I Let My Fists Do The Talkin’

Hannukah in Santa Monica
written and performed by Tom Lehrer

When it comes to my novetly song needs, I go straight to Tom Lehrer. I don’t think he’s really gotten his due by the post-Electric Company generation… mainly because of the dominance of “Weird Al” Yankovic since the 80s and the fact that humorous novelty songs are… kind of… retarded.

There was a 3-CD box set put out in 2000 which contained all his albums, the Electric Company songs (which were kind of indistinct from the usual Sesame-esque edu-tunes that came before and came after on things like Between The Lions ), and four or so previously unreleased tracks—including the linked one above.

What I didn’t realize is that this song was recent—written in ‘90-91, the recording is either ‘97 or ‘99… I don’t have the CD in front of me… and it was written for Garrison Keillor’s American Radio Company of the Air (the weird non-Prairie Home Prairie Home Companion… does anyone know why it changed its name? And then changed back?). Weirder still, I was at the premiere (or second-to-premier) performance at the Kennedy Center in DC when I was 14. My main memories of the night were that even far away in the mezzanine, Garrison Keillor looked like Frankenstein’s monster and that song.

In the liner notes of the Leher CD quote the intro given as “This song was created in response to there being no good Hannukah songs. It wouldn’t occur to the gentile composers to write them, and the Jewish composers were busy writing Christmas songs.”

When home, I also found out my brother had Mr. Lehrer as a teacher at Santa Cruz for a math lecture… that he dropped.

(MP3 found on April Winchell’s site. I could fill up entries for the rest of the year with clips from this site, but I’ll leave you to explore on your own. Porkchops.)

This entry was posted on Monday, December 26th, 2005 at 8:53 pm and is filed under Comedy.