Caedmon Records ‎– TC 1307

Released: 1968

Genre: Non-Music

Style: Poetry, Comedy, Spoken Word

Side 1

Reflection on a Wicked World (0:37)

1a Reflections on Ice-Breaking

1b The Parent

1c Reflection on Ingenuity

2 Cat Naps Are Too Good for Cats 1:27

3 The Strange Case of the Irksome Prude 1:56

4 Very Funny, Very Funny 1:13

5 The Nymph and the Shepherd, or. She Went That-a-way 1:22

6 What, No Sheep? 1:10

7 How Can Echo Answer What Echo Cannot Hear 1:20

8 A Potted Watch Never Boils, or, Maybe That’s What They’ve Been Trying to Prove 1:20

9 Laments for a Dying Language 0:44

10 If He Were Alive Today, Mayhap, Mr. Morgan Would Sit on the Midget’s Lap 1:19

11 While Homer Nodded: A Footnote to the Iliad 2:06

12 The Darkest Half Hour, or, Too Early Is the Time for All Good Guests to Come to the Aid of the Party 1:52

Song of the Open Road (2:11)

13a The Cricket

13b The Asp

13c The Pizza

13d Crossing the Border

13e A Word to Husbands

Side 2

1 The Short Order Cocktail, or. One Cook to Take Out 3:21

2 The Sunset Years of Samuel Shy 1:45

3 Unfortunately, It’s the Only Game in Town 1:34

4 Roll On, Thou Deep and Dark Blue Syllables, Roll On 2:28

5 One Western, to Go 0:31

6 The Pioneer 0:18

7 Exit, Pursued by a Bear 0:57

8 All Good Americans Go to Larousse, or, I Don’t Pretend to Be Moliere Than Thou 1:40

9 Four Limericks 0:46

10 Admonitory Lines for the Birthday of an Over-Energetic Contemporary 1:30

11 The Stilly Night: A Soporific Reflection 1:21

12 The Strange Case of Mrs. Moodus’s Second Husband, or, How to Unobstreperize a Husband 1:36

13 The Solitude of Mr. Powers 1:17

14 Jack Do-Good-for-Nothing, a Cursory Nursery Tale for Tot-Baiters 1:26

15 Lines to Be Embroidered on a Bib, or. The Child Is Father of the Man, But Not for Quite a While 0:36

Notes

Mr. Nash is the social critic of our generation. He is more penetrating

than Alsop, more accurate than a Times editorial and better informed

than Newsweek. He is also a damned sight funnier. Into perfect rhyme

— actually some of Mr. Nash’s rhymes are likely to incinerate this

record — are put the foibles of our day. These range over billboard

signs, senility, pizza, the Metropolitan Opera and a busted watch. He

seems to take a jaundiced view of almost anything you can mention and

a few things you wouldn’t think of mentioning.

Every few years sees the publication of a new Nash tome. The tome

is never especially heavy and is cleverly disguised by his publishers as

light verse. But insidiously hidden behind this gay facade lies a man

crazily perched on the gnarly limb of satire. He stares down at a Wicked

World, far madder than he.

It would be a mistake to think of Ogden Nash merely as a funny man;

like Mr. Thurber, he has a Democritean streak which entitles him to

the respect due to a philosopher, albeit a laughing one.