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Tom Lehrer releases song lyrics to public domain

• sohkamyung 6y ago
  Hearing Tom Lehrer perform live from some of his albums is also a revelation. There are times when some of his on-stage jokes fall flat, yet he recovers with aplomb and gets the audience on his side again.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• denkmoon 6y ago
  And we will all go together when we go, what a comforting fact that is to know!
• pg_bot 6y ago
  I find it funny that his "New Math" has now been replaced by an even newer math which parents can't understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • chrismorgan 6y ago
    Can you elucidate?
    • pg_bot 6y ago
      Old "New Math" https://groovyhistory.com/remember-new-math https://groovyhistory.com/remember-new-math New "New Math" https://www.wired.com/2016/10/meet-new-math-unlike-old-math/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/meet-new-math-unlike-old-math/
      • dllthomas 6y ago
        The funny thing is how much of the 1960s "new math" that was derided at the time for being irrelevant is now super applicable in computing as soon as you scratch the surface just a little bit more than average. From your link: "abstract algebra, modular arithmetic, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and other super-mathy stuff they might never need" Even in Lehrer's song, the textbook wants us to do the calculation in base 8, and that's amusing and surprising and... being familiar with octal helps me in minor ways on probably a weekly basis. Being familiar with other bases more generally, even more frequently.
  • C1sc0cat 6y ago
    Ah the weird methods of arithmetic kids start out with which don't teach place order.
• ipsum2 6y ago
  > Note: This website will be shut down on December 31, 2024, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long. I've never seen a website with a specific shut down time. I wonder why he put it there.
  • teruakohatu 6y ago
    Better than randomly shutting it down like so many other websites. It will be on The Internet Archive in no time.
  • jimmcslim 6y ago
    Maybe he has had a vision, and that is when we will all go together when we go...
    • fogihujy 6y ago
      I suddenly feel like it's a good idea to print everything and store it safely. Just in case someone survives.
    • spopejoy 6y ago
      Oh we will all char together when we char And let there be no moaning of the bar Just sing out a te deum When you see that ICBM And the party will be come as you are [his rhymes are nothing short of amazing, cf the one in his college application for "Harvard" ("larva'd") ]
  • vortico 6y ago
    The "Tom Lehrer Trust" probably has a budget, and they've probably already paid the server/domain fees until then but have no plans for the trust to cover renewal.
  • gnulinux 6y ago
    > why he put it there. Because they're gonna shut down on Dec 31 2024? Would you prefer them shutting down without a notice?
  • apricot 6y ago
• thombles 6y ago
  Not to mention a whole lot of intermediate-level piano sheet music! At 92, a fine gift to those younger generations who want to get in on some irreverent fun.
  • rvense 6y ago
    I've been thinking about getting an electric piano again for a while, I think this might be the push I needed!
• phobosanomaly 6y ago
  So Long Mom, we're off to Drop the Bomb is so dry, sarcastic, ironic, and apropos of our time that y'all should check it out. Tom Lehrer - So Long Mom (A Song for WW III) - with intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDFqoReof6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDFqoReof6A Sorry about the intro, it was the shortest weird, long intro on this video I could find on YouTube.
  • ummwhat 6y ago
    That + we will all go together are on my "in case of nuclear war" playlist
    • phobosanomaly 6y ago
      I call it the 2020, everything is fine, playlist.
• kyrra 6y ago
  I had a professor in college that used to quote one of his songs rather regularly. The song: https://youtu.be/gXlfXirQF3A https://youtu.be/gXlfXirQF3A "Don't shade your eyes, plagiarize." This was an opengl programming class for graduate students or senior compsci majors. He was really just saying make sure to build on other people's work and don't always just reinvent the wheel.
  • einpoklum 6y ago
    "But remember please always to call it: Research!"
• k_sze 6y ago
  A question for the lawyers among us: is there any effective difference between granting all these permissions vs actually putting them into public domain? Tom says “In other words, all the lyrics herein should be treated as though they were in the public domain”, emphasis mine. That’s what got me curious. Does Tom effectively still hold some rights that are not afforded by “true” public domain?
  • andreareina 6y ago
    Some countries don't recognize dedication to the public domain. I believe CC0 is the usual license for those that want to do this in a more robust way: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc...
