Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years

Subject: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 07:49 PM

Correct me, please, if this is mistaken.
But Tom Lehrer's 90th birthday
appears to have been last April,
so it came and went
WITHOUT a Mudcat thread.

Better late than never, AND he's still alive, yes?

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 08:18 PM

I haven't heard otherwise.

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 11:38 PM

An awful debility

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Jan 19 - 11:40 PM

And this Tom Lehrer at 90: a life of scientific satire

Andrew Robinson celebrates the high notes in the mathematician’s inimitable musical oeuvre.

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 03:26 AM

One of my heroes - I played his songs incessantly when I got hold of vinyl recordings by him. As I recall, the live album was even more joyous than the studio stuff.

I've heard one or two of his songs performed in folk clubs, but usually with the wrong chords. In his case, nothing compares with the original. Some of my favourite extracts:

"Soon we'll be out, amid the cold world's strife,
Soon we'll be sliding down the razorblade of life..."

"The mariachis would serenade,
And would not shut up 'til they were paid.
We ate, we drank, and we were merry,
And we got typhoid and dysentery."

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Leadfingers
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 03:30 AM

I cant help wondering if he has continued writing , and after he finally leaves us a Tom Lehrer In Memoriam song book may be produced !

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Mr Red
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 03:46 AM

Strange he remains silent on the subject of Trump.

Perhaps the Kissinger quote is, on the Twitler scale, barely a move of the needle. Kissinger's Nobel Peace prize killed his muse.

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 22 Jan 19 - 06:31 AM

My hero. Unique, side splittingly funny, and a master of internal rhyme.

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Jan 19 - 01:41 PM

When asked in an interview which satirical songwriters he enjoys,
Tom Lehrer name-checked John Forster and his song "Fusion."
Now appearing on its very own Mudcat thread.

I would link this thread to that thread
if my word-processing skills were up to it,
but my attempts to make such links
usually meet with failure.

Lyr Add: Fusion (John Forster)

Link added for you. ---mudelf

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Charley Noble
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 10:57 AM

I believe that Lehrer gave up satire when he realized that the things going on in the world were even more bizarre than his songs. Case in point would be the current President...

Charlie Ipcar

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 12:55 PM

Humorists are struggling to stay ahead of the news. Case in point, Andy Borowitz, whose satire in The New Yorker are routinely mistaken as news stories. Sometimes he's only days ahead of actual events.

Perhaps a Go Fund Me account could raise enough cash to tempt Lehrer into writing one more anthem - for the upcoming election.

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: GUEST,Roger
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 01:16 PM

Somehow I don't think Toms primary motivation would be cash.
Roger

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 24 Jan 19 - 06:29 PM

A ridiculously high amount would show such desperation I think it might tweak his interest. :)

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Jan 19 - 02:11 PM

I wonder what he'd make of Trump and the dreaded Brexit!!
Roger

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Mr Red
Date: 27 Jan 19 - 05:53 AM

Looking at the Youtube videos, I can help thinking that the ultimate irony is that he looks like a youthful Henry Kissinger. And it was the Kissinger Nobel prize he cited as his reason that his satire could not compete with the absurdities of real events. So he stopped writing his songs.

Whaddayareckon?

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Jack Campin
Date: 27 Jan 19 - 08:32 AM

"I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments about lava." - Lehrer in 2002

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Jan 19 - 09:38 AM

Borrow a tune from a Fred Astaire musical or something from Gershwin and give us a song called "The Pyroclastic Quickstep."

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Mrrzy
Date: 27 Jan 19 - 10:43 AM

When the movie came out I heard he said he hated his work... Was a conservative and such.
He liked the rhymes [merry - dysentery, cut subt(le)] but not the content.

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 27 Jan 19 - 06:44 PM

In one of his interviews, Lehrer said he preferred giving his age in Celsius, which would make him 32.

Subject: RE: Tom Lehrer makes it to 90 years
From: Mrrzy
Date: 29 Jan 19 - 10:49 AM

Ooh I gotta start doing that.