Lyr Add: The Elements (Tom Lehrer)

Subject: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: GUEST,Big John
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:40 PM

I recently came across this song, written in the sixties. I've updated the lyrics just for fun and I'm trying out your blue clickie for the first time. I still haven't a clue about getting the lines to stay in order after I print them, but what the hell, one thing at a time. The following lines follow after the original song.
Theres Dubnium, Lawrencium, Seaborgium and Bohrium//
Theres Hassium, Meitnerium as well as Rutherfordium/
Those sixties men of Harvard, this might come as a shock to them//
They've gone from Unununium as far as Ununoctium//
And those Periodic experts would surely be surprised //
Theres at least another hundred that they're trying to synthesise.

Forget the blue clickie. The link is http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/lyrics.html

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: GUEST
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 09:49 PM

Still trying the blue clickie trick

Tom Lehrer' "The Elements"

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: The Pooka
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:14 PM

Thanks Big John. Good stuff.

You said you "recently came across" the old Lehrer song of the Elements. Do you know his other material? If so, wanna try your hand at updating, say, "So Long Mom" or "We'll All Go Together When We Go"?
(This might be a good time....)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: GUEST,Big John
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:25 PM

For over 30 years I've been singing his "Irish Ballad"(Rickety tickety tin) but couldn't find any of his records . A few months ago I finally acquired a CD with 28 tracks. That should keep me busy.Incidentally, I notice that I am now the holder of "Guest" status. How do I get back into the Family?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: The Pooka
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:32 PM

Hee hee

...Not only did she do them wronnnng:
She did every one of them in,
Them in....

Happy Lehrering, then. The man was a wapred genius. (My hero:)

Um did you lose your Cookie? Reset it?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Musicman
Date: 24 Oct 02 - 10:33 PM

i have several of the actual records.. bought them years ago.. loved his stuff.. my favorite i think is (two) the New Math, and VAtican Rag.....

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Gurney
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:10 AM

All his records are available on CD, some doubled up. I was looking up the web for them, as my 16yo got interested, and found plenty of places to buy them. He short-circuited me by finding them all at the local record shop!
They are all documents of their time, but great musical social comment by a clever man and superb pianist.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: EBarnacle1
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 12:23 AM

I have not seen "The old dope peddler" or "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" in these collections.

I hold your hand in mine, dear, I press it to my lips...

...The old dope peddler, doing well by doing good.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 01:49 AM

You might be interested in The Formulary Song, which I wrote as a fourth-year medical student, twenty-five (gulp!) years ago. It was published in the New England Journal of Medicine! I sent it to Tom Lehrer, and he replied, "As a lifelong apostle of plagiarism, I certainly have no objection."

For some reason, the third line of the third verse got left out. It should be:

There's Miltown, Motrin, Medrol, Maalox, Myleran and Miradon

Aloha,
Mark

P.S. I know all the words to "The Old Dope Peddler" and "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" if you can't find them anywhere else...but I'm sure you can.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Jeanie
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 03:32 AM

Great song, Mark !

One of the best Tom Lehrer websites I've come across is this one:
http://members.aol.com/quentncree/lehrer/

It has the lyrics and melodies to all the songs, including "Pigeons" and "Dope Peddler".

Gurney - I'm pleased to see Tom Lehrer is attracting a whole new generation of fans, like your son. My teenage daughter has also discovered him - she's learned to sing and play "Vatican Rag" and is now working on an accompanying dance routine for her and her friend to perform at her (catholic convent) school talent show. I fear we must expect a visitation soon from the Spanish Inquisition ...

- jeanie

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 05:52 AM

Don't be too worried Jeanie. "Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition!"

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Jeanie
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 07:00 AM

No, you're right, Nigel. They will lurk... and then, just when I think it's safe to sit in the comfy armchair ...

- jeanie

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: GUEST,Big John
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 11:04 AM

Mark, that's absolutely brilliant. It took me 20 minutes to read those words, I'd would LOVE to hear somebody singing it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 11:46 AM

I must also report that my children (aged 10 and 14) have discovered and LOVE Tom Lehrer--who last I heard, is alive and well in Southern California. Does anyone have other information? We could use some new songs right about now! I think he has suitable material with this administration.

Last year I pulled out my CD (though I have many of the vinyl albums) and played "The Elements" for Caroline as something she could mention to her science teacher, and she loved it. I made the mistake of saying "what the heck" and playing the whole CD for them. :) I had a LOT of explaining to do! I would then notice the door to one of their bedrooms was shut and hear laughter emanating from behind it. I'd go in and find the two of them huddled around the CD player, listening intently and laughing hilariously. I finally burned them each their own copies so they wouldn't take mine over to their friends' houses any more. And I told them that IF they play these for their friends they have to explain them, and they might have to apologize to their friends' parents if they don't share the same liberal political views. Yup--I definitely had to explain a lot.

On the other hand, they listened and learned. Caroline, in a game called "Whiz Quiz" they play at school was totally annoyed when some kid jumped in with a guess answer of "Shakespeare" before she could answer "Oedipus" to the question "what play had a king who killed his father and married his mother. . ." She learned it here first! And they're never going to see drug dealers as "cool" after learning "The Old Dope Peddler." Disrespect and sarcasm--great teaching tools for children! (My parents must have thought so also, because they also played Lehrer for us upon demand when we were kids).

