That Was the Year That Was

That Was the Year That Was
Live album by Tom Lehrer
Released	1965
Recorded	July 1965
Genre	Satire
Length	31:42
Label	Reprise/Warner Bros. Records
Producer	Jimmy Hilliard
Tom Lehrer chronology
Revisited (1960) That Was the Year That Was (1965) That Was "That Was the Week That Was" (1981)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]

That Was the Year That Was (1965) is a live album recorded at the hungry i in San Francisco, containing performances by Tom Lehrer of satiric topical songs he originally wrote for the NBC television series That Was The Week That Was, known informally as TW3 (1964–65). All of the songs related to items then in the news.

Track listing

Side one:

1. "National Brotherhood Week" – 2:35
2. "MLF Lullaby" – 2:25
3. "George Murphy" – 2:08
4. "The Folk Song Army" – 2:12
5. "Smut" – 3:15
6. "Send the Marines" – 1:46
7. "Pollution" – 2:17

Side two:

1. "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" – 2:23
2. "Whatever Became of Hubert?" – 2:13
3. "New Math" – 4:28
4. "Alma" – 5:27
5. "Who's Next?" – 2:00
6. "Wernher Von Braun" – 1:46
7. "The Vatican Rag" – 2:14

Topics of songs

• "National Brotherhood Week" – National Brotherhood Week
• "MLF Lullaby" – An ultimately failed U.S. proposal for a multilateral nuclear force as part of NATO
• "George Murphy" – George Murphy, dancer, actor, U.S. Senator from California, and Robert F. Kennedy (D, NY), the putative third senator from Massachusetts
• "The Folk Song Army" – Topical songs as part of the folk revival of the 1960s; also alludes to songs of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, especially "Venga Jaleo" which it excerpts musically
• "Smut" – Censorship of obscenity, and the 1957 U.S. Supreme Court case Roth v. United States, which coined the expression "redeeming social importance"
• "Send the Marines" – Militarism in United States foreign policy. In 2003, former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix told a Swedish radio program that he did not think that the Iraq War, "in the way it was justified, was compatible with the UN Charter," then had the station play this song.^[2]
• "Pollution" – Pollution of the environment
• "So Long, Mom (A Song for World War III)" – Nuclear war, Mutually Assured Destruction, nostalgia over past wars, and television news coverage
• "Whatever Became of Hubert?" – Hubert Horatio Humphrey, then U.S. vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson
• "New Math" – New Math, a trend at the time in the teaching of mathematics
• "Alma" – Alma Mahler, who had recently died. Composer and painter; wife, successively, of Gustav Mahler, Walter Gropius, and Franz Werfel.
• "Who's Next?" – Nuclear proliferation
• "Wernher Von Braun" – Rocket scientist Wernher von Braun
• "The Vatican Rag" – The Second Vatican Council and the reform of Roman Catholic liturgy

References

1. ^ Allmusic review
2. ^ "Iraq invasion violated international law: Blix". Sydney Morning Herald. August 7, 2003. http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/07/1060145783214.html. Retrieved 2008-11-23. 

External links

• Tom Lehrer Discography
• Tom Lehrer performing some of the songs on TV in the 1960's