20 November 2007

It's Almost Time For Alice's Restaurant


Well its nearly Thanksgiving and that means it's nearly time for Arlo Guthrie's famous song "Alice's Restaurant".

Ever year and only once a year on Thanksgiving "Alice's Restaurant" is played in its entirety on several NYC radio stations. It's a great tradition and a great song that easily gets stuck in my head until the following October.

The song clocks in at 18:20 and starts to get annoying around 18:15 so it works out nicely.

Arlo's cadence and delivery is just so intoxicating. It's probably one of the catchiest tunes written in the most unorthodox way. It's basically just Arlo rambling for 20 minutes but the rhythm of his ramble is incredibly infectious.

"Alice's Restaurant Massacree" (commonly referred to simply as "Alice's Restaurant") is one of Arlo Guthrie's most prominent works, a musical monologue based on a true story that began on Thanksgiving Day 1965, and which inspired a 1969 movie of the same name.

At 18 minutes, 20 seconds, the song occupies the entire first side of Arlo's 1967 debut album. It is notable as a satirical, first-person account of 1960's counterculture, in addition to being a hit song in its own right. The final part of the song is an encouragement for the listeners to sing along, to resist the draft, and to end war.

The song recounts a true but comically over exaggerated Thanksgiving adventure.

"Alice" was restaurant-owner Alice M. Brock, who in 1964, using $2,000 supplied by her mother, bought a deconsecrated church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where Alice and her husband Ray would live. It was here rather than at the restaurant, which came later, where the song's Thanksgiving dinners were actually held.

On that Thanksgiving, November 25, 1965, the 18-year-old Guthrie and his friend Richard Robbins, 19, were arrested for illegally dumping some of Alice's garbage after discovering that the dump was closed for the holiday.

Two days later they pleaded guilty in court before a blind judge, James E. Hannon; the song describes to ironic effect the arresting officer's frustration at the judge being unable to see the "27 8x10 colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us".

In the end, Guthrie and Robbins were fined $50 and told to pick up their garbage. The song goes on to describe Guthrie's being called up for the draft, and the surreal bureaucracy at the New York City induction center on Whitehall Street.

The punchline of the story's denouement is that because of Guthrie's criminal record for littering, he is first sent to the Group W Bench (where convicts wait) then outright rejected as unfit for military service.

The final part of the song is where Arlo tells the audience that should they find themselves facing the draft they should walk into the military psychiatrist's office and sing, "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant," and walk out. Thus is born, "the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacree Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar."


As of 2005, Alice Brock lives in Provincetown, Massachusetts and owns an art studio and gallery at 69 Commercial Street. She illustrated a children's book written by Guthrie in 2004 called "Mooses Come Walking".

I'm not positive who plays it but I'm sure Q104.3 will, NPR definitely will, FUV will - if you have some tin foil and a coat hanger, CBS-FM might. Just flip around the dial on Thursday afternoon and you'll hear it.

Alice's Restaurant is to Thanksgiving what A Christmas Story is to Christmas.

Arlo Guthrie, Remembering "Alice's Restaurant" {NPR}

1 comment:

Brooklyn Beat said...

Thanks for the reminder, you CAN get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant... !


Also, please note, from IMDB.com,

Arlo Guthrie

Trivia

Had a hootenany-style bar mitzvah when he was 13. His Hebrew tutor was the then-unknown Rabbi Meir Kahane, who would later become founder of the Jewish Defense League.

Father of Sarah Lee Guthrie

--Happy Holidays, Y'all