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Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoI saw "Tomfoolery," a Lehrer revue, in 1980 or 1981 in SF. The actor singing "The Elements" had a periodic table and a pointer. He identified every element in time and at tempo without missing a one. Impressive.
- f_allwein 2y agoCheck out https://tomlehrersongs.com/albums/ https://tomlehrersongs.com/albums/ - he put all his works into public domain.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoYes, indeed. Bookmarked that a while ago!
- lupire 2y agoDaniel Radcliffe sang it on Graham Norton, introducing Tom Lehrer to a crowd who didn't know him. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs
- space_oddity 2y agoWhen I saw that video back then my jaw dropped.Was fascinated by it
- bitwize 2y agoRadcliffe's geek cred was a factor in his casting as the title character in Weird:The Al Yankovic Story.
- sp332 2y agoHe said it was this specific performance that convinced Weird Al that he was the right guy. Also the movie is great.
- space_oddity 2y agoWanted to watch this one for a looong time
- eichin 2y agoWow. (Without the piano line it's clearly a lot harder to get in the pauses to breathe, even the comically large one that's in the original performance.) Back in the 80's, the MIT freshman chemistry class had A Thing where if you'd stand up in the lecture hall and sing The Elements, you'd get extra credit (I think it was an automatic A on the first quiz? something small.) I'd already placed out, but helped one of my housemates practice, which was fun (he did succeed, on the day.)
- I_am_uncreative 2y agoI remember singing this in my 8th grade physics class in middle school for extra credit. Circa 2007.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoI acknowledge the effort but this didn't quite land for me. Don't know the performer or the tv show; the lava lamp background was distracting.
- Symbiote 2y agoHe was Harry Potter in all the films, so I assume he's one of the best-known actors in the world.
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoAh, thanks. I've not seen the movies or read the books.
- konstantinua00 2y ago...username checks out?
- OldGuyInTheClub 2y agoCan't spell "Ok, boomer" without "me".
- rkangel 2y agoSome years ago I did a production of Gilbert and Sullivan (I think Ruddigore - I've done a few). We had a talent night, and one of the guys did "The Elements" at full tempo while also solving a Rubiks cube and had it done before the end of the song. It put all the rest of our "talents" to shame!
- mannyv 2y ago“Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.” Truer words have never been sung.
- gjm11 2y agoThose words haven't (so far as I know) been sung either: they're from one of his spoken preambles, not from any of the songs. (The preambles are generally at least as funny as the songs, at least in my estimation.)
- walterbell 2y agoFrom https://tomlehrersongs.com/we-will-all-go-together-when-we-go/ https://tomlehrersongs.com/we-will-all-go-together-when-we-g...
- mannyv 2y agoI wouldn't call what he does singing given the normal meaning of the phrase.
- walterbell 2y agomini-musical?
- gjm11 2y agoThat seems unfair. He is (or at least was when he was doing it -- he's 96 years old now) a very competent singer and pianist. He's not particularly trying to make a beautiful sound, but there's more to singing than that.
- JohnFen 2y agoTom Lehrer is one of my musical heroes, and I listen to his songs regularly to this day. My hat's off to you, Mr. Lehrer. Having known a couple of very famous people and seeing what that brought to them, I'd prefer obscurity. I don't know if that's related to his decision-making, of course.
- jcalvinowens 2y agoI've made a simple archive of the work Lehrer released to the public domain: https://github.com/jcalvinowens/tomlehrer-archive https://github.com/jcalvinowens/tomlehrer-archive The text on his website suggests it won't be around for long. The archive is a git repo, you can help out by hosting it somewhere.
- pdonis 2y agoJust cloned it. Thanks for doing this!
