That Was the Year That Was is a 1965 Live Album (recorded at the hungry i
in San Francisco) by humorous singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer, featuring songs he had written during a stint on the American incarnation of the satirical current affairs show That Was the Week That Was. Most of the songs on the album, as well as a few of Lehrer's older songs, were performed on that show by their resident performers; "The Folk Song Army", "Smut", "Alma", "Wernher von Braun" and "The Vatican Rag" were not featured on TW3.
This was the only Lehrer album not to be originally issued on his own label; it was released by Reprise Records. As part of the deal to issue the album, Reprise also got the rights to Lehrer's back catalog; in 1966, they reissued An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer and had Lehrer rerecord Songs by Tom Lehrer in stereo.
Track list
Side One
- "National Brotherhood Week"
- "MLF Lullaby"
- "George Murphy"
- "The Folk Song Army"
- "Smut"
- "Send the Marines"
- "Pollution"
Side Two
- "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)"
- "Whatever Became of Hubert?"
- "New Math"
- "Alma"
- "Who's Next?"
- "Wernher von Braun"
- "The Vatican Rag"
Hot and cold running Tropes:
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Lampshaded by Lehrer during "New Math", when, while doing the problem in Base 8, he goes to the sixty-fours:"Sixty-four...? How did sixty-four get into it?", I hear you cry.
Well, sixty-four is eight squared, don't you see?
"Well, you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer." - Balance of Power: "Who's Next?" mentions this by name. "First we got the bomb", because the United States developed the nuclear bomb first. But then Russia got the bomb, but Lehrer assures is that it's okay "'cause the balance of power's maintained that way".
- Captain Obvious Aesop: Invoked. One of the targets of "The Folk Song Army" is the fact that most of these songs have rather obvious things that they're railing against. "We all hate poverty, war, and injustice, unlike the rest of you squares", as Lehrer sings in the song, tongue firmly in cheek. In the opening monologue before playing the song, Lehrer notes that it takes "a certain amount of courage" to sing a song about being in favor of peace, justice, and brotherhood, in full Sarcasm Mode.
- Carry the One: In "New Math", Lehrer describes a traditional way of doing a subtraction problem: "Three from two is nine, carry the one..." but claims that in the New Math approach to mathematics teaching that was then in vogue, "the idea is to know what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer." As a result, he does the problem over again, with different carrying of the one...to get the same answer, of course, but he does it so fast that it's hard to follow.
- Cheap Heat: Since That Was the Year That Was was recorded in San Francisco, he sings "the breakfast garbage that you throw into the bay, they drink at lunch in San Jose" in "Pollution" and gets an enthusiastic reaction from the crowd. The songbook Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer suggests that anyone singing the song should similarly localize that line.
- Dance Sensation: "The Vatican Rag" is a satirical example. After "Vatican II" showed up, Lehrer suggested that a dance craze in the name of the Vatican was a good way to spread the message.First you get down on your knees
Fiddle with your rosaries
Bow your head with great respect
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect! - Deadpan Snarker:
- "MLF Lullaby", regarding a proposal that the USA and Germany (among other countries) join forces in a multilateral nuclear deterrent force:Once all the Germans were warlike and mean, but that couldn't happen again
We taught them a lesson in 1918, and they've hardly bothered us since then! - In "National Brotherhood Week", Tom mentions that on the first day of the titular week that year, Malcolm X was murdered, which he notes "gives us an idea of how effective the whole thing is!"
- "MLF Lullaby", regarding a proposal that the USA and Germany (among other countries) join forces in a multilateral nuclear deterrent force:
- Doctor von Turncoat: "Wernher von Braun" portrays the title scientist as gleefully switching sides in the war and not caring who is using his rockets or for what purpose as long as he still gets funded.
- "Once the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
- Educational Song: Parodied with "New Math", which purports to be an attempt to make the 'New Math' understandable, but is really trying to make it as confusing as possible. In the song, Lehrer does a simple math problem of 342 minus 173; he overexplains the problem first, then does the same problem in base 8 instead of base 10. The whole point of the song was that it was making math unnecessarily complicated in Lehrer's mind.
