner notes are also entertainment in their own right. They are filled with statements such as "Once again, leaden rapier in hand, he strides out in search of adversaries to skewer, first making sure they are already down" and the disclaimer at the end "Any ideas in this record should not be taken as representing Mr. Lehrer's true convictions for he has none" (my personal favorite).
The first song, National Brotherhood Week, pokes fun at the official government attempt to foster tolerance. There are some references in this song that are dated (how many people today know who Sheriff Clarke was?) but the sentiments are still true. The upbeat melody helps bring home the "everyone be cheerful now - you can go back to hating everyone later" mood:
Be nice to people who
Are inferior to you.
It's only for a week, so have no fear;
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!
MLF Lullaby tells us to sleep without worry because our traditional allies the Germans are protecting us (to the tune of a lullaby). At the time it had been only 20 years since World War II, so the concept of considering the Germans allies was more frightening and strange then. Since it has now be more than fifty years since WWII, this song has lost some of its bite, but it is still an intelligent poke at how politics makes strange bedfellows:
Once all the Germans were warlike and mean,
But that couldn't happen again.
We taught them a lesson in 1918
And they've hardly bothered us since then.
George Murphy holds up worse against the passage of time than any other song on this album. Who was George Murphy? I had seen him in one movie but I doubt very many folks today have. How about Helen Gahagan? Even the introduction ages badly, referring to Massachusetts having three senators. I am well educated and well read and it still took me a long time to figure out that Lehrer was poking fun of Bobby Kennedy gaining a New York Senate seat. That said, there are still enjoyable aspects of this song. The incredulous tone with which Lehrer mentions Ronald Reagan as a politician makes me giggle every time I hear this song. Not to mention we can all relate to the idea of having a senator who can really sing and dance.
"It takes a certain amount of courage to get up in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favor of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on." Or so The Folk Song Army would have you believe. Poking fun at the plethora of folkies popping up everywhere in the mid-sixties who sang about the woes of the world instead of doing something about them, this song takes an interesting look at a group of artists often romanticized today.
"I do have a cause, though, it is obscenity. I'm for it!" So starts the introduction to one of my two favorite songs on this album, Smut. What follows is just over three minutes of rollicking good fun, literary references, and compelling arguments against censorship all set to a march. Asking me to pick a few lines of the song to share is like asking me to pick one favorite book, but just for you I've managed to chose a selection:
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz - there's a dirty old man!
Written at the very beginning of the Vietnam conflict, Send the Marines examines the practice of sending troops to foreign lands to control its leadership. Still very current today, this song is a very pointed poke at sending troops to keep peace elsewhere in the world while Mississippi and other parts of the US were rife with conflict:
Members of the corps
All hate the thought of war;
They'd rather kill them off by peaceful means.
We Americans have all heard the warnings - don't drink the water in Mexico, watch what you eat when you travel, etc. In Pollution Lehrer turns all of those back on the United States. This song rivals Smut for the cleverness title without requiring the same outside knowledge to get all of the jokes. It's flat out funny from start to finish, leaving me with vivid mental images of people walking the streets in gas masks and birds falling from the sky at random intervals:
Just go out for a breath of air
And you'll be ready for Medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill -
If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.
So Long, Mom is a biting song about the nature of war in modern times. Lehrer predicted folks would be sitting in bomb shelters watching the 90 minute war on television (just how long does it take to drop the bomb, anyway?). He wasn't far off about the war coverage, but luckily so far we've managed to avoid his other prediction.
In order to understand Whatever Became of Hubert? you must simply realize that Hubert Humphrey was Vice President of the United States at the time this song was written. Once this simple fact is exposed, the song reveals a general truth about any second banana - no matter how well they stood out as individuals before, they invariably fade into the background of number one:
Once a fiery liberal spirit,
Ah, but now when he speaks, he must clear it.
Second fiddle's a hard part, I know,
When they don't even give you a bow.
New Math is a song sure to delight any math lover and make those who struggled through math in school chuckle with rememberance. Highlighting that sometimes we see what we expect to see rather than what's intended while at the same time poking fun at brownosers and some of the tricks people use to remember simple math (Base eight is just like base ten really - if you're missing two fingers! ), this song shouldn't be missed.
Alma is a bit different than the other songs in the album. It still has the kick and clever lines all of these songs have, but it's much more lighthearted. Lehrer happened to see the obituary of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, a woman who married three rather famous men and took many others as lovers. The obituary listed most of these liasons making for interesting reading. As Lehrer says, "It seemed to me, on reading this obituary, that the story of Alma was the stuff of which ballads should be made, so here is one."
The proliferation of nuclear weapons was a big story in the sixties. Who's Next? pokes fun at the need of every country on the planet to have a store of nuclear bombs. Slightly dated with references to apartheid and the many wars between Egypt and Israel, the song perfectly illustrates the Veruca Salt "I want it now!" syndrome:
So Israel's getting tense,
Wants one in self defense.
"The Lord's our shepherd," says the psalm,
But just in case, we better get a bomb!
Wernher von Braun uses the famous German scientist, instrumental in developing America's first spaceships, to illustrate most scientists separation of science and politics. He perfectly captures the "Ijust discover and design the technology, I don't decide how it is used" attitude prevalent among scientists:
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.
The final song is the most controversial song on the album because it pokes fun at the most sacrosanct of institutions, the Catholic church. The Vatican Rag is a hilarious suggestion about how to follow through the desire to make church more popular by making church music more appealing to young people:
Get in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional.
There the guy who's got religion'll
Tell you if your sin's original.
Although several of the songs in That Was the Year That Was contain references that are no longer pulled from popular culture due to the passage of time, all of the songs within are still at least funny. Many are downright hilarious. Lehrer's songs hold up much better than many of the other parodies and funny songs of the fifties and sixties because he broached many topics that are universal such as education and religion. Even the more overtly political songs on this album, songs that in general you would expect to be tied strongly to the time of their creation, hold up fairly well. I strongly recommend That Was the Year That Was to anyone who enjoys humorous songs or songs that make you think a bit. There is also a boxset with all of these songs and both live and studio versions of most of Lehrer's other songs so if you think these types of songs are your cup of tea, you might be better off looking to purchase The Remains of Tom Lehrer instead.
P.S. Whatever Became of Tom Lehrer?
Unfortunately Lehrer retired from the music business (which was never more than a hobby) soon after That Was the Year That Was so other than a few stray songs written for the children's television show The Electric Company and a smattering of individual songs this album was Lehrer's swan song. He can instead be found teaching Mathematics at the UC Santa Cruz part time and living in Cambridge, MA the rest of the year.
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