Relevant passage from <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer" rel="nofollow">https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer</a>, a magnificent portrait that everyone who likes TL should read:<p><i>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:<p>TL: Well, you see, I'm fine with that channel.<p>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?<p>TL: I don't have a family.<p>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?<p>TL: Yes, but there's no need to remove that channel.<p>EM: I was just wondering what will happen in the future, because you're certainly going to continue to sell records.<p>TL: Well, I don't need to make money after I'm dead. These things will be taken care of.<p>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.<p>TL: But I'm fine with that, you know.<p>EM: Will you establish any kind of foundation or charity or something like that?<p>TL: No, I won't. They're mostly rip-offs.</i>
I had a professor in college that used to quote one of his songs rather regularly.<p>The song: <a href="https://youtu.be/gXlfXirQF3A" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/gXlfXirQF3A</a><p>"Don't shade your eyes, plagiarize."<p>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.
Tom Lehrer's sharpest satirical song IMHO is "Wernher von Braun"<p><pre><code> When rockets are up,
Who cares where they come down,
It's not my department
Says Wernher von Braun
</code></pre>
plus many more satirical pearls in just one song.
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.<p>I love you Tom, I always have. This move is one more song, one more satirical poke at the music industrial complex
> Note: This website will be shut down on December 31, 2024, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long.<p>I've never seen a website with a specific shut down time. I wonder why he put it there.
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.<p>Mr. Lehrer, thank you for brightening our lives.
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.<p>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.
If curious see also Tom Lehrer in other threads (including several appearances by former students):<p>2020 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24279151" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24279151</a><p>2018 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036813" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18036813</a><p>2018 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774608</a><p>2015 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684409" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10684409</a><p>2015 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675682" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10675682</a>
A question for the lawyers among us: is there any effective difference between granting all these permissions vs actually putting them into public domain?<p>Tom says “In other words, all the lyrics herein should be treated <i>as though</i> they were in the public domain”, emphasis mine. That’s what got me curious.<p>Does Tom effectively still hold some rights that are not afforded by “true” public domain?
I find it funny that his "New Math" has now been replaced by an even newer math which parents can't understand.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA</a>
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.<p>Tom Lehrer - So Long Mom (A Song for WW III) - with intro
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDFqoReof6A" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDFqoReof6A</a><p>Sorry about the intro, it was the shortest weird, long intro on this video I could find on YouTube.
He even includes pastiches of pastiches:
<a href="https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Elements-Aristotle.jpeg" rel="nofollow">https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Elemen...</a>
<p><pre><code> "There, the guy who's got religion'll
Tell you if your sin's original."
</code></pre>
Is probably the greatest rhyme ever made in the English language.
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.
I remember reading about an ELI5: The "Old Math" in Tom Lehrer's New Math. That post was funny.<p>If you haven't heard the song, he describes the way they used to do math as follows:<p>Consider the following subtraction problem, which I will put up here: 342 minus 173. Now, remember how we used to do that:<p><i>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.</i>
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.
The most 2020 of Lehrer’s songs might be this one: <a href="https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/i-got-it-from-agnes.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/i-got-...</a>
You see there used to be this thing called <i>common sense</i> back in the day ;)<p>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"
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.<p>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.
Somewhat off topic, but he did a concert in Copenhagen of which there's a full recording on Youtube [1]<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPmRJIoc2k" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPmRJIoc2k</a>
> Prospective performers of the piece (if any) are advised to > heed its basic precept and plagiarize the author's version.<p>Appropriate... <a href="https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/lobachevsky.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://tomlehrersongs.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/lobach...</a>
So now you can...<p>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 ---<p>(Lobachevsky song - Tom Lehrer)
> Note: This website will be shut down on December 31, 2024, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long.<p>I hope this collection gets onto archive.org.
certainly imperfect, but before 2024 you might want to run something akin to:<p>wget -r -l 2 -A pdf --no-parent <a href="https://tomlehrersongs.com/index/" rel="nofollow">https://tomlehrersongs.com/index/</a>
>Tom Lehrer releases song lyrics to public domain<p>Wrong.<p>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.<p>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.