- Ethnic Menial Labor: Discussed in "George Murphy", in the context of insensitive comments the real Murphy had made about Mexican migrants."Should Americans pick crops? George says no, 'cause no one but a Mexican would stoop so low!"
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: "New Math" pokes fun at this attitude, especially the result of the 1960s attempt to introduce set theory in elementary school. As Tom himself says, "The idea is to know what you are doing rather than to get the right answer!"Hooray for New Math, New Math
It won't do you any good to review math
It's so simple, so very simple
That only a child can do it! - Filth: The subject matter of "Smut".All books can be indecent books,
Though recent books are bolder
For filth (I'm glad to say) is
In the mind of the beholder
When correctly viewed, everything is lewd
I can tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz (there's a Dirty Old Man!) - For Science!: "Wernher von Braun" is about the career of a German scientist who built missiles for the Nazis during World War II with the excuse that what he really wanted to build was space rockets but nobody would give him funding for that (and then after the war was rewarded for his work blowing up parts of England by being hired by the American space program).
- Gallows Humor: "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)". The song is all about a young soldier in a theoretical war with Russia. The lyrics include such things as shooting Commies, an "agonizing holocaust", and the war ending in an hour and a half from the use of nuclear bombs.
- Gunboat Diplomacy: "Send the Marines" is all about the use of the Marines as soldiers who get sent in early "for Might Makes Right", and that the USA will keep sending the Marines "until somebody we like can be elected".When someone makes a move
Of which we don't approve
Who is it that always intervenes?
U.N. and O.A.S.
They have their place (I guess)
But first, send the Marines! - Historical Hero Upgrade: Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel is considered a controversial figure these days, partly because of her own self-confessed antisemiticnote and pro-Fascist beliefs, and partly because she proved to be an Unreliable Narrator in her role as the caretaker of Gustav Mahler's legacy.
- Hypocritical Humor: From the intro to "National Brotherhood Week":I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that!
- Ironic Nursery Tune: "MLF Lullaby", a sweet nursery song about how you should rest easy and not worry about the fact that peace and the human race's continued existence depends on some really untrustworthy people.
- I Will Find You: Given a suitably dark twist in "So Long Mom (A Song for World War III)":
- Lame Pun Reaction: Lehrer apologizes for his own pun in "Whatever Became of Hubert?":"We must protest this treatment, Hubert"
Says each newspaper reader
As someone once remarked to Schubert
Take us to your Lieder
[spoken] Sorry about that. - Lyrical Dissonance: "So Long Mom" is a song about nuclear war set to a cheerful tune. The narrator is a pilot in World War III addressing his mother:While we're attacking frontally,
Watch Brink-a-ly and Hunt-a-ley
Describing contrapuntally
The cities we have lost.
No need for you to miss a minute
Of the agonizing holocaust. (Yay!) - Midword Rhyme: "Smut".Smut!
Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I can't shut
If it's uncut
And unsubt—
tle - Parental Bonus:
- While most of his songs are still funny, there are lines he says that are rather topical to the 1960s. An example would be when he mentions that Massachusetts is the only state with three senators; it's because Robert Kennedy (from Massachusetts) happened to be a New York senator at the time.
- "New Math" was supposed to make fun of the new (at the time) subtraction method, by using Motor Mouth to make it look as incomprehensible as possible. While New Math was mostly abandoned, the subtraction method he demonstrates in the song actually stuck around, and nowadays, kids are taught using that "new" method. Kids will now understand perfectly the incomprehensible "new" method, but struggle trying to understand the normal "old" method because Lehrer didn't bother explaining it too much (since he assumed people would be familiar with the method) and, as Lehrer himself points out, the "old" method wasn't actually meant to be understood.
- Painful Rhyme: Lampshaded in "The Folk Song Army":The tune don't have to be clever,
And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line.
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English
And it don't even gotta rhyme! Excuse me: rhyne. - Patter Song: "New Math" derives a lot of its humor from Lehrer doing a simple math problem (342 minus 173 equals 169), but over-explaining each and every step of the problem, including introducing set theory to do the same problem again in base 8 just to make it even more confusing.
