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Comment by beagle3 | Hacker News Reader

Tom Lehrer is incredibly witty and funny; he was a mathematician and performer who was active in the 1960's until the 1980's. Some of his stuff is a little dated but most of it is as relevant as ever.

I found three albums of his - "That was the year that was", "An evening wasted with Tom Lehrer" and "Antoher evening wasted". They cover the more famous parts of his repertoire, and for the rest you'll likely have to look through YouTube and the internet.

Highly recommended.

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If you like Tom Lehrer then you might also enjoy his British contemporaries Flanders & Swann in "At the drop of a hat" and other albums.

With rare exceptions ("The laws of thermodynamics") they didn't write about the sciences, but they were musically a bit more sophisticated and just as witty.

Their satire was far less biting but was present. Although Michael Flanders did monologue: "The purpose of Satire, it has been rightly said, is to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half-truth - and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again." :)

I recommend their delightful animal song "The Sloth" as having pertinence to my fellows in the HN audience who have trouble with procrastination...

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blDNO5qznjM

On the topic of Flanders and Swann, their song about a gnu[0] (using the then non-standard pronunciation) was one of the inspirations for the naming the GNU project.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJ4iKv0H70&list=OLAK5uy_m5z...

Nifty, I didn't know that connection, thanks!

On PBS in the US, Mark Russell was also in a similar vein--but mostly political and IMO not as good. Doesn't seem to be readily available.

"Slow Train" about UK railway stations shut in the 60s is great (though about a third of the 28 mentioned were reprieved or reopened so it can seem a bit odd if you visit Chester-le-Street, say.)

Armstrong and Miller have several excellent parodies of Flanders and Swann on YouTube, if you happen to like their somewhat coarse humour.

Also, keep an ear out for what he says between the songs. The introductions are often as witty as the songs themselves.

(It's tempting to recount some here, but I think it's better to hear it from the man himself.)

Happily, although he hasn't performed in decades, Tom Lehrer is still alive today, at the age of 92.

There was a compilation, seems to be "Collection 1953-60," that basically includes all of his stuff.

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