Tom Lehrer’s Polaroid Songs

It’s Tom Lehrer’s 84th birthday! To celebrate the master satirist of his generation, we in Polaroidland are posting three Lehrer songs, last performed more than three decades ago and never before seen outside Polaroid circles.

Background first. For those of you who don’t know of him: In the early fifties, Tom Lehrer was a Harvard graduate student in mathematics who began writing and performing funny songs for departmental parties and the like. In 1953, he issued a private-label LP called Songs by Tom Lehrer, sold on the Harvard campus and by mail order, and it slowly gathered a reputation in Cambridge, then beyond. A second disc followed. By the early sixties, Lehrer was a hit among the intellectual set, known for twisted little songs like “The Masochism Tango” and (probably my favorite) “The Vatican Rag.” They’re erudite and witty, and are also grounded in musical-theater tradition: Lehrer knows his Gilbert and Sullivan and his Cole Porter, and it shows. (I’ve taken a whack at the sheet music for some of these, and they’re actually pretty complicated tunes, musically speaking.) Lehrer’s third album, That Was The Year That Was, from 1965, includes his most political and biting songs, which were performed on a TV series hosted by David Frost.

Then he quit. He’s said in interviews that he got tired of touring and playing, and decided to go back to math full-time, taking teaching posts at MIT and then the University of California at Santa Cruz. He lives out of the spotlight today—he’s come out of retirement to perform in public just once, in 1998 in London—and his albums have been reissued on CD, in box sets, and on iTunes. He’s retained a cult status both to Ivy Leaguers of his generation and a surprising number of younger fans, including one you wouldn’t expect.

What does this have to do with Polaroid (I hear you cry)? Well, the Cambridge community of the seventies was tight-knit, especially around Harvard and MIT, and Lehrer had friends at Polaroid who were fans. Several times, they hired him to write and perform songs for corporate events. The song I’m posting today is based on one of Lehrer’s best, a tune called “The Elements,” in which he set the entire periodic table to Gilbert & Sullivan’s “The Major-General’s Song.” (It begins “There’s… antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, / And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,” and winds down on “tungsten, tin, and sodium.”) For Polaroid’s September 1980 sales meeting, he wrote new lyrics about the many, many things one could do with instant film. (Lehrer notes that the song was recorded at Falmouth, Massachusetts, with the chorus and orchestra of the College Light Opera Company, conducted by Bill Tyler. Presumably the recording is somewhere in the archives, now at Harvard Business School; the a/v collection there should be catalogued sometime in the next decade, and I hope it eventually surfaces.) He also wrote a much briefer version, for a 1972 promotional film.

Lyrics to both long and short versions below; grateful thanks for Mr. Lehrer for permission to reprint. We’ll post two more songs later in the week.

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POLAROID PHOTOGRAPHY SONG (long version, 1980)
words by Tom Lehrer
tune: “The Major General’s Song” from The Pirates of Penzance, by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

Of uses for our photographs you’ll find a multiplicity,
From quality control to advertising and publicity,

Computer graphics, diagnostics, also radiometry,
Endoscopy and dentistry and microdensitometry,

And micrometalography and paper chromatography,
Spectrography, thermography, and color scintillography,

For studies biomedical and studies anatomical,
[soft]  For bodies microscopic and
[loud]  For bodies astronomical!

CHORUS:  For bodies microscopic and for bodies astronomical,
For bodies microscopic and for bodies astronomical,
For bodies microscopic and for bodies astronomic-omical!

Geology, oncology, pathology, myology,
Astrology—astrology?—forget it, my apology—
With spectroscopes, oscilloscopes, and cam’ras ultrasonical,
There’s hardly any science that is missing from this chronicle.

CHORUS:    With spectroscopes, oscilloscopes, and cam’ras ultrasonical,
There’s hardly any science that is missing from this chronicle.

Acoustical holography, computerized tomography,
Diffraction crystallography and autoradiography.
In short, in ev’ry field from cosmic rays to choreography
There’s bound to be a way of using Polaroid photography.

CHORUS:    In short, in every field from cosmic rays to choreography
There’s bound to be a way of using Polaroid photography.

[Getting faster and faster:]

In short, in ev’ry field from cosmic rays to choreography
There’s bound to be a way of using Polaroid photography.

CHORUS:    In short, in every field from cosmic rays to choreography
There’s bound to be a way of using Polaroid photography.

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POLAROID PHOTOGRAPHY SONG (short version, 1972)
words by Tom Lehrer
tune: “The Major General’s Song” from The Pirates of Penzance, by W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

(first 4 lines piano only)

There’s infra-red photography and high-speed oscillography,
Micrography, macrography, and also keratography,
Spirography, spectrography, diffraction crystallography,
Thermography, holography, and autoradiography.

There’s micrometallography and paper chromotography,
Seismography, myography, and color scintillography,
In short in every field from cosmic rays to choreography,
There’s bound to be a way of using Polaroid photography.  (Gasp!)