- Polluted Wasteland: The whole topic of "Pollution", which is a reversal of how Americans going overseas would be warned not to drink the water there, and how foreigners coming to America should prepare for it.If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air!
Pollution, pollution!
They've got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap
And get hot and cold running crud! - Protest Song: Parodied in "The Folk Song Army". Lehrer believed that protest songs were utterly useless and was fond of reminding people of how effective the satirical cabaret shows of Weimar Germany were against the Nazis. He did several songs satirizing political issues of the day, such as nuclear proliferation, and senator and former Hollywood star George R. Murphy's racist remarks during an interview and other such things, but these were more Gallows Humor than protests.If you feel dissatisfaction
Strum your frustrations away
Some people may prefer action
But give me a folk song any old day - The Short War: "So Long Mom" envisages that World War III will be one, thanks to the presence of nuclear weapons.I'll look for you when the war is over
An hour and a half from now! - Short-Lived, Big Impact: The introduction to "Alma" discusses this. In particular, he mentions Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, noting that, by the time he was 37 (as Lehrer was at the time of the album's release), Mozart had been dead for two years.
- Shout-Out:
- "Smut" has references to two classic works of erotic literature, Fanny Hill and Lady Chatterley's Lover.
- In the banter accompanying "New Math", Lehrer jokes that he's always wanted to write a mathematics textbook because he has a title he knows would sell a million copies: Tropic of Calculus.
- Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: "The Folk Song Army".The tune don't have to be clever
And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English
And it don't even gotta rhyme—excuse me—rhyne - Take That!:
- "Wernher von Braun" is one long Take That to von Braun, and by extension to the people who employed him after the War.
- "Send the Marines" takes aim at American foreign policy.For might makes right
And till they've seen the light
They've got to be protected
All their rights respected
Till somebody we like can be elected - "Folk Song Army" mocks protest folk songs, which Lehrer deemed useless and guilty of
blatantly obvious messages.
- Those Wacky Nazis: He references Wernher von Braun's Nazi past:Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown...
"Heh, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun! - Three Chords and the Truth:
- He has a dig at this trope in the spoken intro to "Folk Song Army":I have a song here which I realize should be accompanied on a folk instrument, in which category the piano does not, alas, qualify. So imagine, if you will, that I am playing an 88-string guitar.
- Then he does it again in the song itself, where he also pokes fun at the lyrical version:The tune don't have to be clever
And it don't matter if you put a couple extra syllables into a line
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English
And it don't even gotta rhyme — excuse me — rhyne
- He has a dig at this trope in the spoken intro to "Folk Song Army":
- Trophy Husband: "Alma", a ballad dedicated to socialite Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, whom he praises for managing to marry three of the greatest minds of the day and having the raciest obituary he had ever had the pleasure of reading.
- Verbal Backspace: "New Math" gets a gag out of a subtraction error:And so you've got thirteen tens
And you take away seven,
And that leaves five...
[Beat]
Well, six actually...
But the idea is the important thing! - Vice President Who?: The theme of "Whatever Became of Hubert?", regarding Lyndon Johnson's VP Hubert Humphrey.Whatever became of Hubert? Has anyone heard a thing?
Once he shone on his own
Now he sits home alone
And waits for the phone to ring - Wangst: Discussed at the end of "Alma". Lehrer had little patience for dramas of the day around the lack of communication and all of the complaining about it.And the characters in these books and plays and so on — and in real life, I might add — spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.
- War Is Glorious: Done, tongue firmly in cheek, in "So Long Mom (A Song for World War III)". The subject of the song apparently looks forward to "getting the Commies" and invoking some agonizing holocaust on his enemies.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: "Send the Marines".Fortunately, in times of crisis like this, America always has its number one instrument of diplomacy to fall back on...
- Word, Schmord!: In "Wernher von Braun":Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown
"Ha, Nazi Schmazi," says Wernher von Braun - World War III: "So Long Mom" is a parody of jingoistic World War II songs, updated for the next Big One. It also assumes the war will be over very quickly.