- dang 2y agoRelated: Tom Lehrer DAT Recordings - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38778749 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38778749 - Dec 2023 (2 comments) That's Mathematics – Tom Lehrer Songs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38471908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38471908 - Nov 2023 (1 comment) Tom Lehrer puts all music and lyrics in public domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34038206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34038206 - Dec 2022 (1 comment) Looking for Tom Lehrer, Comedy's Mysterious Genius - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34034896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34034896 - Dec 2022 (1 comment) Tom Lehrer has released all of his songs into the public domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024968 - Dec 2022 (130 comments) Tom Lehrer – We Will All Go Together When We Go - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30509279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30509279 - March 2022 (2 comments) Tom Lehrer – So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III, 1967) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30496103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30496103 - Feb 2022 (1 comment) Tom Lehrer on Kurt Weill's Broadway Music (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27743713 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27743713 - July 2021 (1 comment) Tom Lehrer Puts His Music into the Public Domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24882384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24882384 - Oct 2020 (1 comment) Tom Lehrer releases song lyrics to public domain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24833683 - Oct 2020 (132 comments) Tom Lehrer's Mathematical Songs (1951) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24279151 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24279151 - Aug 2020 (44 comments) Tom Lehrer’s memorable “Revue” session - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036813 - Sept 2018 (6 comments) Tom Lehrer at 90: a life of scientific satire - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608 - April 2018 (83 comments) Looking for Tom Lehrer, Comedy's Mysterious Genius - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684409 - Dec 2015 (3 comments) Tom Lehrer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675682 - Dec 2015 (32 comments) Tom Lehrer's last (math) class (2001) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1914399 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1914399 - Nov 2010 (1 comment)
- walterbell 2y agoAround age 70, "A Conversation with Tom Lehrer", https://web.archive.org/web/20210307035012/http://www.paul-lehrman.com/insider/1997/12insiderfulltext.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210307035012/http://www.paul-l... > This winter I'm just going to do a math course. I'm doing a three-unit, as opposed to five-unit course on infinity, which I've never done before. I'm planning to study like crazy. It's for non-math majors. I'm trying to bring in the fact that infinity is when things get complicated. In calculus, algebra, probability, geometry, everything, so I'm trying to learn things like how perspective drawing uses infinity. So that'll take me three months. They won't appreciate it, but I will. I'll have fun with it. I've been teaching a course for non-mathematicians for years, and a lot of the stuff has already been covered there. 1997 math lecture performance (13m), including "That's Mathematics" for kids, https://archive.org/details/lehrer/lehrer_high.wmv https://archive.org/details/lehrer/lehrer_high.wmv
- walterbell 2y agoAnother Tom Lehrer interview clip (1994, age 65), http://www.crazycollege.org/lehrer.html http://www.crazycollege.org/lehrer.html GEO: I was surprised to learn that you enlisted in the Army back in 1955. TOM LEHRER: That's one way of putting it, but probably not the appropriate verb. The point is that they were drafting people up to the age of 35. So I dodged the draft for as long as anybody was shooting at anybody. And then when I realized that I would have to go -- there was really no way out of it except getting an essential full time job, which I didn't really want to do -- I waited until everything was calm and then surrendered to the draft board. I wouldn't call it "enlist". "Enlist" means that you have to spend another year. I allowed myself to be drafted. I was 27 at the time and there were a lot of graduate students who were like me who had gotten deferred as graduate students and now had to pay up. So it was a kind of an odd group there, a lot of educated people in my "outfit", I believe is the word. And we had a lot of fun. So I did that for two years in Washington DC and had a great time -- especially since there was no war -- though vice president Nixon was trying to get us into one in Indo-China even then. So there was that little threat. And there was Suez and a few other little things that looked a little tricky. But it didn't look like there was going to be a real war. So it seemed to be safe to go in. And I'm sure that a lot of my cohort felt the same way. GEO: And what did you do? TOM LEHRER: It was NSA. I think I'm allowed to say that now. I asked around before I surrender to be sure that I would not be in special services or something playing volleyball with the troops in Korea. I wanted to make sure that I got a nice cushy job. We were called "The Chair Borned". And I found out that they were hiring mathematicians. So I arranged to be hired. GEO: Do you find that your training as a mathematician influenced your song writing. Writing a song seems to me to be like creating a puzzle. TOM LEHRER: Not Mathematics itself, but the kind of mind that likes mathematic. Stephen Sondheim has that kind of mind. He was a mathematics major in college, too. Having that kind of a mind, you look for organization, and rhyming, and pattern, and prosody -- all those things that are fun to do in a song, rather than -- which is what a lot of comedy songs are -- just couplets. Working all that out, if not "mathematical", is at least "logical". GEO: As a mathematician did you ever make any brilliant discoveries? TOM LEHRER: Oh,nonono. I have no desire to extend the frontier of human knowledge; retract them, if anything. I like to teach it and I like to think about it, but that's about it. https://tomlehrersongs.com/it-makes-a-fellow-proud-to-be-a-soldier/ https://tomlehrersongs.com/it-makes-a-fellow-proud-to-be-a-s...