  • athms 6y ago
    >Does Tom effectively still hold some rights In the United States, copyright is automatic and exists until expired. Nothing in the federal statute allows an entity to terminate copyright, effectively putting works in the public domain. The United States also allows authors (and heirs), except work-for-hires, to clawback copyright transfers and terminate licenses after 35 years. This is an inalienable statutory right, which means it cannot be waived even with a contract.
    • cogburnd02 6y ago
      Citation needed.
      • athms 6y ago
        https://www.copyright.gov/title17/title17.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/title17/title17.pdf
        • cogburnd02 6y ago
          That is not a citation. A citation provides enough specific information to independently verify that a claim comes from some authority. A citation would include (at the very least) some kind of statute or clause number.
• 082349872349872 6y ago
  He even includes pastiches of pastiches: https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Elements-Aristotle.jpeg https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Elemen...
  • taejo 6y ago
    Which you can see him performing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSKKPuNoA1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSKKPuNoA1g
  • zem 6y ago
    i did this one (independently) as "There's water, fire, air, and earth <stop abruptly>" following the cadence of the original more closely. interesting to see lehrer make the opposite decision, to break with the tune and space out and emphasise each element a little more; i think i prefer my version because it ends just as the audience is catching on, which makes the punchline funnier.
• coffee-- 6y ago
  certainly imperfect, but before 2024 you might want to run something akin to: wget -r -l 2 -A pdf --no-parent https://tomlehrersongs.com/index/ https://tomlehrersongs.com/index/
  • vortico 6y ago
    Hopefully the Wayback Machine will pick it up. It only has the index page at this time. https://web.archive.org/web/20200302193816/https://tomlehrersongs.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200302193816/https://tomlehrer...
    • kwhitefoot 6y ago
      Use the Firefox extension to add the pages to the Wayback Machine. I've added some. Don't forget to add the actual pdfs.
      • pabs3 6y ago
        I just used savepagenow@archive.org to archive all the web parts and then a bunch of curl plus the email to save the PDFs.
  • gspr 6y ago
    Hopefully I got everything: https://nonempty.org/stuff/lehrer-pubdomain.tar.gz https://nonempty.org/stuff/lehrer-pubdomain.tar.gz
• mullikine 6y ago
  This is cool. The elements is the only song I have studied the lyrics for and had written down many times ;)
• seg_lol 6y ago
  I could imagine Aaron and Tom doing a duet.
• dang 6y ago
  If curious see also Tom Lehrer in other threads (including several appearances by former students): 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24279151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24279151 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036813 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684409 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675682
• dang 6y ago
  Relevant passage from https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer, a magnificent portrait that everyone who likes TL should read: Meyn originally posted content to the channel without Lehrer’s permission and called him from overseas in December 2008 to apologize, a conversation he later posted on the “Tom Lehrer!” Facebook page. An excerpt: TL: Well, you see, I'm fine with that channel. EM: You're very kind. But my question is: Who in your family will take care of your copyright and your songs in the distant future? TL: I don't have a family. EM: OK, but what do you think will happen to the channel and your songs? And if you have someone who will act on your behalf, could you give them my name in case they'd want the channel taken down? TL: Yes, but there's no need to remove that channel. EM: I was just wondering what will happen in the future, because you're certainly going to continue to sell records. TL: Well, I don't need to make money after I'm dead. These things will be taken care of. EM: I feel like I gave away some of your songs to public domain without even asking you, and that wasn't very nice of me. TL: But I'm fine with that, you know. EM: Will you establish any kind of foundation or charity or something like that? TL: No, I won't. They're mostly rip-offs.
