You can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant, but LA is about to get something pretty spectacular at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Monday, April 6, when Arlo Guthrie comes to town to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the event that inspired his most well-known song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree."
If you don't know Arlo, you most definitely know his dad Woody, who spent a fair bit of time rambling through Los Angeles and performing folk music that was as humorous and lyrical as it was politically biting. And like father, like son: "Alice's Restaurant" is one of the greatest, funniest anti-war rally songs in the American folk tradition. It also happens to be an 18-minute musical monologue (containing 2,833 well-delivered words), which means that it doesn't get a ton of play on the radio, or even on Arlo's regular tours.
Luckily for us, the event that the song is based on (in which Arlo shares Thanksgiving with Alice, gets fined $50 for being a litterbug, and subsequently is rejected for service in Vietnam as an unrehabilitated criminal) occurred in 1965, meaning it's been 50 years and it's high time for a celebration. So Arlo has embarked on an 18 month tour (one month for each minute in the song, perhaps?), during which he'll sing "Alice's Restaurant" in its entirety at each stop, along with selections from his other full-length studio albums (we're crossing our fingers for "Coming Into Los Angeles").
Listen to the song below, or grab tickets for Monday's show and hear it in person surrounded by fellow ne'er-do-wells, litterbugs, draft dodgers and forward-thinking, folk music-loving new friends. We'll be there.