- ghaff 2y agoAlthough, as the article notes, he did glancingly dip his toe back in a couple of times but my impression was that he was just ready close that chapter. Even requests from close friends fell on deaf ears.
- doktrin 2y agoI can’t pretend to know the man’s mind but I always got the vibe he didn’t really feel at home in the cultural landscape of the late 60s and onwards Personally I think his contributions would be welcome in any era, and either way “this is the year that was” is a certified banger
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI grew up listening to him. He seems to be personally, very happy. That’s something that I find inspirational.
- throwaway5752 2y agoI have to think "swapping fame for obscurity" is a large part of that happiness. "Tom Lehrer Is Teaching Math and Doesn’t Want to Talk to You", brilliant.
- space_oddity 2y agoLehrer has often expressed that he didn't enjoy the lifestyle that came with fame
- jrockway 2y agoI still have some Tom Lehrer songs in my playlist. They sound like they're a product of their time but are still relevant today. I am also amused that I learned "new math" in elementary school, but I think it's actually different from the "new math" in his song of that name. I didn't hate it, honestly. "Now the book wants you to do it in base 8." This is actually relevant to my day to day work. (Though in base 8, I have to say that I only ever use bitmasks. chmod 755 foobar)
- bitwize 2y agoNew Math was a response to the Soviet lead in the space race. It was thought that introducing more abstract concepts, like different bases and set theory, would help kids grok math more. It was a fool's game. Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core (one of which you probably encountered). At the elementary school level, the only way to increase math proficiency is drilling. Drill the basic math facts and standard algorithms until the kid knows them by heart and can do problems as easily as breathing. Only then will they be ready for the higher level, conceptual stuff. The Soviets were ahead in math and science because they drilled their kids harder. Any kid who didn't want to drill was a traitor to the working class. (Were I a right-wing conspiracy theorist, I'd say New Math and its successors were Soviet psyops designed to sabotage math education in order to weaken the west. Instead I think it's more likely a psyop by the bourgeoisie to make us more compliant and exploitable slaves through mass innumeracy.) No surprise, then, that today, when Americans really want their kids to learn math, they use the curriculum from a country where they cane you for minor infractions. They use Singapore Math. Math is hard, and hard things can only be mastered through discipline.
- jrockway 2y agoI think I'm too old for common core (39). It was "Chicago Math" or something like that. We did multiplication by making a 2x2 grid with diagonal lines and whatnot? I didn't really understand the simplification that much; my parents taught me the old way well before I encountered this in school.
- aebtebeten 2y ago
- TheFreim 2y ago"So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" by Tom Lehrer is one of my favorites.
- elihu 2y agoI didn't know he had released sheet music and lyrics into the public domain. That's amazing. https://tomlehrersongs.com/ https://tomlehrersongs.com/
- aidenn0 2y agoFun fact: the tempo for "Smut" is "Pornissimo" in the sheet music.
- elihu 2y agoI would expect nothing less.
- 082349872349872 2y agoI would be content with less, namely pornior.
- cyco130 2y ago“I Got It from Agnes” is the funniest song ever written and I will refuse to socialize with anyone who thinks otherwise after hearing it. What a brilliant mind.
