HAPPY THANKSGIVING

We at Story of Songs wish everyone a safe and Happy Thanksgiving.

ARLO GUTHRIE, ALICE'S RESTAURANT AND THANKSGIVING DAY

There aren't too many Thanksgiving Day songs. In fact, I can't think of any. I'm sure there are some out there, just no hits, I suppose. When I googled Thanksgiving Day songs, I found some sites. There is actually a Thanksgiving Day song by Adam Sandler which I had forgotten about and is, well, Adam Sandler. The site, Love to Learn Place had My Country Tis of Thee as one of their songs. It's a good song and I guess it could be considered a Thanksgiving Day song, if we knew what My Country Tis of Thee meant.

There is one song, however, that has become a Thanksgiving Day song by chance, and that is Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant Massacree. Supposedly, some radio stations play the whole thing on Thanksgiving Day. It's eighteen minutes long, so don't look for it on a Pop Contemporary Hit radio station. Maybe try the local public radio station.

It started out as a song opposed to the Vietnam War. It's basically a song about a guy who gets drafted into the Army but is found unfit to serve military duty because he got arrested for dumping trash on Thanksgiving Day when the dump was closed.

The song goes on to describe how our hero was sent to the Group W bench which is where the Army placed all the undesirables. When the undesirables found out that he was in Group W for littering, they all moved away from him. When he added "and creating a nuisance," they all moved back toward him. It's actually a pretty amusing song based on real events.

There really was an Alice who had a restaurant and there really was an Obie who arrested Arlo for littering. And Arlo really did not go to the Army because he was convicted of littering. The song also became the inspiration for a movie called by the same name and starred Arlo Guthrie as himself.

Arlo Guthrie is a singer-songwriter who played in the 60's Woodstock festival. He is also the son of another singer-songwriter. That would be the legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie, who is known for This Land is Your Land. Woody supposedly wrote it because he didn't like the song God Bless America. A movie was made about his life called Bound for Glory, which won two Oscars. That's actually pretty impressive that both the father and son had a movie made about their life.

Woody is also known as an inspiration to Bob Dylan. The story goes that Bob Dylan was in awe of Woody Guthrie and went to see him on his death bed in 1961. Pretty good story except that Woody didn't die till 1967. It's sort of amusing until you find out that Woody spent a lot of his later years in a State hospital in Brooklyn where he was being treated for Huntington's disease.

NPR's All Things Considered did a story on Alice's Restaurant which I highly recommend. Better yet, check out the whole story on the link right here(try the second clip). It's well worth your time. Just put it on and go about your chores while you listen. Oh yeah, and the song is pretty good too.

STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN BY LED ZEPPELIN

Stairway To Heaven is a genuine masterpiece. It starts out with one of the most famous intros ever. It can even be argued that it's even more famous than Beethoven's Fifth. Although it is tough to beat a four note intro. After the intro the song builds slowly, then the bridge comes along. I think. I don't know what a bridge is, but I want to sound like I know something. Sometimes, though, even Led Zeppelin can't find that confounded bridge. The guitar solo eventually comes on, which brings on the crescendo. The song finally comes to a finish as slowly as it began.

I rarely listen to it when it comes on the radio. For one, you have to be in the mood for it. And two, you have to have the time for it as well. I don't think I will ever enjoy the song as much as when I first listened to it when I was young. Back then I actually had time to listen to it. I sat in front of the speakers and read along with the lyrics to the song. Who has time for that now. While doing the research for the podcast I found out it's eight minutes two seconds long. Eight minutes two seconds is a lot different now than it was back then. Time truly is relative.

I checked out the Led Zeppelin websites and came upon an interesting one. It is called enzepplopedia.com and Frank Reddon is the owner. He has been writing three Led Zeppelin books. He's been at it for over twelve years. Along with that, he plays a number of instruments and runs marathons. That's pretty amazing if you ask me. He was excited about being interviewed and thought that our idea for the website and podcast was a very good one. Frank was gracious enough to send me his book Sonic Boom: The Impact of Led Zeppelin Vol 1, which I appreciate immensely.

The podcast came out really well. It was my first international phone call. I wasn't even sure that Skype went to Canada without an international fee. Fortunately, it doesn't. Skype is great. It was tough editing the podcast, though, because Frank loves Led Zeppelin and he has a lot to say. The clips on the podcast are interesting as well. One of them is the infamous song played backwards that supposedly sings about the Devil. We capitalize Devil, right? I don't want to hurt his feelings. The other clip is about the guitar intro from the band Spirit that sounds a lot like the guitar intro to Stairway to Heaven. They supposedly toured together as well.

Another interesting fact I found is that people actually do covers of Stairway To Heaven. That makes no sense to me. Some songs don't need covers and Stairway to Heaven is one of them. The best thing you can say is that at least they are not on the list of worse cover songs ever. That honor goes to Bob Dylan playing the Van Morrison song And It Stoned Me. In actuality, Dolly Parton's version of Stairway To Heaven was named by people in the comments section of the list. So you be the judge.

Stairway To Heaven will be around for a long time. Just recall the excitement the band caused when they reunited for one concert in 2007 in London. ABC News reported that an amazing twenty million people got on the Internet lottery for 18,000 concert tickets. I suppose like Frank said in the interview, Led Zeppelin has achieved one of its goals, which is to create a lasting piece of work.

