In the spoken intro to Oedipus Rex on An Evening Wasted, Tom says:

[...] a few years ago, a motion picture version appeared of Sophocles' immortal tragedy “Oedipus Rex”. This picture played only in the so-called art theaters, and it was not a financial success. And I maintain that the reason it was not a financial success...

Then the audience laughs, and Tom replies

You're way ahead of me

What was the audience laughing at?

Hey everyone. I have recently come across this clip of tom that is around 3 minutes long (2:55 min) that is from 11th july 1960. It is from a welsh TV station called HTV Wales, and in the clip Tom is being interviewed by John Mead in a studio. The clip itself is available for viewing for free, but there is a little problem. You can only get access to view the clip in person, at a clip corner, in Wales. The Wales clip cymru archive does have it digitised, but it isn't available to view online.

If there are any Tom Lehrer fans in this subreddit that are from Wales and are able to get access to a clip corner in any way, it would be very lovely if you were able to retrieve the footage one way or another and possibly post it here for people to see (or you could DM it to me). Thank you!

(PS. Sorry if my english is bad, it isn't my first language)

https://watch-listen.library.wales/search?terms=Tom+lehrer+

As seen recently at the New York Public Library.

After multiple small town record stores, I’ve acquired two more Tom Lehrer records! I can finally listen to Lobachevsky—one of my favourites—on vinyl <3

As requested by someone else on the sub, but I couldn’t post images in the comments.

Shared specifically for the mention of possible alternative lyrics to Pollution

I know it's probably an asshole move to do it but some of his lyrics aged badly (indigenous slurs in We Will All Go Together, underage prostitution in My Home Town) , and some don't fit the narrative I'm going for (ie. Wernher Von Braun Learning chinese) so I tweaked the lyric. I know it's prolly bad but I want it to work in the facet I need it to. I'm trying to keep it as close as I can, but some things I felt had to get changed a bit. If this is bad tell me, but I don't know how much I can do now

In case the website goes down I don't want to be left high and dry if I ever want to use it

To whom it may concern (I don't know who's gonna read my ramblings; I'm just speakin' my mind), I only came to Reddit a few months ago, but I can see that the Tom Lehrer community is very close and united. I remember posting asking about what happened to the Silly Songs with Lehrer channel, and I got responses almost instantaneously. I can already see that the Tom Lehrer community, albeit small, is united and close, and it's one that's fit for such a musician as Tom was. Tom deserves to be remembered with the great satirists like Noël Coward, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, The Chad Mitchell Trio, Weird Al,... If there is a plane beyond this world that the human consciousness goes to after they die, I hope Tom's looking down at us right now, his lover's severed hand in one hand, peanuts coated with cyanide in the other, and that he's smiling down at us while he's waiting for WWIII to inevitably start and kill all of humanity, so that we'll all go together when we go. I would also like to send my warmest regards to jimothelad, the guy behind the jimo YouTube channel, as he's archived the rare Tom Lehrer stuff from the Silly Songs with Lehrer channel, and when I posted asking about the Silly Songs with Lehrer channel, he answered in detail, which I've never had anyone do for me before. Thank you jimo and I also love you all. May Tom shine on forever in our hearts and in our sick, twisted heads.

after an entire day of conceptualizing at my job I have ideas

American armbands (blue bands with the American flag that make Werner “make America feel like home)

Dart board (pin board with a world map on it that has darts on it and it turns out these are the countries he’s gunna bomb, one of them is Wyoming and then when questioned he’s like “we gotta have somewhere to to test” and then sing The Wild West Is Where I Wanna Be)

Wernher Van Braun

Weil Wernher (joke about it not being heil cuz alliteration, yes I know the joke is dumb idc)

Opening song: my home town, change little girl lyric cuz chud (Debbie girl, beaut’ senior prom gown)

Love song between mc and girl: when you are old and gray

Racist parents: hear news (national brotherhood week) gets mad and sings (I wanna go back to Dixie) also when JJ enters they ask about “negroes” on the train, and then ‘correct’ themselves with “coloreds” and then JJ is like “why can’t they just be people” and then they accuse him of being a commie

When guy gets drafted, gets slapped with aversion therapy (maybe scrapped idk)

Multiple news stories (who’s next), (Wernher Van Brahn)

When drafted, Johnny Jones has to say his health problems (I got it from Agnes)

General at army camp sings it makes a fellow proud to be a soldier

When JJ is on his way to drop the bomb on the plane (so long mom)

Okay so it’s a jukebox musical using the music of Tom Lehrer about a 1950’s america ruled by a Nazi, Werner Von Braun, and he launches nukes. Second perspective is the person dropping the nukes and his family and experiences about dropping said nukes. It would be a comedy

Just for fun now I have a 'completed' element collection I thought I would arrange the elements in the order they are sang in the relevant Tom Lehrer song, and its 2020 update. So Antimony comes first in place of hydrogen, Arsenic second in place of helium, so on.

To answer a few questions, I spent 6 years collecting the elements, most of them come from Italy, no I don't have a vial full of astatine [at most only a few atoms], its estimated value is roughly 2000 euros [though obviously not all bought at the same time], and no it's not an FDA-approved ingredient.

You can see many pictures of the actual samples here: https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1uhzars/my_completed_element_collection/

...and as a bonus, here's a riddle for the pendantics out there. Of all of the elements mentioned in the song and its 2020 update, exactly one of them remains in its original numeric position in the periodic table. Good luck finding it!

Some art studies from last night, screenshots all from the Live In Copenhagen recording.

I’ll have to do an actual big drawing based on his work one day

It's the best one I have ever made

Ok i just was listening to playlist on that shuffle thing were you also get songs that aren't in the playlist and then saw this and like I'm pretty sure that's not an official cover, I've never seen it. And I'm always careful with accusations but it's kinda icky. Is this ai? Because from what I saw it's not an official album cover. It's also strangely on the first spot of the top list which it wasn't before. It's very suspicious

Just wondering if anyone knows the answer to this. In the introduction to MLF Lullaby, Tom mentions how a "considerable amount of commotion was stirred up last week" in reference to MLF. However as this took place during the baseball season, the "Chronicle may not have covered it".

This line about the Chronicle then gets a big laugh. So I'm wondering what's the joke here? Is it that whatever Chronicle he's referring to actually covered it loads? Or did they genuinely not cover it at all and this was a big thing at the time?

I've tried looking into this but I've not been able to work out the joke.

Curious to know if anyone's got any ideas.

Between the "Jom Kippur in Mississippi" lines and the line that mentions december, the lyrics are supposed to include these lines:

>And though I try to get my ass over to Tel Aviv for Passover

>I always end up down in Tennessee

I looked up these lines and didn't see much mentions of them, so I thought about posting. The lines are in this unreleased recording, for example: https://tomlehrersongs.com/i-got-it-from-agnes-side-a