Saturday, May 30, 2009

In honor of North Korea, and Pakistan

Steve Bates of The Yellow Something Something (formerly known as The Yellow Doggerel Democrat) referred me to the wonderful Tom Lehrer and his song,"We will all go together when we go." Since I listened to it on YouTube, it has gotten stuck in my brain...

So I thought I'd share.



When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that sooner or
Later those you love will do the same for you.
And you may have thought it tragic,
Not to mention other adjec-
Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do.
But don't you worry.
No more ashes, no more sackcloth.
And an armband made of black cloth
Will some day never more adorn a sleeve.
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too,
There'll be nobody left behind to grieve.

And we will all go together when we go.
What a comforting fact that is to know.
Universal bereavement,
An inspiring achievement,
Yes, we all will go together when we go.

We will all go together when we go.
All suffuse with an incandescent glow.
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance,
Lloyd's of London will be loaded when they go.

Oh we will all fry together when we fry.
We'll be french fried potatoes by and by.
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie,
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.

And we will all bake together when we bake.
There'll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.

Oh we will all char together when we char.
And let there be no moaning of the bar.
Just sing out a Te Deum
When you see that I.C.B.M.,
And the party will be "come as you are."

Oh we will all burn together when we burn.
There'll be no need to stand and wait your turn.
When it's time for the fallout
And Saint Peter calls us all out,
We'll just drop our agendas and adjourn.

And we will all go together when we go.
Ev'ry Hottenhot and ev'ry Eskimo.
When the air becomes uranious,
And we will all go simultaneous.
Yes we all will go together
When we all go together,
Yes we all will go together when we go.

(edited to match the YouTube version a bit more)

crossposted at SteveAudio

10 comments:

Steve Bates said...

Hmm... must have been a compressed performance schedule; he omitted both recitatives. The first one is in your printed text:
  Down by the old maelstrom,
  There'll be a storm before the calm.
The other one, after all the repeats of the faster material, goes like this:
  You will all go to your respective Valhallas,
  Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollas...

ellroon said...

Darn it! Thought I'd removed all the lines he didn't have in his YouTubed version. Maybe there's the longer version out there...

Mahakal / महाकाल said...

Well, you know, always look on the bright side of life.

Steve Bates said...

I don't know about the YouTube versions (I've heard 'em all; that's why I don't know), but you can find slightly less difficult arrangements of the "official" versions in the sheet music in a book called "Too Many Songs by Tom Lehrer / with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle" (Pantheon, 1981). I don't know if it's still in print, but you can get new or used copies through Amazon. Tom Lehrer in your very own home... some assembly (singing and playing) required!

Best line in an Australian interview a few years ago with Tom Lehrer: "That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them." Yep.

ellroon said...

Well, thanks for that, Mahakal! Anything from the Life of Brian is inspiring...

Somewhere hubby has a LP of Lehrer's songs, Steve, buried by the amassing collection of cds... Must be worth millions if we can ever find it...

ellroon said...

Or do I mean burgeoning...

Steve Bates said...

elroon, "amassing" is what a priest does...

Mahakal, somehow that scene always leaves me feeling a bit... cross.

<grin_duck_run />

ellroon said...

Lol! What, are you hung up on the crucifixion? Mahakal was just hammering home a point...

Steve Bates said...

(Oops... apologies for misspelling your name, ellroon, or more likely mistyping it.)

ellroon said...

:D! No biggie, I've been called worse. Name was made up long ago for a Dark Age of Camelot multiplayer online game and I already had an email for it...

Some people think I'm an L.Ron Hubbard Scientologist tho... which is a nauseating thought...