Revisited (Tom Lehrer album)

Revisited
Live album by Tom Lehrer
Released 1960
Recorded 1959–1960; 1971 (CD bonus tracks)
Genre Comedy
Satire
Length 41:02
Label Lehrer Records
TL-201

Reprise/Warner Bros. Records
26203 (1990 CD reissue)
Producer Tom Lehrer
Joe Raposo
Tom Lehrer chronology
More of Tom Lehrer
(1959)		 Revisited
(1960)		 That Was the Year That Was
(1965)

Revisited is a 1960 album by Tom Lehrer, consisting of live recordings of all the songs from 1953's Songs by Tom Lehrer. The CD reissue of the album contains two additional tracks that Lehrer wrote and performed for the PBS television show The Electric Company (and produced and conducted by Joe Raposo).

Contents

Track listing

  1. "Introduction" – 3:27
  2. "I Wanna Go Back to Dixie" – 2:56
  3. "The Wild West is Where I Want to Be" – 2:31
  4. "The Old Dope Peddler" – 1:42
  5. "Fight Fiercely, Harvard" – 2:41
  6. "Lobachevsky (song)" – 4:19
  7. "The Irish Ballad" – 5:13
  8. "The Hunting Song" – 1:59
  9. "My Home Town" – 2:58
  10. "When You are Old and Grey" – 2:27
  11. "The Wiener Schnitzel Waltz" – 2:21
  12. "I Hold Your Hand in Mine" – 1:55
  13. "Be Prepared" – 2:39
  14. "L-Y" – 2:11 (CD bonus track)
  15. "Silent E" – 1:30 (CD bonus track)

Song Highlights

"The Old Dope Peddler"

This is a parody of "The Old Lamp-Lighter" by Charles Tobias and Nat Simon, which was a hit for Kay Kyser in 1947. The sticky-sweet verses of the original asserted that

He made the night a little brighter
Wherever he would go
The old lamplighter
Of long, long ago

It goes on to say that if there were sweethearts in the dark, "he'd pass the light and leave it dark," and concludes by explaining that now, the old lamplighter turns the stars on at night and turns them off at dawn.

Lehrer's parody had lines like this...

He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well that today's young, innocent faces will be tomorrow's clientele

  In later years, Lehrer apparently came to regret writing the song, stating that the lyrics seemed funny at the time; but today seem "...almost chilling."

Notes

On the original Lehrer Records release of Revisited, tracks 1–6 (side 1) were recorded live on November 23 & 24, 1959, in Kresge Auditorium at MIT in Cambridge, MA, while tracks 7–13 (side 2) were recorded live at two concerts during Lehrer's tour of Australia in spring 1960 (March 21 in Melbourne and May 4 in Sydney).

Because of issues with the sound quality of the Australian recordings, England's Decca Records assembled its release of the album solely from the MIT concert tapes. The Decca configuration was the basis for the 1990 Reprise/Warner Bros. CD reissue.[1]

The cover photograph was taken at Royal Festival Hall in London, England, UK, after his performance there on June 29, 1960. Tracks 14 and 15 were recorded May 28, 1971, and December 14, 1972.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Morris, Jeff. "Tom Lehrer Discography". Demented Music Database (dmdb.org). http://dmdb.org/discographies/lehrer.disco.html. Retrieved 2009-05-25. 

See also