Tom Lehrer

Everyone will laugh at least one Tom Lehrer song. Unfortunately, here I only have the music (for some) in MIDI format.

MIDI files (originally from this site)
• Poisoning Pigeons in the Park
• Pollution
• Vatican Rag
• Who's Next? (one of my favorite Lehrer songs!)
• I Got It From Agnes
• We Will All Go Together When We Go!
• Be Prepared
• Bright College Days
• I Wanna Go Back to Dixie
• The Elements (All science teachers love this song!)
• The Folk Song Army
• Fight Fiercely, Harvard! (an actual Harvard fight song!)
• The Hunting Song
• The Irish Ballad
• In Old Mexico
• National Brotherhood Week
• New Math
• So Long Mom (A Song For World War III)
• Wernher von Braun

Here are a few quotes from or about "the best musical satirist of the 20th century":

The best musical satirist of the 20th Century.
Dr. Demento

I�ve always kind of considered him the J. D. Salinger of demented music.
"Weird Al" Yankovic

Lehrer is that rarest of beasts a performer who was never seduced by the roar of the crowd and who rejected show business well before it had a chance to do the same to him. His concert tours were brief and motivated either by a desire to visit a new place (such as Australia, in 1960) or to test and polish material for a recording.
Sydney Morning Herald

Lehrer was able to express and to expose, in humorous verse and lilting music, some of the most powerful dangers of the second half of the century ... Many of the causes of which Lehrer sang became, three decades later, part of the main creative impulse of mankind.
Sir Martin Gilbert, historian.

I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them. And that's not funny. ... OK, well, if I say that, I might get a shock laugh, but it's not really satire.
Tom Lehrer, 1 March 2003 in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.

You can make fun with Saddam Hussein jokes ... but you can't make fun of, say, the concentration camps. I think my target was not so much evil, but benign stupidity people doing stupid things without realising or, instead, thinking they were doing good.
Tom Lehrer, 1 March 2003 in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald.

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!
Tom Lehrer, "Vatican Rag"

But don't panic. Base eight is just like base ten really � if you're missing two fingers.
Tom Lehrer, "New Math"

Don't say that he's hypocritical, Say rather that he's apolitical. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.
Tom Lehrer, "Wernher von Braun"

I feel that if any songs are gonna come out of World War III, we'd better start writing them now.
Tom Lehrer, "So Long Mom (A Song For World War III)"