- bambax 2y agoThe article is nice and interesting but doesn't answer the question of why did Tom Lehrer stop. It's possible he thought he didn't have anything more to say. But I doubt that's the whole reason he stopped making songs and performing. He lived through a time when the US defeated Nazi Germany, and then... hired prominent Nazis to work for them. This is what the Wernher von Braun song is about. My take is, he thinks humanity as a whole doesn't deserve him — which may very well be the case.
- dekhn 2y agoSee the book "Operation Paperclip" for an in-depth writeup on the Nazi scientists who were smuggled out of Germany at the end of the war. I was not aware of, and was completely sickened by, the description of the Mittelwork factory where they worked slave laborers from nearby concentration camp to death to build V-2s.
- Analemma_ 2y agoI vaguely remember seeing that part of the reason he quit was that he felt satire had no purpose and no possibility of success in a country which elected Richard Nixon. Which may have been sort of brilliantly prescient of him, considering how popular stuff like The Daily Show / The Colbert Report was in the 2000s and yet how toothless and impotent they seem in the face of current political developments.
- bambax 2y agoThe article does address this: > we do know that he believed satire changed nothing. He quoted approvingly Peter Cook’s sarcastic remark about the Berlin cabarets of the 1930s that did so much to prevent the rise of Hitler and the second world war.
- 082349872349872 2y ago> He could just about stay detached enough to be funny about Eisenhower’s America. compare "Our Long National Nightmare": https://legacy.npr.org/assets/news/2013/onion-bush.pdf https://legacy.npr.org/assets/news/2013/onion-bush.pdf
- jedberg 2y agoTL;DR: He didn't answer the question. Still a fun read though.
- ribs 2y agoHoly crap, Tom Lehrer is still alive!?
- lproven 2y agoYes he is, and he is with it enough to know about the internet and publishing rights and so on. So, a few years ago, he put all his lyrics in the public domain, and then more recently, all his original melodies too. Top man.
- AlbertCory 2y agoArtie Shaw was another guy who walked away from fame, and he was a lot bigger than Tom Lehrer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw Gerry Rafferty (probably more commercially successful than Lehrer, at least) also didn't like the business or performing aspects of music. Bill Murray said (paraphrasing), "I always say to someone who wants to be rich and famous, 'try being rich first, and see if that doesn't get you 90% of what you want.' Being famous is a 24-hour-a-day job."
- vmfunction 2y ago>Being famous is a 24-hour-a-day job. That's why, people whom are smart and/or lazy won't touch it.
- aidenn0 2y agoBill Withers hated working with the record labels so much he walked away from Columbia and quit touring, though he had about a dozen years from when he won his first Grammy to walking away. He attributed his ability to walk away to being older than most (early 30s) when his first hit was released.
- etc-hosts 2y agoevil Dark Enlightenment mathematician Eric Weinstein posted a photo on Twitter of himself and Tom Lehrer, with a blurb about how arranging the photo with his son was a great highlight of his life. I can't find it anymore, he must have taken it down. edit: found a copy: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeTFuNkUQAAHIwa?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeTFuNkUQAAHIwa?format=jpg He posts a lot about Tom Lehrer! https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40ericrweinstein%20lehrer&src=typed_query&f=top https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40ericrweinstein%20lehr... Here's Tyler Cohen claiming Tom Lehrer would have been a part of the "Intellectual Dark Web" https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/12/tom-lehrer-man-ahead-time.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/12/to...
- kragen 2y agoeric weinstein is not from the dark enlightenment (the neoreactionaries who want to re-establish monarchy) but the intellectual dark web ('a term used to describe some commentators who oppose identity politics, political correctness, and cancel culture'). i know the culture war can be confusing, and it's hard to keep all the subversive factions straight
- emmelaich 2y agoWhat a fantastic quote.. >You had to admire these folk singers,” he says on the live LP. “It takes courage to get up in a coffee house or a student auditorium and come out in favour of the things everyone else is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood, and so on.” It's pretty much my reaction to every protest or social concern story in the media.
