[HN Gopher] Alice's Restaurant: An American Thanksgiving Tradition
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Alice's Restaurant: An American Thanksgiving Tradition
Author : hprotagonist
Score : 43 points
Date : 2022-11-24 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nysmusic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (nysmusic.com)
| eldenlad wrote:
| A few years ago I would amuse myself by queuing this song up
| whenever I was at a bar that had a Touch Tunes jukebox.
| Inevitably nobody would notice or care. Nice song, though.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| I've always been tempted to follow John Mulaney and go with
| "what's new pussycat", but i've never quite had the gall...
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv1l1eUhN-E
| Animats wrote:
| That's a tradition?
|
| For the Xmas season, listen to Stan Freburg's "Green Christmas".
| Banned from radio play at one time due to advertiser
| objections.[1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5IXlfJSEi4
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Funnily enough, a young no-name DJ named "george carlin" was
| very nearly fired once for playing it perhaps one too many
| times...
| sp332 wrote:
| Here is the original song. Hearing a young Arlo Guthrie making
| all these jokes to an audience who hasn't heard them a million
| times is the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM
|
| But later he added a part to the end - here's a link to the new
| part https://youtu.be/TuSBv5xim-o?t=1020 And if you've heard the
| original before, I do recommending skipping back to the beginning
| and listening to this one at least once, because hearing an old
| Arlo tell the story to an audience who has memorized every word
| and is still engaged and listening intently is also pretty
| special.
| wpietri wrote:
| Oh, that's great. Even just the intro; his comedic timing is
| perfect.
| CharlesW wrote:
| For non-Americans who might take this article at face value: As
| an American this has never been a tradition in my family or any
| I've known, and it's not a Thanksgiving staple on any radio
| station I've listened to. (America's huge and diverse, so YMMV of
| course.)
| marmetio wrote:
| I think it's a northeast thing. But not everyone in the
| northeast knows it, either. You're more likely to know it if
| you have to drive for at least an hour for Thanksgiving dinner
| and you like to browse radio stations.
| dottrap wrote:
| Thank you for that. Also as an American, I too have never heard
| of this. When I saw the words Alice and restaurant, I thought
| back to the TV sitcom called Alice from the 1970's-1980's who
| worked at Mel's Diner.
|
| As far as American Thanksgiving staples I'm aware of, it's:
|
| * Macy's Thanksgiving Parade
|
| * (American) Football
|
| * Turkey dinner
|
| * Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (+ maybe Garfield)
| happytoexplain wrote:
| That's interesting - I thought it was ubiquitous. Everybody I
| know acknowledges the tradition. Just another highly regional
| thing, I guess.
| jedberg wrote:
| Dr. Demento played it every year near thanksgiving, which was
| syndicated nationwide but very niche.
| eric8bits wrote:
| The comment I was looking for, as a European. Thank you!
| sp332 wrote:
| Your mileage does vary lol. WERS out of Boston played it once
| today and said it will be on again at 5 PM.
| BenFrantzDale wrote:
| It was a WBCN noon tradition back when WBCN was alive.
| mlindner wrote:
| Same, I've never even heard of this person or this "tradition".
| Not something anyone I know listens to.
| Omni5cience wrote:
| FWIW this seems to be a NY focused publication and my
| understanding is that the tradition started on WNEW. I grew up
| listening to it, but I have no idea how far it's spread outside
| of the NYC metro area.
| uxp100 wrote:
| Midwest here, hear it every year, usually on the radio, but
| you know, sometimes gotta fall back to queuing up a
| recording.
| mlindner wrote:
| Also midwest here, and never heard of it or the person who
| performed it.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Seattle here, it's a yearly tradition :)
| jwally wrote:
| FWIW I've heard this song exactly once, driving into Dallas
| around 22 years ago on the classic rock station to go watch an
| NFL game. I was amazed by how long it went on.
|
| The only reason I remember it is the same riff is used in The
| Doors (who I really got into around the same time) song "WASP".
| wl wrote:
| Listening to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving is a tradition
| I grew up with in Northern California.
| Fatnino wrote:
| Do you also drive to Alice's Restaurant up on Skyline at LA
| Honda road?
| derwiki wrote:
| In the song, it's a restaurant owned by Alice but not
| called Alice's Restaurant
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Amusingly, that's a different restaurant than the one in
| the song; in fact, that restaurant is named after the song.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Plus, you _can't_ get anything you want at the Alice's
| Restaurant on La Honda road. I was so disappointed.
| [deleted]
| mikewarot wrote:
| Here's the original incident[1], as reported in the November
| 29th, 1965 edition of the Berkshire Eagle.
|
| No mention is made in the article of the 27 8x10 color glossy
| pictures, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of
| each one, as entered into evidence by Stockbridge Police Chief
| Willian J. Obanhein.
|
| I believe Arlo's telling of this story has earned him a place of
| notoriety and firmly took him out of the shadows of his father,
| noted ballad singer Woody Guthrie. We listened to this quite a
| few times in my youth, from a neighbor's record.
|
| [1] https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39766863/alices-restaurant/
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| It's nice that Arlo and Officer Obie ended up becoming friends
| and Obanhein embraced ways to make positives from the event,
| song, and eventual movie, in which he played himself.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Obie is also the police officer depicted in the Norman
| Rockwell painting "The Runaway", noted in this ... Alice's
| Restaurant story:
|
| <https://www.bytesdaily.com.au/2013/06/alices-restaurant-
| part...>
|
| A much higher-resolution image:
|
| <https://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/ROGALLERY/64/675364
| ...>
| [deleted]
| wpietri wrote:
| Alas, according to Wikipedia, that story is slightly too
| good to be true. Obie did pose for Rockwell, but was not
| the officer from "The Runaway", who was instead
| Massachusetts state trooper Richard Clemens:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Obanhein
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Went to an Arlo Guthrie performance about a decade ago. It was
| interesting how he removed some of the more non-PC lyrics by
| breaking out of the song from time to time to engage the audience
| in the performance and then would pick back up on the other side
| of what he wanted to exclude. It worked much more naturally than
| changing the lyric or adding some sort of disclaimer.
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(page generated 2022-11-24 23:01 UTC)