Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. Fight Fiercely, Harvard
2. Old Dope Peddler
3. Be Prepared
4. Wild West Is Where I Want to Be
5. I Wanna Go Back to Dixie
6. Lobachevsky
7. Irish Ballad
8. Hunting Song
9. My Home Town
10. When You Are Old and Gray
11. I Hold Your Hand in Mine
12. Wiener Schnitzel Waltz
13. Poisoning Pigeons in the Park
14. Bright College Days
15. Christmas Carol
16. Elements
17. Oedipus Rex
18. In Old Mexico
19. Clementine
20. It Makes a Fellow Proud to Be a Soldier
21. She's My Girl
22. Masochism Tango
23. We Will All Go Together When We Go
24. I Got It from Agnes
25. That's Mathematics

Disc 2:

1. I wanna go back to Dixie
2. Wild West is where I want to be
3. Old dope peddler
4. Fight fiercely Harvard
5. Lobachevsky
6. Irish ballad
7. Hunting song
8. My home town
9. When you are old and grey
10. Wiener shnitzel waltz
11. I hold your hand in mine
12. Be prepared
13. Poisoning pigeons in the park
14. Bright college days
15. Christmas carol
16. Elements
17. Oedipus Rex
18. n old Mexico
19. Clementine
20. It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier
21. She's my girl
22. Masochism tango
23. We will all go together when we go
24. We Will All Go Together When We Go

Disc 3:

1. National brotherhood week
2. MLF lullaby
3. George Murphy
4. Folk song army
5. Smut
6. Send the marines
7. Pollution
8. So long Mom (a song for World War II)
9. Whatever became of Hubert
10. New math
11. Alma
12. Who's next
13. Wernher Von Braun
14. Vatican rag
15. Poisoning pigeons in the park
16. Masochism tango
17. Hunting song
18. L to Y
19. Silent E
20. O to U (the hound song)
21. S to N (snore sniff and sneeze)
22. N apostrophe T
23. Selling out
24. I'm spending Hannukkah in Santa Monica
25. (I'm Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67846 in Music
• Released on: 2000-07-24
• Number of discs: 3
• Formats: Box set, Import

Amazon.co.uk Review
Tom Lehrer was never a popular favourite in his native country: in the States, Lehrer was--and is--a cult artist, appealing to Ivy Leaguers and Wallace Shawn-era New York readers. Maybe it's due to the fact that Lehrer has a sense of humour--he's ironic, intelligent, literary and knowing--and not a sense of humor: this is not music for the masses that have made Adam Sandler a star. Lehrer's métier is to use classic song styles (waltzes, tangoes, traditional folk tunes) and twist them to his needs; he sings them (relatively) straight, but with vaudeville timing, taking pot shots at the left, right and centre.

The three-disc set The Remains of Tom Lehrer collects every album that Lehrer's ever released: the studio albums Songs by Tom Lehrer and More of Tom Lehrer, the live recordings Tom Lehrer Revisited and An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer, and That Was The Year That Was; they're joined by studio sessions with Richard Hayman, Joe Raposo and Rob Fisher. Amazing, then, that there are only 59 different songs here--31 appear here twice (in both studio and live versions), with a further four songs making three appearances (those reprised in the Hayman sessions). The real surprise is the inclusion of six previously unreleased songs--some old, some new; some witty but educational (recorded for a children's TV show), the others witty but cynical. --Randy Silver

Customer Reviews

from the bible to the popular song......
everything is ridiculed, picked on, laughed at and generally sung about.From nuclear war to nuclear families sleeping together, every idea everwrote about is to be found somewhere in here. This is simply a fantasticcollection of some of the funniest, most hilarious, timeless pieces ofcomedy ever written. Any one interested in music, politics, war,americans, sleeping with or killing various members of their families,murdering various small animals or remembering their college years, thereis a song here for you. But dont just buy this collection for the songsand extremely funny interludes, which will have you rolling with laughter,but also for the book which comes with the box set. Which contains manyinsights in to the life of lehrer and what made him the way he is today (amaths lecturer who needed to get out and sing hilariously daft songs).

A treasure-trove of historical depravity
First of all, this really is all an old Tom Lehrer fan or a new initiate will need - absolutely everything he did is here. I say 'old' because, at a recent tribute show I attended, the average age of the audience was in its sixties...and that accentuates what was so remarkable - unique, in fact - about Lehrer's comic songs: in this case 'ahead of his time' doesn't even come close. Written when America was feeling most smug and satisfied with itself, Lehrer was the spectre at the feast.

I have to disagree with some of the reviewers here about there being no sex in his work: there was loads. It was simply put across differently. It FEELS very innocent by today's standards, but that made it all the more subversive. We are, after all, talking about a whole song on the clap (I Got It From Agnes) but you are not explicitly TOLD it's about the clap. We're talking about necrophilia jokes made in the nineteen fifties, a time when clearly most of his audience hadn't even heard the word - such humour still shocks when The League of Gentlemen does it today, some fifty years later!

One or two songs are a little dated because George Murphy and Hubert Humphrey are distant memories (though Arnold Schwarzenegger and Al Gore are more or less the modern equivalents) but actually it's amazing how little has changed. Send The Marines, Pollution and New Math could have been written yesterday (though I guess it would now be New New Math). The Old Dope Peddler might have lost some of its shock value, but when I saw it performed in the tribute by a singer made up to look like he was in the final throes of heroin addiction, its understatedness still disturbed. Some of the rare material is great, too. I can't believe Selling Out and (I'm Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica - a response to White Christmas - were never released.

Whether you have old Tom Lehrer LPs in your collection or are coming to know his work for the first time, this is a treasure trove - and the accompanying booklet containing all the lyrics, several interviews, reprints from old Mad magazines etc...well, it's beyond perfection.

And you know what? The old boy's still alive and will no doubt be spending the royalties!

Prepare to be disillusioned...
...with today's comedy. After having listened to Tom Lehrer, you'll find it difficult to be so entertained by comedians today, many of whom seem to think standing on stage and swearing is funny.

No, there's not a single swear word on these CDs. No reference to sex either (unless, of course, you count Oedipus Rex) or any of the other topics today's entertainers fall back on. Mr. Lehrer is, however, one of funniest people to ever get up on stage.

He covers issues which would appear completely devoid of humour brilliantly. The theme of nuclear fallout, for example, is taken and turned into a ballad entitled 'We Will All Go Together When We Go' (which includes the great rhyme of "sooner'll" with "funeral").

What's amazing is how much of the material here could have been written yesterday. 'Send the Marines' is a case in point, and could easily have been written about the recent war in Iraq. Some, of course, - particularly some of the songs on disc 3, which were recorded for a current affairs show - are obviously dated, but even when this is the case, the songs are still enjoyable in their own right. You might even learn a bit about '60s American politics...

Personally I prefer the live records to the studio ones, and rarely listen to the latter.

Yes, as others have mentioned, quite a lot of the material is very similar, but for just over £20, you get 2 concerts, and a book, as well as the duplicate songs for completeness. Is it worth the money? Yes. Definately. 100%. Just do yourself a favour and buy it.

To close, a quote from the liner notes:

"Any ideas expressed on this record should not be taken as representing Mr. Lehrer's true convictions, for indeed he has none. 'If anyone objects to any statement I make,' he has said, 'I am quite prepared not only to retract it, but also to deny under oath that I ever made it.' So don't write in, Okay?"

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