On An Overgrown Path

"What passes for risk-taking in television today is showing people having sex on Big Brother. That's not a risk - it's just grubby." Independent producer John Lloyd commenting in the Guardian about the BBC radio 'lewd messages' fiasco . It's a comment worth pondering on as risk-taking is the lifeblood of creativity. Among John Lloyd's credits are the late night satirical TV show Spitting Image which ran from 1984 to 1996. My header video comes from the series and is a parody of the popular BBC TV quiz show Mastermind . It is sobering to think the sketch dates from 1992. Like John Lloyd, Tom Lehrer was a master of creative risk-taking . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

And of course no item about Lehrer in a music blog would be complete without mention of one of his least political but most delightful songs - Alma. I first heard it when I was starting university and had just bought my first Mahler recording (the Cleveland/Raskin/Szell 4th ). I remember being fascinated to discover that Alma only died the previous year. Thanks Scott for that email, which sends us down another fascinating path. My header photo shows Alma and Gustav Mahler in Basle at the time of the performance of the composer's Second Symphony there in 1903. The photo below shows the couple walking between Toblach and Altschluderbach in 1909. There are very few photos of Alma and Gustav together, which may not be surprising once you've heard Tom Lehrer's song. Below are the lyrics for Alma together with the top and tail Lehrer gave it on his 1965 album That Was The Year That Was . Finally there is a recording of the great Tom Lehrer himself singing Alma . Last Decembe...

Caught Northern Theatre Touring's tribute to Tom Lehrer in Norwich yesterday. The evening is described as 'a black humoured musical revue, with songs composed by American satirist Tom Lehrer. It looks at the social and political aspects of common culture, such as racism , pornography and war in a uniquely warped way. The songs of Lehrer are as relevant today as they were when they were first composed in the 1960s .' A magical evening that was also a timely reminder of the depths that today's BBC has sunk to with its so called satire. The highlight of the show was Tom Lehrer's priceless song Werner Von Braun . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The satiric songwriter and performer Tom Lehrer , who also taught mathematics at Harvard, was a big draw and my friends and I went to his concerts at Carnegie Hall or Town Hall. He wrote very funny songs satirizing the politically dangerous and socially strangled times we were living in, banging them out on a grand piano, singing at full volume with a deadpan delivery. One song exposed the dubious ethics of Wernher von Braun , who first developed rockets for the Nazis and later for the United States: 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 Taken from Suze Rotolo's recently published memoir of Greenwich Village in the sixties 'A Freewheelin' Time' . In the top photo the apolitical von Braun is seen on the right in a dark suit with senior Nazis staff at the height of hostilities in May 1943 at the German ro...