All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park
Every Sunday you’ll see my sweetheart and me
As we poison the pigeons in the park
When they see us coming
The birdies all try an’ hide
But they still go for peanuts
When coated with cyanide
The sun’s shining bright
Everything seems all right
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park
We’ve gained notoriety
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games
They call it impiety
And lack of propriety
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names
But it’s not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon
So if Sunday you’re free
Why don’t you come with me
And we’ll poison the pigeons in the park
And maybe we’ll do
In a squirrel or two
While we’re poisoning pigeons in the park
We’ll murder them all
Amid laughter and merriment
Except for the few
We take home to experiment
My pulse will be quickenin’
With each drop of strych’nine
We feed to a pigeon
It just takes a smidgin!
To poison a pigeon in the park
In the white bread, conformist world before the birth of the counter-culture, Lehrer seemed to us middle class kids as the lone voice declaring that the emperor was naked.
And that, in itself, was confusing, because once Lehrer pointed it out, we wondered why it wasn’t obvious to our parents and teachers.
He mocked priests, presidents, world leaders, and the middle class notion of good taste. Moreover, Lehrer wasn’t a bitter, anti-establishment dumbass who could be funny, ala Lenny Bruce. He was the real deal, your basic, genuine genius who graduated from Harvard at 18 and got his masters degree from the same school a year later. He was a man with Steven Hawking’s mind and Martin Short’s wit. His right and left brains were equally developed. He once taught math at MIT, but at other times he also taught the history of musical theater.
He was a generous as he was brilliant. He transferred the music and lyrics for every song he had ever written into the public domain. He then published them online and told everyone who wanted them to get them while the getting was good.
I would say he’ll be missed, but that verb is in the wrong tense. He has been missed for about 60 years. We’ve been missing him since 1967, when he made what was basically a farewell tour of Scandinavia. He didn’t go full J.D. Salinger and disappear completely, but he came close. He would pop up now and then in the years since, but he was basically out of showbiz and into academia.
First you get down on your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the Pontiff.
Everybody say his own
Kyrie eleison,
Doin’ the Vatican Rag.
Get in line in that processional,
Step into that small confessional.
There the guy who’s got religion’ll
Tell you if your sin’s original.
If it is, try playin’ it safer,
Drink the wine and chew the wafer,
Two, four, six, eight,
Time to transubstantiate!
So get down upon your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!
Make a cross on your abdomen,
When in Rome do like a Roman;
Ave Maria,
Gee, it’s good to see ya.
Gettin’ ecstatic an’ sorta dramatic an’
Doin’ the Vatican Rag!
===========
I guess it sounds like I am a Tom Lehrer fanboy.
Fuckin’ A!
This hits me harder than Ozzy.
When Doctor Demento goes, I’m gonna be inconsolable.
Absolutely agree on this.
so many pigeons left to poison … RIP great one
There’s the only great regret of his life. Although he lived 97 years, he left so many unpoisoned pigeons.
So many pigeons, so little time.
Of all the celebrities we’ve lost recently, this one hits me the hardest by far, and he was 97. I clung to the hope that he would live forever.
My wife and I went to a small theater a few years ago to see the revue of his songs, “Tomfoolery.” Afterwards in the lobby, one of the actresses approached me and said, “I wanted you to know that the whole cast was talking about you during intermission. We were all saying, ‘Did you see that guy in the front row who’s mouthing every word we sing?'”
His Poisoning The Pigeons song was inspired by city of Boston actually trying to poison 10,000 of them in 1964
Not possible.
Timeline.
Poisoning Pigeons In The Park is part of the album “An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer,” which was recorded in March, 1959.
However, that method was used by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to control pigeon populations in public areas during the 1950s, including in Boston, so I suppose your point is probably correct except for the date.
I love the songs. They’re witty & they’re catchy. They skewer things that many of us accept as just our culture–the predicament of our modernity. Yet, a word needs to be said about his reasons. Why he quit & why he was never tempted to stage a comeback. I base this on what he’s said in interviews, at least one of them fairly recent.
The story of what made him quit, I’m not even sure is publicly known. It followed some legal brouhaha supposedly to do with his making fun of Werner von Braun’s scruples. My only point about it would be that somewhere along the line harmless fun becomes objectionable. The objection itself & the severity of it are both subjective judgements. The zone of safety for a performer, that is, the goal posts, can shift unexpectedly. Before that, Tom could feel that he had gotten away with it. After that, the chickens had come home to roost. He didn’t want to keep taking the risk.
As for his not being tempted to perform again, it’s essentially bc of why lampooning isn’t effective at igniting change. What makes the material funny is acknowledging that we aren’t willing to fight to fix the problems it shines a light on. Either we’re powerless or we got bigger fish to fry. Then all we can do is laugh at ourself. The book The Trouble With Dilbert permanently changed the way I look at humor. It’s a way to defuse a bomb, but the underlying conflict remains. Lehrer apparently looked at his own jokes the same way. If he had truly meant to be an agent of change, he wouldn’t have stopped at poking fun at these things. That had never been his intent. In truth, though the songs are pointed, they’re pointless.
Could you name some songs that have a point in the way you mean here? Do you mean songs like “La Marseillaise”, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”. and the “Horst Wessel Song”? “If I Had A Hammer”? Vibrant calls to action? Because that is going to leave about 99% of songs pointless. But I have probably misunderstood you.
A brilliant satirist, a true wit, the rhyming schemes and cadence, the puns, the word plays and the plays on words, Tom was a genius in so many ways. Just don’t see anyone like him these days, he will be missed.
See this