{"id":1340,"date":"2025-07-27T20:45:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T03:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/?p=1340"},"modified":"2025-07-27T21:22:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T04:22:33","slug":"remembering-tom-lehrer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/1340","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Tom Lehrer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I just heard Tom Lehrer died yesterday<\/a> at the age of 97. I first heard of Tom Lehrer reading the lyrics to The Hunting Song<\/a><\/em> in one of my Dad’s old Mad Magazines, though like many of my generation I didn’t realize he was the same guy who sang Silent E<\/a><\/em>, L-Y<\/a><\/em> and a bunch of other songs I had probably already heard on The Electric Company<\/em>. I still remember learning all the lyrics to The Masochism Tango<\/a><\/em> long before I had any idea what the word meant, subjecting all my friends to my rendition of The Irish Ballad<\/a><\/em>, and lying in the way-back of a station wagon coming back from a high-school chess tournament while listening to a bootleg tape of of Tom Lehrer, Revisited<\/a><\/em> (or perhaps Tom Lehrer Discovers Australia<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Lehrer wasn’t just a brilliant musical satirist, he was also a mensch: a few years ago he signed over literally his entire catalog to the public domain and put the whole thing \u2014 including a music files, sheet music and lyrics \u2014 on his website at https:\/\/tomlehrersongs.com\/<\/a>. So download and stream to your heart’s content. Just take note of the warning at the end of Lehrer’s personal note: “THIS WEBSITE WILL BE SHUT DOWN AT SOME DATE IN THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE, SO IF YOU WANT TO DOWNLOAD ANYTHING, DON\u2019T WAIT TOO LONG.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just heard Tom Lehrer died yesterday at the age of 97. I first heard of Tom Lehrer reading the lyrics to The Hunting Song in one of my Dad’s old Mad Magazines, though like many of my generation I didn’t realize he was the same guy who sang Silent E, L-Y and a bunch […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1340"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1344,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1340\/revisions\/1344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}