Arlo Guthrie - Alice’s Restaurant

Two for her, one for me. It has been a rather intermittent tradition in my family to listen to “Alice’s Restaurant” on Thanksgiving day, being that it is the only good Thanksgiving song. That tradition stopped when we collectively moved from iPods and mp3 players to streaming, but with this CD I was able to play it for my young cousin on the family DVD player. She likes Elvis, she likes Johnny Cash, but she just can’t sit still for eighteen and a half minutes.

Even if you are the kid of one of the greatest folk singers of all time, it takes balls for your first song to be a full A-side of a record. It’s a live take in front of an audience, which means that little flubs and mis-reads stay. The guitar playing is fluid yet metronomic, especially given how out-of-rhythm his jokes are. His voice is passable as a singer, but his delivery and pacing is really top-notch.

The B-side couldn’t possibly live up to the A-side, and it doesn’t really try. “The Motorcycle Song” is fine, it’s better live. “Chilling of the Evening” is rancid. Ultimately, this album only works where Guthrie realizes that he’s a hippy clown and not a purveyor of truth and beauty. “I’m Going Home” is the only passable serious work on the album. In sum, “Alice’s Restaurant” is one of the greatest comic works in American song, and the rest of the record is filler.

Alice’s Restaurant is a bad album, and I like it.