- vintermann 2y agoPart of the joke is that lots of people are against peace and justice and brotherhood in practice - often the majority.
- hardlianotion 2y agoI like that it is ambiguous. Something for everybody.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- p3rls 2y agoYeah when I gaze out into the sea of salty and stultified faces at these protests "what brave souls" is what runs through my head too, if only the state wasn't so finnicky about creating martyrs, their courage would surely triumph in the court of public opinion. Alas.
- dgfitz 2y agoI wonder how you would feel if you didn’t agree with their movement. Would you still call them brave?
- retrochameleon 2y agoThis video essay about Bo Burnam was very interesting, and gave me a lot more context to his recent movie Inside. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but it had a lot more depth in the messaging than I even initially thought. I wasn't aware of a lot of his work prior, but he has been pretty consistent with his messaging throughout most of his career underlying the veil of humor. He once said very clearly and seriously, "if you can live your life without an audience, do it." I'm sure Tom experienced lots of the unfavorable aspects of the attention (and perhaps scrutiny) he garnered. https://youtu.be/I89Lz7CdLuM https://youtu.be/I89Lz7CdLuM
- aamargulies 2y agoI took Nature of Math from Lehrer in the 90s. He said on the first day of class that the class was for non-STEM majors and if any of us were science majors he’d find us and kick us out. I was a science major and I said to myself “Adam, I don’t care what Tom Lehrer says, there’s no way you you’re not taking a math class from Tom Lehrer.” He was bluffing. I stayed and loved every minute of it.
- jmspring 2y agoI had his class in the 90s as well. Enjoyed it. UCSC was smaller then and some interesting classes I’m not sure would be possible today. Another I enjoyed was Frank Andrews (chemistry) course titled something like the chemistry of love.
- cyberax 2y ago"Don't be nervous, don't be flustered, don't be scared... be prepared!" There's a recording of "Tomfoolery" performance on iTunes!
- quonn 2y agoFun fact: Lehrer is the German word for teacher.
- swayvil 2y agoHave you met the public? Fame is an acquired taste and more likely the lesser of evils.
- imetatroll 2y agoAll of those songs are worth a listen. True gold!
- noneeeed 2y agoI can't imagine many things worse than being famous. I guess if you are the kind of super-rich where you can completely avoid interacting with the rest of society that it would be fine, but not being able to just walk down the street or go to the pub without someone stopping you must get tedious. The kind of quiet fame that Lehrer managed, known to a smallish segment of the population, for being really good at something, and then going off and living a normal life sounds pretty great to me. As much as I love the maths based songs, my favourites are still Oedipus Rex and The Vatican Rag. Tom Lehrer and Flanders & Swann were the musical background to my childhood. If you enjoy Lehrer you might enjoy F&L too. While they don't have the science/maths background that makes Lehrer an obvious win for the HN crowd, F&Ls songs were razor sharp satires of the time. One or two have not aged so well, but most are great, although knowing a bit of British history helps. Like Lehrer they wrote songs about the insanity of war, nuclear weapons, and prejudice (A Song of Patriotic Prejudice is an awkward listen because of the terms used, but a great representation of English exceptionalism in the post colonial era).
- BizarroLand 2y agoMy favorite will always be poisoning pigeons in the park, introduced to me courtesy of Dr. Demento. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhuMLpdnOjY
- fragmede 2y agoThe sun is a misama of incandescent plasma, by They Might be Giants for me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLkGSV9WDMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLkGSV9WDMA A 2009 follow-up to their original song from 1993, the sun song, in which they erroneously claimed the sun is a mass of incandescent gas, to weigh the follow-up song is a correction.
- 082349872349872 2y agoMy current song pedantry fave is Nanobot, perfected by a video with 18 numbered [refs]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc (presumably Brian May would have had his phases of astral matter correct in the first set of lyrics?)
- didip 2y agoIf you are very rich, fame seems to be a big liability. You can't even spend your wealth properly without nosey people following you around and make a big deal out of everything.