I heard the guys on Car Talk refer to a Lehrer song I didn't recognise--I thought I knew all of them. I'll have to dig out that note and look up the song. (It makes perfect sense that Click and Clack would also know all of the Lehrer songs!)

SRS

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Hippie Chick
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 11:57 AM

Sing Out! did an interview with him a few issues ago; you could probably find current info on their site about him.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Leadfingers
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 02:33 PM

As an extremely modest person it ill behoves me to boast but I have Tom Lehrers Hard Back song books - and the paper back they did when
Robin Ray put on Tomfoolery in London.If any one is interested PM me.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Cllr
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 03:37 PM

LEADFINGERS MODEST Ha! My small claim to fame was that the guy who produced Tomfoolery was Cameron Mckintosh who is from my old school (I met him when I was involved in one of the reunion dinners) but I have to admit it was Leadfingers who introduced me to Lehrer's music.Cllr

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Micca
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 05:37 PM

Here in the UK (dont know about in the USA) There is a rather nice boxed set called "The Remains of Tom Lehrer" it consts of 3 CDs and a booklet, the CDs have all the issued live recordings and extras that I hadnt heard and studio duplicates of many of the songs too.The booklet contains ALL the song lyrics as well as notes etc and is a MUST for all Lehrer fans!!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Nancy King
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 07:55 PM

A couple of years ago, on the occasion of the release of the 3-CD set, the Washington post had a fine article, which I tore out and saved, about Tom Lehrer. The headline is "For Songwriter Tom Lehrer,
the Parody's Still Not Over."

According to the article, he is still a math professor, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and teaches the winter semester in Santa Cruz, California.

A few excerpts:

"By all rights, his records should have long since vanished. The core of the collection, after all, was recorded nearly half a century ago in 1953 -- a famously underground 10-inch LP he produced himself and mailed out, copy by copy, from his Cambridge apartment. He's written almost nothing new since 1965.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Nancy King
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 08:08 PM

Well, shoot. I didn't intent to hit "submit" at that point. Ahem, to continue:

"But against every possible sort of odds or prediction, his records have remained in distribution in one form or another from the beginning. To his whimsical delight, these have involved fewer than 50 songs selling more or less steadily -- 25,000 to 30,000 albums a year in recent decades -- for nearly half a century. More than 2 million have been sold in all, he says, but at a rate of growth 'more like herpes than Ebola.' "

"...he has been deliciously rewarded by his song about rocket scientist Wernher von Braun and his Third Reich background.

Don't say that he's hypocritical,
Say rather that he's apolitical.
'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun.
...
'In German or English I know how to count down,
Und I'm learning Chinese,' said Wernher von Braun.

Some years ago, Lehrer says, von Braun's daughter applied to an Eastern college, and in the process of her admissions interview, she talked animatedly about her father. 'The admissions officer couldn't wait to call me afterward,' Lehrer remembers with an expression of puckish glee. "The girl said her father had many interests other than rockets. At the moment he was teaching himself Chinese.' "

Cheers, Nancy

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: The Pooka
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 08:51 PM

I am thrilled to see Tom Lehrer receiving here the adulation he well deserves -- and to learn that he is reportedly alive & well & paroled from The Massachusetts Home for the Bewildered. /// And if indeed he hasn't written anything new since 1965, a well-earned brief respite --- could he give us a few more, before, well, y'know....'If we're going to have songs about WW III, we'd better start writing then *now*...'

When you attend a funeral
It is sad to think that sooner'l
Ater those you love will do the same for you
And it's really rather tragic
Not to mention other adjec
Tives to think of all the weeping they will do,
But don't you worry....

**************************************
Dr. Mark: brilliant!! / I will never tease you again. /
(HAHAHAHAHAHA....)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 25 Oct 02 - 11:55 PM

When I was in college I had a friend named Doug Quine (who last I heard was an evolutionary biologist in Nova Scotia and an expert philatelist), whose father, W. V. Quine, is (was?) a world renowned Harvard professor of mathematical philosophy. Doug told me that his father used to say that Tom Lehrer was the only person who ever received an A from him who did not go immediately into academics. (Preferring the bright lights and big money of show biz, of course.)

Tom was also one of Sesame Street's songwriters (which accounts for the classics "Silent E" and "LY"), and I think those songs came after 1965. But I could be wrong.

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Leadfingers
Date: 26 Oct 02 - 09:52 AM

I understand that T L retired from active writing and performing when they gave Kissinger the Nobel Peace prize,commenting that the world had now got past parodying.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 27 Oct 02 - 07:51 AM

The Tom Lehrer boxed set is a treasure. I knew some of his songs from radio programs, & discovered lots more. My special favourite is the Hunting Song, a friend sung it one one night just after I'd bought the set. Magic to hear the words & visualise the Mad magazine version at the same time (it's in the booklet - incidently the best value booklet I've ever seen in a set cos it has a hardcover!!.

well worth buying - from Warner Archives, issued by Rhino.

sandra

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: GUEST,Malcolm Jeffrey
Date: 08 Mar 11 - 01:02 PM

Hi, all.

