An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer [Live]

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"If, after hearing my songs," Lehrer says in this disc's liner notes, "just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while." Makes him sound like a modern punk, eh? Not so, though. Lehrer, ever the king of jolly vitriol, recorded these still potent parodies in the '50s--and the best of them, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," "The Masochism Tango," and "The Elements" (which joins science with Gilbert & Sullivan) remain both nasty and striking. Musically, Lehrer comes across like a demented Cole Porter, wrapping sophisticated, showy tunes around his acerbic jokes. Lyrically, he's a clear forebear to folks like Phil Ochs and Barry Crimmins, who also cloak their commentary in comedy. --Michael Ruby

An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer,Tom Lehrer,Reprise / Wea,Comedy,Musical Comedy,Novelty,Piano,Pop,Popular Music,Satire,Spoken / Comedy / Radio Shows,Standup Comedy,Vocals

Average customer rating:

The dawning of a great social wit
AN evening wasted with Tom Lehrer
Life is skittles and life is beer.
Lehrer is hilarious!
Quality always holds up.

An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer
Tom Lehrer
Manufacturer: Reprise / Wea
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

General | Comedy | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

Country Comedy | Comedy | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

Classic Comedy | Comedy | Miscellaneous | Styles | Music

That Was the Year That Was
Songs & More Songs By Tom Lehrer
Revisited
The Remains of Tom Lehrer
Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer

ASIN: B000002KO8
Release Date: 1990-04-12

Tracks:

Poisoning Pigeons In The Park
Bright College Days
A Christmas Carol
The Elements
Oedipus Rex
In Old Mexico
Clementine
It Makes A Fellow Proud To Be A Soldier
She's My Girl
The Masochism Tango
We Will All Go Together When We Go

Amazon.com

"If, after hearing my songs," Lehrer says in this disc's liner notes, "just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while." Makes him sound like a modern punk, eh? Not so, though. Lehrer, ever the king of jolly vitriol, recorded these still potent parodies in the '50s--and the best of them, "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," "The Masochism Tango," and "The Elements" (which joins science with Gilbert & Sullivan) remain both nasty and striking. Musically, Lehrer comes across like a demented Cole Porter, wrapping sophisticated, showy tunes around his acerbic jokes. Lyrically, he's a clear forebear to folks like Phil Ochs and Barry Crimmins, who also cloak their commentary in comedy. --Michael Ruby

Customer Reviews:

The dawning of a great social wit.......2007-05-25

Tom Lehrer is a bit of late find for me. But having discovered his bountiful vineyard, I am drinking him down to the dregs.

Lehrer's brand of knowing, culturally-savvy and savage wit are are on moderate display in this collection. There are the classics ("Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" and "The Elements"), plenty of little-known but sparkling gems, but a weak piece or two ("Bright College Days" and "She's My Girl") that have little to say. Lehrer's wit is dry and self-deprecatory, and his music is best when it lampoons the excesses of his age or when it hilariously upends a cherished piece of culture. "Oedipus Rex" is a terrific piece that presumes (rightly, as far as it late-1950s audience went) a certain familiarity with the classics. The leering repeated tag line about the king "who REALLY loved his mother" is still eyebrow-archingly naughty today. "It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier" is Lehrer's reflection on the odd set of misfits, morons and maniacs whom he met on a stint in the Army. "We Will All Go Together When We Go," one of the more topical of his works, could be considered a pre-antiwar song, putting a comic face on the global annihilation promised by "The Bomb." With lines like, "When the air becomes uraneous, we will all go simultaneous," Lehrer shows how nuclear war, for all its ability to terrify, is fundamentally ludicrous and perhaps worthy of opposition.

Other pieces have less topical import, but showcase Lehrer's piano virtuosity. After shredding the value of banal folk tunes like "Clementine," Lehrer demonstrates how the old standard would have been played by Cole Porter, Mozart and one of the "cool" composers of the Beat era. While he is at it, he conveys his own unfortunate bias against modern music. Poised as he is on the cusp of the decline of classical music and the advent of rock, Lehrer is none too respectful of the new genre, sneeringly referring to it as "childrens' music." Even in 1959, this sentiment met with subdued laughter and only polite applause. At age 30, Lehrer's musical heros (Gilbert and Sullivan, among them) were quickly becoming irrelevant, and he can appear as a bit of a fusty dinosaur. But never mind that. For every knock-out punch that doesn't connect, there are ten that do. "Masochism Tango" is still freakish, nearly 40 years after it was written. The writer of "The last time I needed twenty stitches to sew up the gash, that you made with your lash" is no homebody, by the standards of his time or of our own.

Lehrer loosened up quite a bit between this offering and the later "That Was the Week That Was," where his political wit and insight were most fully developed. Yet this collection is quite worthwhile in its own way, featuring Lehrer's tight lyrics and musical versatility. Hearing the reaction of the audience is definitely a plus. It's fun to hear what made a 1959 audience howl -- even jokes that are obvious and lame by today's standards were evidently quite fresh a half-century ago.

When this recording hit the streets, Tom Lehrer's short career had yet to peak, and his best output was still ahead of him. Pity that voices like his have been so rare. Happy are we who can appreciate, and perhaps hope to emulate, his style and outlook!

AN evening wasted with Tom Lehrer.......2006-08-14

An evening wasted, no - an album wasted - ALL these songs can be got on "Songs and more Songs by Lehrer, plus 10 or more freebies. Total waste!

Life is skittles and life is beer........2006-05-01

Tom Lehrer was the most brilliant song satirist of the 20th century. This live album features the same songs that were on his studio album "More of Tom Lehrer". But this album arguably is better than that one, since you get to hear Lehrer's introductions to the songs, as well as the audience reactions. Anyway, this is a very funny album, and it's a "must get" for fans of musical comedy.

Lehrer is hilarious!.......2005-12-30

This CD is hilarious! How can you possibly deny the genius of tunes like "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" ("When they see us coming the birdies all try and hide, but they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide"...) or "The Elements" (the periodic table set to Gilbert and Sullivan, as you probably know by now). Lehrer's black humor and commentary always makes me laugh when I pop this disc into my player, and as an added bonus, this is a live disc, so we are treated to Lehrer's monologues as well as his songs, which are usually just as funny as his songs, if not more so. Highlights include the story of Dr. Samuel Gall, inventor of the gallbladder, and a bit about his friend Henry ("He spelled his name H-E-N-3-R-Y. The 3 was silent, you see"...)who wrote novels ("about a young necrophiliac who finally achieved his boyhood ambition by becoming coroner").
Even though these tunes were written in 1959, they haven't dated, and still remain as fresh and funny today as they were 46 years ago. If you enjoy black humor, and like to laugh, what are you waiting for? Buy this, and/or any other album by Tom Lehrer, today!

Quality always holds up........2004-07-16

One reason why the great songs of Tom Lehrer hold up after all these decades is that some of the issues they cover have not gone away. The Cold War may be over, but the weapons remain. And anyway there are other ways Armegeddon may arrive. Misunderstanding between the sexes will never vanish.

But I think the real reason Tom Lehrer's "An Evening Wasted..." has held up so well for so long is that his humor and craft are top quality. We still read Mark Twain's acerbic satires. Will Rogers is still an American icon, while others have come and gone. And in the tradition of Twain and Rogers, Lehrer, while commenting on contemporary conditions, takes them and twists them in a way that is nothing short of brilliant. And, without realizing it, has given us a better understanding of his times, while making us laugh (or weep) at ours.

Forget all that heavy stuff: this is just a darned funny collection!

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