Tom Lehrer - Smut

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{Spoken Introduction}
I do have a cause, though, it is obscenity. I'm for it! Thank you. Unfortunately, the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on. But we know what's really involved: Dirty books are fun! That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that, I suppose. It's simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the Constitution, unfortunately. Anyway, since people seem to be marching for their causes these days, I have here a march for mine. It's called:

{Sung}

Smut!
Give me smut
And nothing but!
A dirty novel I can't shut
If it's uncut
And unsubt- le

I've never quibbled
If it was ribald
I would devour where others merely nibbled
As the judge remarked the day that he
Acquitted my Aunt Hortense:
"To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance."

Por-
Nographic pictures I adore
Indecent magazines galore
I like them more
If they're hard core

(Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties, samplers, stained-glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I'm still not satisfied!)

Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers
Lurid, licentious, and vile
Make me smile
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime
(Let's face it, I love slime.)

All books can be indecent books
Though recent books are bolder
For filth (I'm glad to say) is in
The mind of the beholder
When correctly viewed
Everything is lewd
(I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz, there's a dirty old man!)

I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill
And I suppose I always will
If it is swill
And really fil-
Thy

Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley
But now they're trying to take it all
Away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand
We fight for freedom of the press
In other words

Smut! (I love it)
Ah, the adventures of a slut
Oh, I'm a market they can't glut
I don't know what
Compares with smut

Hip hip hooray!
Let's hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don't let them take it away!

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Tom Lehrer

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Tom Lehrer (born 9 April 1928) is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater.

Before attending college, Lehrer graduated from the Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut. As an undergraduate student at Harvard University, he began to write comic songs to entertain his friends, including Fight Fiercely, Harvard (1945). Those songs later became ‘The Physical Revue’ in a joking reference to a leading scientific journal, The Physical Review. Influenced mainly by musical theater, his style consisted of parodying then-current forms of popular song. For example, his appreciation of list songs led him to set the names of the chemical elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Major-General’s Song”.

Inspired by the success of his performances of his songs, he paid for some studio time to record an album, Songs By Tom Lehrer, which he sold by mail order. Self-published and unpromoted, the album, which included the macabre (I Hold Your Hand In Mine), the mildly risqué (Be Prepared), and the mathematical (Lobachevsky), became a success via word of mouth. With a cult hit, he embarked on a series of concert tours and released a second album, which came in two versions: the songs were the same but More Songs by Tom Lehrer was studio-recorded, while An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer was recorded live in concert.