  • reagent_finder 6y ago
    Oh man, THANK YOU for this. What an amazing article! >He grew up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the son of a pioneering necktie manufacturer, James Lehrer That's just hilarious. I can't think of anything more appropriate than a necktie manufacturer family. In any case, if anyone is unfamiliar with Tom Lehrer, I encourage you to take a wiki dive and then listen to his music. This guy taught mathematics at Harvard, then accidentally sold 10,000 copies of a vinyl of his songs in a few weeks, then went on to tour the US and the world. His works remain some of the brightest, most convivial, most haunting and poignant works of song to date. He sings clever happy songs of things like pollution, patricide, nuclear holocaust, arson, murder, racism, plagiarism, criminal boy scouts, disease and crime in Mexico and, of course, the eternal desire of the common man to poison pigeons in the park. Like "Weird Al" Yankovic says in that article, Tom Lehrer remains the modern Tom Lehrer today. There's just no one like him and the way his songs have remained so relevant up to this day is something I find myself in awe of. He just... took a look at society, grokked it on a primordial level and wrote songs that I will end up teaching my kids and they'll go "Wait, they had these things 80 years ago?" EDIT: Also, OP title is wrong, Lehrer simply released his LYRICS to the public domain. My copy of "Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer" with musical notation remains relevant, yay!
• jedberg 6y ago
  Includes the Aristotle version of the elements, reproduced here in whole: There's.... Earth and Air and Fire and Water.
  • bloopernova 6y ago
    That earned a happy snortle laugh from me. Nice way to start my morning, thank you.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• pabs3 6y ago
  > Note: This website will be shut down on December 31, 2024, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long. I hope this collection gets onto archive.org.
  • kwhitefoot 6y ago
    Don't just hope. Help to put it there. Either paste urls into the Wayback Machine [1] or use the Firefox extension to add the pages to the Wayback Machine. I've added some. Don't forget to add the actual pdfs. [1] https://web.archive.org/save https://web.archive.org/save
    • Rebelgecko 6y ago
      Does that matter if they just add the whole website to their robots.txt in December of 2024?
      • pabs3 6y ago
        IIRC archive.org pay attention to the robots.txt now rather than in 2024.
        • moonchild 6y ago
          They do not. They have in the past removed public access to pages due to robots.txt changes.
          • pabs3 6y ago
            Hmm, this old blog post sounds like they were planning on ending that practice: https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-search-engines-dont-work-well-for-web-archives/ https://blog.archive.org/2017/04/17/robots-txt-meant-for-sea...
    • pabs3 6y ago
      I just used savepagenow@archive.org to archive all the web parts and then a bunch of curl plus the email to save the PDFs.
• vixen99 6y ago
  What a magnificently generous gesture! Thank you Tom Lehrer.
• athms 6y ago
  >Tom Lehrer releases song lyrics to public domain Wrong. An author (or heirs) cannot put creative works in the public domain. There is nothing in the statute that allows this. Only after the expiration of the copyright does the work go into public domain. Copyright stays with the author (or heirs) and is subject to license termination after 35 years. This would mean the declaration of "use freely" can be revoked. Which is why these works cannot treated as if they are in the public domain.
  • fortran77 6y ago
    Agreed. But don't expect the people on Hacker News, who don't "believe" in intellectual property, to get this right. A better title would be: "Tom Lehrer publishes his songs and lyrics online and states that they can be freely used."
  • thyrsus 6y ago
    I am aware of a written work on which the author inscribed "Copyright (C) <year> <organization>" and as best I can tell <organization> was fictional, and thus incapable of enforcing any terms of the copyright. What is your opinion as to what would happen if someone attempted to claim that copyright? It looks like a pretty brilliant hack to me.
    • athms 6y ago
      Irrespective of what is printed on the artistic work, the copyright is automatic (from 1976 onward) and belongs to the author(s) or their heirs. If there is a question of ownership, a court would need to decide.
      • thyrsus 6y ago
        Organizations own work-for-hire, and to establish ownership, you would need to prove the non-existence of the organization (reverting the copyright to the author/heirs) or determine the beneficiaries of a possibly ephemeral organization.
  • mjcohen 6y ago
• thirteenfingers 6y ago
  Oh man. I posted here about this before, but almost exactly four years ago a friend and I put on a concert of our own favorite Tom Lehrer songs to great enthusiasm. By what must be total coincidence, just a few days ago I had posted some videos of that concert to youtube, keeping my fingers crossed they wouldn't get copystriked... and now I wake up to this. I knew of his permissive attitude toward copyright, but I wasn't expecting him to make it official. Mr. Lehrer, thank you for brightening our lives.
