Whilst I had never heard of
The Elements way back in 1959 when visiting New York on H.M.S. Victorious, I did however get acquainted with
Tom Lehrer thanks to a mess-mate, one Bobby Avis who bought an LP, "Songs by Tom Lehrer" (TL 101 - 1953) to which we listened fairly often over the following six months. Whilst very much enjoying it, it never entered my head that one day I would sing such songs myself. But, as you know dear surfer, life is strange and one should never be surprised as to what turns up. So decades later in 2004 I teamed up with
Oliver Rosteck and in working out what we wanted to perform, the name of Tom Lehrer was mentioned. "Gesagt, getan" as one says in German,
Too Many Songs was ordered and on its receipt we quickly determined that
The Elements was just the song for us. The song itself is just a list of the chemical elements sung to the music of Sir
Arthur Sullivan. Oliver enjoyed the accompaniment whilst I was enraptured by the tongue-twisting lyrics which I spent several hours, possibly day, practising. It became one of our best numbers which we duly performed at our debut in the Begegnungsstätte Schwanewede in June, 2005.
