General Discussion

I was going to post some of his songs, but you beat me to it.

My wife and I heard Tom Lehrer at the Hungry I (a night club) in San Francisco in the 1960s. His act had top billing. The other act that evening was a then-unknown group called the Kingston Trio (!).

There's so much I could say about Tom Lehrer's music and lyrics, but I'll limit my comments to just the first song you posted.

Does anybody but me ever listen, I mean really listen, to the piano accompaniment? I keep asking people if they noticed the musical quotations. The songs quoted are the German National Anthem and "Ach du lieber Augustine". The former occurs at the very beginning of the song. Think: "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles." It is disguised by changing the time signature from 4/4 to 3/4. In other words, what was originally a march is turned into a waltz.

I would like to encourage everyone, and particularly musicians, to listen to "Wernher von Braun" again, and pay attention this time!