That Was the Year That Was

That Was the Year That Was (1965) is a live album recorded at the hungry i in San Francisco, containing performances by Tom Lehrer of satiric topical songs he originally wrote for the NBC television series That Was The Week That Was, known informally as TW3 (1964–65). All of the songs related to items then in the news.

Track listing

Side one:

1. "National Brotherhood Week" – 2:35
2. "MLF Lullaby" – 2:25
3. "George Murphy" – 2:08
4. "The Folk Song Army" – 2:12
5. "Smut" – 3:15
6. "Send the Marines" – 1:46
7. "Pollution" – 2:17

Side two:

1. "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" – 2:23
2. "Whatever Became of Hubert?" – 2:13
3. "New Math" – 4:28
4. "Alma" – 5:27
5. "Who's Next?" – 2:00
6. "Wernher Von Braun" – 1:46
7. "The Vatican Rag" – 2:14

Topics of songs

• "National Brotherhood Week" – National Brotherhood Week
• "MLF Lullaby" – An ultimately failed U.S. proposal for a multilateral nuclear force as part of NATO
• "George Murphy" – George Murphy, dancer, actor, U.S. Senator from California, and Robert F. Kennedy (D, NY), the putative third senator from Massachusetts
• "The Folk Song Army" – Topical songs as part of the folk revival of the 1960s; also alludes to songs of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, especially "Venga Jaleo" which it excerpts musically
• "Smut" – Censorship of obscenity, and the 1957 U.S. Supreme Court case Roth v. United States, which coined the expression "redeeming social importance"
• "Send the Marines" – Militarism in United States foreign policy. In 2003, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix told a Swedish radio program that he did not think that the Iraq War, "in the way it was justified, was compatible with the UN Charter," then had the station play this song.^[2]
• "Pollution" – Pollution of the environment
• "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" – Nuclear war, Mutually Assured Destruction, nostalgia over past wars, and television news coverage. (Lehrer: "I feel that, if there's going to be any songs coming out of World War III, we'd better start writing them NOW.")
• "Whatever Became of Hubert?" – Hubert Horatio Humphrey, then U.S. vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson
• "New Math" – New Math, a trend at the time in the teaching of mathematics
• "Alma" – Alma Mahler, who had recently died. Composer and painter; wife, successively, of Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius, and Franz Werfel. (Lehrer: "It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished.")
• "Who's Next?" – Nuclear proliferation
• "Wernher Von Braun" – Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun (Lehrer: "And what will make it possible to spend $20 billion of your money to put some clown on the moon? Why, it's good ol' American know-how, that's what! Led by good ol' Americans like Wernher Von Braun.")
• "The Vatican Rag" – The Second Vatican Council and the reform of Roman Catholic liturgy (Upon performing this song in the Hungry i nightclub in San Francisco, Lehrer was harshly criticized by Ricardo Montalban, who happened to be in the audience that night. Montalban shouted, "How dare you make fun of my religion! I love my religion! I will die for my religion!" To which Lehrer responded, "That's fine with me, as long as you don't do it here.")

References

External links

• Tom Lehrer Discography
• Tom Lehrer performing some of the songs on TV in the 1960's