I've been singing "The Elements" in Midlands folk clubs for a while now and have found that I have an odd compulsion to keep the song up to date. So far, after an initial catch-up verse to include all the new elements discovered since Tom wrote the song, and after a few renamed elements and a smattering of new ones, here is v 1.05 of my verse, to be inserted after the "cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium" line. Enjoy ! And, yes - I *am* a programmer, funnily enough. :o)

There's ununseptium, meitnerium, darmstadtium and dubnium,
ununpentium, ununquadium, ununoctium, ununtrium,
copernicium, ununhexium, lawrencium, seaborgium,
and hassium, bohrium, roentgenium, and also rutherfordium.

Malcolm Jeffrey

p.s. being a Black Countryman, anotherpossible ending I reserve for Midlands audiences is

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Audnam,
and there may be many others, but if there am, then we ay 'eard on 'em.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: Joe_F
Date: 08 Mar 11 - 08:14 PM

I heard my first Lehrer song, the Irish Ballad, in the back of a truck in 1954. You can't imagine what a breath of fresh air it was in the Stuffy Fifties. That same year, my mother gave me the first LP as a highschool graduation present, and I took it to Caltech with me.

"The Elements" is amusing, but a more valuable contribution to society would be a song mentioning them in order, one line to each, with a brief mnemonic -- each stanza concluding with a noble gas. It's on my agenda. If I ever get it started, I'll put the beginning here, so the rest of you can continue it when I die.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements - Tom Lehrer
From: GUEST,murrbob
Date: 09 Mar 11 - 03:04 AM

While attending a one-woman show in Sacramento, the actress, playing a Dominican nun (very convinceingly)spent a lot of time interacting with the audience. My left-of-center Catholic wife had informed "Sister" that I was an agnostic. Later, when she asked the audience what the term for converting bread and wine to body and blood was, I reluctenly raised my hand. Of course, "Sister" was happy I knew something Cathlic; when asked if I learned the term 'transubstantiation' from my good wife, I had to answer truthfully that I learned it from Leher's "Vatican Rag." The actress almost fell off the stage laughing!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements (Tom Lehrer)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 27 May 11 - 07:06 PM

If I sing this all the way through at Float Trip this year, do I win a prize?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements (Tom Lehrer)
From: DrugCrazed
Date: 27 May 11 - 07:17 PM

The discovery of Tom Lehrer was akin to my discovery of Flanders and Swann. Both being people I'd heard about from my Dad, but finally I bought them on iTunes.

Wordplay and satire have always been favourites of mine, but by god they did well.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements (Tom Lehrer)
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 08 Jun 11 - 07:05 AM

I'm afraid Malcolm's going to have to rewrite his final verse - Ununtrium and Ununpentium have been rejected, and only Ununquadium and Ununhexium added to the Periodic Table by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

Periodic Table gets new elements

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements (Tom Lehrer)
From: Joe_F
Date: 08 Jun 11 - 06:30 PM

If you want to do something much harder but also more useful, try writing a song that has the elements *in order*, one mnemonically useful line about each. I may try it myself someday.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements (Tom Lehrer)
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 09 Jan 17 - 02:50 PM

IUPAC ANNOUNCES THE NAMES OF THE ELEMENTS 113, 115, 117, AND 118

"Overall, it was a real pleasure to realize that so many people are interested in the naming of the new elements, including high-school students, making essays about possible names and telling how proud they were to have been able to participate in the discussions," said Professor Jan Reedijk, President of the Inorganic Chemistry Division. He added "It is a long process from initial discovery to the final naming, and IUPAC is thankful for the cooperation of everyone involved. For now, we can all cherish our periodic table completed down to the seventh row. "
https://iupac.org/iupac-announces-the-names-of-the-elements-113-115-117-and-118/ 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
December 2016 ...
Helen Arney has added an extra verse covering the last 16 elements.

https://youtu.be/UzvjB5hC2qc 

"Update! 

We've got lawrencium, meitnerium, darmstadtium, seaborgium,
Roentgenium and dubnium, flerovium and bohrium,
Copernicium, livermorium and hassium, rutherfordium,
Oganesson and tenessine, moscovium, nihonium.

Those last four elements confirmed now by the chemistry consortium."

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements (Tom Lehrer)
From: GUEST,Senoufou
Date: 09 Jan 17 - 04:49 PM

I've been pitting my wits on the 'Sporcle Periodic Table' free site, where you have to type in all the 118 elements in 15 minutes. I'd got all the unun- ones learned, then they gave them new names, as you say Freddy. I last studied Chemistry fifty years ago, only to 'O' Level. but I can now rattle the 118 off in about 5 minutes, including nihonium, moscovium etc.
I also like the ASAP team on Youtube, who sing a lovely song with all the elements in (but not the new names sadly!) to the Can-Can tune!

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: The Elements (Tom Lehrer)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Jan 17 - 07:13 PM

I never did get it all the way through...