[78-L] The Investigator (Was: "IT", Was:Presidents on radio/McCarthy)

[neechevoneeznayou at gmail.com]

you might google Real Alternative or Media Player Classic, both IIRC 
will play real files w/o installing real.

joe salerno


Michael Biel wrote:
> Mike Harkin wrote:
>>> IT = "The Investigator"
> 
> David Lennick wrote:
>  > Oooooh, THAT! dl
> 
> Well, now that we know it is "The Investigator" is is Lennick who is 
> tagged as it.  How about  it -- can you dig up one of those original 
> complete copies?  I'd love to have it in its context with the open and 
> close, and in better quality if it so happens. 
> 
> As I mentioned, I have a number of original Columbia pressings and 
> several later ones including the very inferior Broadside.  What is 
> interesting is that most of the original pressings I see do not have the 
> liner notes -- the reverse of the cover is BLANK.  This added to the 
> mystique of the record  because so many people who had it did not know 
> any of its background.  It was truly underground and mysterious.  I 
> think the first time I found a copy with the original back cover was a 
> later black label copy with the handwritten XTV matrix numbers, the type 
> made by the Everest Group that we found in the annual college bookstore 
> traveling record sales. 
> 
> My background with this recording is likewise even more "underground".  
> In 1956 I am 10 and in my first summer at sleep-away camp, and my bunk's 
> counselor has an open-reel VM tape recorder.  As a progressive college 
> kid, a couple of the tapes he had were dubs of Tom Lehrer and The 
> Investigator.  (He also played a lot a recording of a military chorus 
> singing "The Red Ball Express" from an Ed Sullivan program.)  As a kid I 
> didn't understand all of what Lehrer was singing about--to me dope meant 
> someone stupid, so The Old Dope Peddler was selling stupid people, and 
> giving kids free samples of stupid people???   Even then I was watching 
> the news so I did know something about the McCarthy hearings but 
> certainly had no idea about the politics. 
> 
> But to answer the comment as to whether it holds up now, it does because 
> even kids who did not know what the satire meant could enjoy it then.  
> The best part were the running gags, especially bringing in all the 
> wrong Karl Marxes.  "Oh no no no.  I'm Karl Marx the fish cleaner."  And 
> sending all the witnesses "from uo here . . . . . . to down there"  and 
> that great wind music swirling from up here to down there with a final 
> thud.  And then the report of the devil getting pissed off because all 
> of the Karl Marxes are holding rallys.  I loved it then and once I 
> realized what it was all about, I love it more.  It is one of the 
> greatest pieces of political satire of the century. 
> 
> It turns out (of course) that there is a good web page about it with 
> audio by permission of the CBC, but my computer cannot play RealPlayer 
> because it turns off my modem ever time the player is started, so I do 
> not know the quality or if the open and close is there.  Can someone 
> check it out and report back?  
> http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol3/investigator/investigator.html
> 
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com 
> 
>>>     
>>>> Taylor Bowie wrote:
>>>>       
>>>>>> Michael Biel wrote:
>>>>>>           
>>>>>>> Mike Harkin wrote:
>>>>>>>             
>>>>>>>> TO WHOEVER WROTE THAT THEY HAVE COPIES OF IT:  please DO make a CD of it;
>>>>>>>> I'd buy it!  Mike in Plovdiv
>>>>>>>>               
>>>>>>> What is "it"??  There were half a dozen recordings discussed in this thread.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>>>>>>> _________________________________________
>>>>>>>             
>>>>>> I've got "it" but it don't do me no good. dl
>>>>>>           
>>>>> I had it,  I lost it,  and it's gone. 
>>>>>         
>>>> But...they can't take THAT away from me.
>>>>
>>>> And You Said It,  but it turns out that She's Got It. T 
>>>>
>>>>       
>>>> And I Got It From Agnes.
>>>>
>>>> (Somebody's gonna be sorry they asked..) dl
> 
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