Quote of the day:

It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.
—Tom Lehrer

Back in Elco high school when Tom Lehrer’s album That Was the Year That Was came out, practically everyone in my little group was listening to and quoting those songs. That was the year of the Irregulars, so we even played a few of them on our morning show.

Lehrer’s satirical songs tackled a lot of the issues of the day from pollution to obscenity (he was for it) and even some issues that would loom larger in the coming years, like actors getting into politics.

Well, it finally happened and at the age of 97 Tom Lehrer died.

I wanted to commemorate it with a version of his song “Smut”, but I couldn’t find a video of him performing it live, only the version from the album.

So instead here is a song that Maryann Shellhamer and I used to sing along to. Maryann was, and as far as I know, probably still is a good Catholic, but she enjoyed this song as much as us non-Catholics.

Here is Tom Lehrer performing “The Vatican Rag” live in Denmark: