LIVE ALBUMS, cont’d #4. Turned to comedy after such a dispiriting news week; we watched John Mulaney “Kid Gorgeous” on Netflix and ate Chinese food, then I dug this out to follow last night’s Randy Newman, this equally dark, equally ditty-ish, sadly equally still-relevant-years-later solo performance by Newman’s predecessor Professor Lehrer. It’s more squarely a comedy album than Newman, but there’s more to compare than contrast. This garage sale find (you can see 50¢ written on it) was an essential building block for my brain when I was in probably seventh grade: I played piano, he plays piano wonderfully; I started reading Mad magazine in like third or fourth grade, his sensibility is pure “Ecch.” Even now I often think of phrases like “haunt him, and taunt him, and if at all possible, consuuume him with a kiss of fire....” and “in the morning she makes coffee that tastes like sham—pooo... but oh well, what the hell, she’s my girl, AND I LUV’ERRR....” and all of “We Will All Go Together When We Go” and “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” (“except for the few we take home to ‘Experiment!’”...)... And of course “The Elements” sung to Gilbert and Sullivan. It’s all as much a part of my neural network as “fire hot” and “cookie good” and the works of Monty Python and the Beatles. #vinyl #vinylcollection #tomlehrer #aneveningwastedwithtomlehrer #livealbum #theelements #poisoningpigeonsinthepark #madmagazine #ellipticalsoundtrack #treadmillsoundtrack #nowspinning #nowspinningonvinyl (at Noblesville, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/BolFgxGnv_m/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1luuizo6oevcv