BORN IN THE USA AND CHARLES R CROSS

Once I felt that Dave Marsh might not do the interview, I tried to find someone else to do Born To Run. I had already written the questions, so I figured I might as well do it. Born to Run is the last interview I'll do where I write the questions before the interview has been booked. Won't be doing that again.

I found a Bruce Springsteen fan magazine called Backstreets. It's been around since 1980 and was started by a fan from Seattle who printed 10,000 four page leaflets and handed them out free at a Springsteen concert. Unfortunately, most of them winded up on the floor. Nowadays, that first issue is worth over a hundred dollars. From those meager beginnings, Charles R Cross and his staff, developed a fanzine widely regarded as one of the best fanzines around.

I emailed Charles from Backstreets about doing the interview and told him how I admired the work that had been done to elevate the magazine to what it is today. That is what I aspire to do on my project. I also said that I would like to interview him for the Bruce song Born in the USA. I backed out at the very last moment about asking him for Born to Run.

He emailed me back for more information, which I sent and then replied that Born in the USA does not have as interesting a story as other Bruce songs. I agreed and told him that I had already penciled in Dave Marsh for Born to Run. And that I was holding out for Dave to do the interview. Charles then replied that it might not be such a good idea to have another Springsteen podcast when I have so few podcasts to begin with. I felt that way but had emailed Charles anyway about the other Bruce song. I guess I was drawn to the Backstreets story. It turned out to be a good idea anyway because Charles has also written books on Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. They both have a connection to Seattle.

He told me about writing those books so I mentioned that a Jimi Hendrix song could make a good podcast and that I liked either Purple Haze or All Along the Watchtower. But that Watchtower seemed more interesting because of the Bob Dylan connection and the amazing transformation the song did at the hands of Jimi Hendrix.

Charles went on to say that there are some good stories in his book, Room Full of Mirrors about Jimi's obsession with Dylan. It made me feel good about the decision of which song to pick for podcasts and that I kind of know what I'm doing.

So all in all it was a good correspondence I had with Charles even though I never emailed him back. We left off with him letting me know that he was working on a new book and that we should resume our connection in April. I agreed and told him that hopefully our website would be up and running by then. It is not so I did not approach him again. I'm embarrassed because the website's not up yet.

Hopefully, I have not tarnished the interest Charles had for being interviewed by us. I will contact him again one of these days. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

BABY I WAS BORN TO RUN WITH DAVE MARSH

The next podcast I thought of doing was an amazing song called Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It's not often I quote songs in conversation, but I occasionally do use the Strap your hands across my engine, line on my wife. Unfortunately, it doesn't usually work. I'm no Bruce.

Obviously Bruce was out of the question as an interviewee, so I decided to try a writer. I checked on Amazon and found quite a few. Dave Marsh, in fact, had several. I knew Dave from the Louie Louie book. I won't go into its name since it has one of the longest titles ever. It's twice as long as Borat's movie, which is called "Borat: Cultural Learnings America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." It's just the Louie Louie book to me. I also knew Dave from his book, The Heart of Rock and Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles. A must have for someone like me.

When I contacted Dave about doing the interview, I mentioned that we had already done a podcast on Louie Louie and that we had interviewed Dick Peterson of The Kingsmen. Dave responded yes to my request and mentioned the fact that Dick was not there when The Kingsmen recorded "Louie Louie." I wrote back saying we were thrilled he was interested in doing the podcast and that we had asked Dick if he was there during the recording of Louie Louie and he admitted he wasn't. He did, however, know quite a bit about the song and the story of The Kingsmen since he's been their drummer since 1963.

Dick Peterson actually had some words to say about Dave Marsh's Louie Louie book. Namely that Dave just read articles for the book and might've even made stuff up. I'm actually staying out of this one because I like them both. Dick has a tremendous story that would make a terrific and funny movie. And Dave has written some excellent books, including BTR. On one of his emails, Dave wrote BTR/BS podcast. I had no idea what it meant. I thought it might be a texting lingo. Or even worse, it might even mean BS podcast. And I don't have to spell that out for you. So I asked Dave what it meant. He said it stood for Born To Run Bruce Springsteen. To be funny I replied that I was going to read his BS book. I didn't hear back from him. He had responded rather quickly to all my emails, but this time he didn't respond, so I thought he might've been offended. But it turned out it wasn't the case. He did respond eventually.

Dave actually postponed the interview on account of illness. We also postponed it as a result of illness and then Dave became quite busy with work doing something for Sirius radio. One of the things I like about podcasting is that you can listen any time you want. I wanted to hear some of Dave's work on Sirius, including an interview he did with Bruce Springsteen, but didn't catch. It would've been great if it was a podcast.

Dave now is on my list of interviewees who I will resume contacting once the website is up and running. He was a Rolling Stone writer and one of the founding members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So I think it would be a good interview. Not as good as the Bob Costas interview with Dave for Later with Bob Costas. But then again we're no Bob Costas. Another reason I'd like Dave to do our show is that he is a friend of The Boss. And maybe he could put in a good word for us and get an interview with Bruce about one of his songs. That would be awesome. Maybe I'll email Dave this blog entry and see what happens. I'll keep you posted.