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.