• el_don_almighty 6y ago
  This man had a huge impact on my outlook to life as a youth and helped create a framework for me to disassemble difficult issues in the world around me. Picking through arguments and finding the absurdities is an artform, turning them into compositions is pure genius. I learned that scary things could, and should be defanged, dried and hung for public display rather than feared in the shadows. I love you Tom, I always have. This move is one more song, one more satirical poke at the music industrial complex
• stared 6y ago
  Is it a version of the WTF Public Licence? (Which I love wholeheartedly, but lawyers may find not explicit enough.)
• microtherion 6y ago
  The most 2020 of Lehrer’s songs might be this one: https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/i-got-it-from-agnes.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/i-got-...
• timoth3y 6y ago
  "There, the guy who's got religion'll Tell you if your sin's original." Is probably the greatest rhyme ever made in the English language.
  • panpanna 6y ago
    I would say his "elements" song holds that spot: These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard, And there may be many others, but they haven't been discovered.
    • cogburnd02 6y ago
      My favorite rhyme comes from Perry Como: The way that we cheered/whenever our team/was scoring a touchdown, The time that the floor/fell out of my car/when I put the clutch down
  • dllthomas 6y ago
    And you may have thought it tragic Not to mention other adjec- -tives... is also pretty great. Then there's the absurd chain if "-ility" rhymes in When You Are Old And Gray.
• ArtWomb 6y ago
  You see there used to be this thing called common sense back in the day ;) We tried to do a song parody version of The Elements, but using only Pokemon names. It was enormous fun, until you realize nothing rhymes with Pickachu, or Charmander, or Bulbasaur, or any of them for that matter. That lead to a discussion of how to write a Python script to test for like word endings on combinations of 888 pairs, etc. These songs have an almost mystical power to open minds. And observe there is this property to the universe known as "intelligence"
  • michaelt 6y ago
    > nothing rhymes with Pickachu, or Charmander, or Bulbasaur Were you only rhyming pokemon names with other pokemon names, or could you use other words? If you can use other words, the trick to rhyming made-up words is to find any word that ends with the same sound, and look that word up in a rhyming dictionary. Pickachu -> You -> zoo, IQ, caribou, misconstrue etc Charmander -> Salamander -> gander, candour, meander, highlander etc Bulbasaur -> Dinosaur -> door, floor, centaur, guarantor, heretofore etc
    • jfengel 6y ago
      The song he's trying to parody consists almost exclusively of the actual names of the elements. There are a few filler words added to make the meter work out ("There's strontium and silicon and silver and samarium"), and a couplet in English at the end, but otherwise it's just the elements. The rhyme is trivial, since every line ends with "ium". To do it with anything else you'd need to work a lot harder.
      • michaelt 6y ago
        But isn't the elements song itself a parody of "Modern Major-General" which has plenty of non-rhyming words (although of course with a lot of rhyming words too)?
        • jfengel 6y ago
          Sure. It's just that if what you want is to do a Pokemon-based version of this song, your ideal would be to cram it as full as possible with Pokemon names. You could step back and do a Pokemon-based G&S parody, rather than a parody-of-a-parody, but it doesn't have quite the same panache.
• jonstewart 6y ago
  Who’s next?
• hilbert42 6y ago
  Good on Tom Lehrer for releasing his songs to the public domain. I hope this magnanimous gesture by such a high profile person sets an example and starts a trend. I've always been a fan of Lehrer's from the days when he was a household name, it's good he's in the spotlight yet again.
• lr1970 6y ago
  Tom Lehrer's sharpest satirical song IMHO is "Wernher von Braun" When rockets are up, Who cares where they come down, It's not my department Says Wernher von Braun plus many more satirical pearls in just one song.
  • Diederich 6y ago
    For those who haven't watched any of his material, please click here to see the above performed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs&t=63 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTKn1aSOyOs&t=63 He is amazingly talented across many different axes.
  • alangibson 6y ago
    I was just watching some color footage of von Braun riding around with JFK and thought of this song. Who cares indeed...
  • unethical_ban 6y ago
    "In German, oder Englisch, I know how to count down... Und I'm learning Chinese", Says Werner von Braun --- Pretty prophetic for 1962, pre-moon-landing.
  • 205guy 6y ago
    One of the other comments mentioned how Tom Lehrer's song have remained relevant. This song is a gem, but I'd forgotten the last lines (from the video in sibling comment): "In German oder Englisch, I know how to count down And I'm learning Chinese, says Wernher von Braun."
