This is the time of the year where I admit that I owned not one…but two different Arlo Guthrie albums. For those of you not familiar with Arlo Guthrie, he is the less talented son of Woody Guthrie, who pretty much singlehandedly inspired Bob Dylan to travel to N.Y.C. and, as a result, change the course of rock history.Now Arlo himself is a talented guy, it’s just that he’s not talented enough to draw unknown lyrical geniuses from the Midwest out to his deathbed so that they can run some new material by him before he croaks.
No sir, Arlo was just good enough to get signed to Reprise records in the late 60’s, get really baked and play Woodstock high as a motherfucker, and land a tune in the Billboard Top 40 charts (“City Of New Orleans”). The weed he smoked at Woodstock was apparently strong enough to maintain a buzz all the way to 2008: most recently, he endorsed Republican candidate Ron Paul because he was too stoned to know better.
I had Guthrie’s Hobo’s Lullaby. It contained “City Of New Orleans,” a song he didn’t even pen from an album that featured mostly covers to begin with. It wasn’t my cup of tea and I have no idea where it is today.
But I do know where my other Arlo Guthrie album is, because I think about it every year around Thanksgiving. Alice’s Restaurant was released on this day in 1967. It was Arlo Guthrie’s first album…still arguably his best…and it became a fixture of progressive rock stations who braved the song’s 18 minute talking blues storyline for at least one day each year.
The story itself is quite humorous. It’s the kind that you can probably only tolerate once a year, but when you do hear it, it’s as satisfying as watching the Cowboys/Lions game after Thanksgiving dinner and then wondering why they don’t show The Wizard Of Oz at 6:00pm like they used to. And like both of those other events, you’re content and don’t need to see it again for another year.
Since the story is over 18 minutes long and since you’re probably familiar with it, I don’t need to explain the details. For the novice, Arlo and his girl are arrested for littering on Thanksgiving Day, the ensuing “trial” for the crime, and the end results that Carlo’s criminal record has on his ability to be drafted to go to Vietnam. Of course, nobody really wanted to get drafted to go to Vietnam, so Arlo capitalized on his exaggerated-but-true tale of how people could use his tale of Thanksgiving misfortune into a form of social protest. If you’re having trouble comprehending all of this, all you need to understand was that is was the work of a hippy, so that should explain the incredible leap between littering and protesting the Vietnam draft.
In other words: you have to hear the song before it makes sense and, surprisingly, it’s a good listen.
While the “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” took up all of side one on the Alice’s Restaurant album, side two features a half-dozen Guthrie originals that are easily forgettable but fairly pleasing folk tunes whose only problem is that they’re stacked behind such a major offering like the epic on side one. The one exception may be “The Motorcycle Song” which manages to rhyme “pickle” with “cycle” and, because of this novelty, was one of my favorite songs before going to kindergarten.
That’s changed now, of course, but “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” still remains one of my favorite songs around Thanksgiving.