    • HarryHirsch 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Bombs,_One_Satellite https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Bombs,_One_Satellite
  • thaumasiotes 6y ago
    Some have harsh words for this man of renown / but some feel our attitude should be one of gratitude / like the widows and cripples in old London town / who owe their large pensions to Werner von Braun
• Avernar 6y ago
  I remember reading about an ELI5: The "Old Math" in Tom Lehrer's New Math. That post was funny. If you haven't heard the song, he describes the way they used to do math as follows: Consider the following subtraction problem, which I will put up here: 342 minus 173. Now, remember how we used to do that: Three from two is nine, carry the one, and if you're under 35 or went to a private school, you say seven from three is six, but if you're over 35 and went to a public school, you say eight from four is six ...and carry the one, so we have 169.
• lioeters 6y ago
  If you're looking for sheet music, here's the full list: https://tomlehrersongs.com/category/sheet-music/ https://tomlehrersongs.com/category/sheet-music/ --- EDIT: Quick DOM-Fu retrieved the following. https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/be-prepared-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/be-pre... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/bright-college-days-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/bright... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/a-christmas-carol-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/a-chri... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-elements-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-el... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/fight-fiercely-harvard-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/fight-... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-folk-song-army-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-fo... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-hunting-song-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-hu... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/i-got-it-from-agnes-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/i-got-... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/i-hold-your-hand-in-mine-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/i-hold... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/i-wanna-go-back-to-dixie-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/i-wann... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/in-old-mexico-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/in-old... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-irish-ballad-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-ir... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/l-y-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/l-y-mu... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-masochism-tango-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-ma... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/mlf-lullaby-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/mlf-lu... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/my-home-town-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/my-hom... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/national-brotherhood-week-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/nation... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/new-math-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/new-ma... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-old-dope-peddler-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-ol... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/poisoning-pigeons-in-the-park-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/poison... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/pollution-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/pollut... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/send-the-marines-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/send-t... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/shes-my-girl-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/shes-m... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/silent-e-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/silent... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/smut-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/smut-m... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/so-long-mom-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/so-lon... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/te-amo-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/te-amo... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-vatican-rag-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-va... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/we-will-all-go-together-when-we-go-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/we-wil... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/wernher-von-braun-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/wernhe... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/when-you-are-old-and-gray-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/when-y... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/whos-next-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/whos-n... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-wiener-schnitzel-waltz-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-wi... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-wild-west-is-where-i-wanna-be-music.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/the-wi...
• asddubs 6y ago
  neat, there's even sheet music!
  • cclark00 6y ago
    I love the pacing note on the sheet music. "I Got It From Agnes" should be played "Infectiously".
• dekhn 6y ago
  When I was in college, I noticed that Tom Lehrer was teaching a math course "Nature of Math" and took it. Great intro to all sorts of historical details like how people competed to solve quartic equations in the 1500s, etc, all delivered with that special Tom Lehrer joking attitude. It was also my introduction to the birthday paradox, which was presented entirely without reference to hash tables. After I finished, I had to decide between TAing that course, or working on an undergraduate thesis; I did the latter, which helped launch my career, but I regret not working with Tom.
• stelliosk 6y ago
  So now you can... Plagiarize! Let no one else's work evade your eyes. Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, So don't shade your eyes, But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize --- (Lobachevsky song - Tom Lehrer)
• dllthomas 6y ago
  It was only about a year ago that I realized the line was "Take us to your Lieder"...
• shash 6y ago
  > Prospective performers of the piece (if any) are advised to > heed its basic precept and plagiarize the author's version. Appropriate... https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/lobachevsky.pdf https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/lobach...
• BuildTheRobots 6y ago
  Somewhat off topic, but he did a concert in Copenhagen of which there's a full recording on Youtube [1] For something filmed in 1967 the audio quality is absolutely stunning. I wonder what equipment they used? My suspicion is that it's a piezoelectric microphone which had fantastic reputation for picking up a wide range of sound (especially for things like multiple people around a table) but fell out of favour as they worked best with valve amplifiers. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPmRJIoc2k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPmRJIoc2k
• dllthomas 6y ago
  Also of note, apparently the perennially missing line from "My Home Town" is here designated (hum).