Almost missed it.

[deo62]

Alice’s Restaurant. That is all.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Alice’s Restaurant. That is all.

I posted it in the "What are you listening to" thread this morning. Tradition!

 

[76Too]

Anyone care to shed some light on this tradition?

 

[DoggyDaddy]

Anyone care to shed some light on this tradition?

Listen to it all the way through...

 

[LEaSH]

It's sort of like watching the Christmas Story or Home Alone at Christmas time.

But it's Thanksgiving theme.

And it's made by and for commies.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

And it's made by and for commies.

Or just us old hippie types... I still remember my dad and his coworkers at the Marion County Health Department doing a pantomime to this song at their Christmas party back in the late 60's. They were all dressed in drag as waitresses.

 

[JeepHammer]

I think of that every time I go through TSA with all this metal, brackets, screws, artificial joints...
Enough scars I look like a human shaped road map,
Carrying letters from doctors, VA, VA card, etc, still stripped down to boxers and sitting on the "Group W" bench...

I wind up on the 'Group W' bench,
In my underwear,
Singing 'Alice's Restaurant'...

I ask them if they have twenty seven, eight by ten color glossy photos with circles and arrows on the front and a paragraph on the back explaining what each one was...
... Looking for the seeing-eye dog.

ALWAYS a blank look like I've lost my mind...

Way back when this crap started, I was on the 'Group W' bench, in my boxers,
With about a 5 year old boy... Screaming & crying...
......

Only one holding cell back then, and we all know that old, broken down veterans & 5 year olds commit 90% of the terrorist bombings...
And the correct thing to do is throw that kid in with a naked adult male you suspect of terrorism and disappear for an hour...

Maybe there is a song in this somewhere?
......

I was teaching the boy 'Alice's Restaurant' to calm him down while we sat there for about 40 minutes, and THAT really freaked out the TSA!
If I wasn't a terrorist before, I sure was now!

I'm POSITIVE the head TSA woman thought I had lost my mind!

 

[indyartisan]

Kid, Have you rehabilitated your self?

 

[KellyinAvon]

I've used the line, "you want to know if I'm moral enough to burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug" many times over the years.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

I've used the line, "you want to know if I'm moral enough to burn women, kids, houses and villages after being a litterbug" many times over the years.

I've used the "I wanna see blood and gore and have veins in my teeth! I wanna keel... keeel... KEEEEL!" line a few times too.

 

[deo62]

I said “Shrink, I wanna kill “

 

[JeepHammer]

Anyone care to shed some light on this tradition?

It was HUGE back in '69,
And when radio DJs were looking for something for Thanksgiving, this was "IT" for 30 years after that...

This, and the WKRP in Cincinnati turkey giveaway after that came out...

If Alice's Restaurant doesn't make you smile, even if you don't understand it's a protest song against the military draft, then there is something wrong with you...

As to the protest, you don't have to start a riot,
It can be polite, respectful, and a little sarcastic but not mean & hateful.

See any protest about anything now, screaming and threatening over not getting a salt packet at the fast food place...

Its just a little ditty about a young guys experience with law enforcement,
(notice he says 'Police Officers', not cops, pigs, etc)
... And how he wishes he would have reacted to the draft board...

This was the first generation born into a world with the very real possibility of nuclear war,
A hard line government that saw 'Commies' in their morning cereal and freaking out daily because they didn't grow up with the specter of nuclear extinction hanging over their heads...

It was also a time where you turned 18 and you could be immediately shipped off to Viet Nam.
Robert McNamara was drafting to put another 100,000 bodies on the ground a year in Viet Nam,
By lowering draft standards, forcing people totally unsuited for military service into combat areas.

Derogatory referenced as "McNamara's Morons", low I.Q. and mentally/physically challenged people were sent for a "Troop Buildup" (Cannon Fodder).

When this leaked out, the entire rational, reasonable people in the country took a second look at the Viet Nam war and how it was being conducted...
Protest songs like Alice's Restaurant popped up, and unlike TV at the time, couldn't be censored.

Of course, the 'Commie Happy' (slow on the uptake or committed to dogma) were in charge and doubled down on a totalitarian state standing,
You do what your told without question... Or else...

The big turning point for a lot of Americans was the shooting of 13 unarmed collage kids at Kent State (Ohio) in May 1970 by police & national guard troops.
A totalitarian state murders its own children over a peace protest/draft protest, 4 dead, 9 wounded unarmed collage students...

People talk about how "Dangerous" it is today...
During the 60s/70s, even into the 80s, over 1,000 bombings a year.

Particularly white supremists in the south,
Particularly schools, churches, even day care centers,
And criminal organizations used bombs to settle feuds...
Some even took up bombing on collage campuses.

All this while the nightly TV news showed death & destruction in Viet Nam, and even more graphic images from Viet Nam were in every print news magazine...
While today's culture has become desensitized to this because of horror movies, the sight of burned & blown apart bodies traumatized a generation of young people...

Alice's Restaurant is a light hearted ditty that was kind of a fun, bright spot in the times we were living in back then...
The 60s/70s are seen by people that DIDN'T live through it as tie dye, big hair, 'free love' times,
While that was the backlash fringe, that wasn't the real story...

 

[Michigan Slim]

Just played it for my 26 yo son. He'd never heard of it. I've been remiss as a father I guess.

 

[04FXSTS]

I always try to listen to AR every year, it's a cute song. One of the things I love about it is near the end when he talks about walking into the requituers office and singing a few bars of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And if two people do it in harmony, they will think they are both "faggots" and they won't draft either one of them.
I can't imagine anyone writing a song in this "woke" day and age with the word "faggots" in it. I am actually a little suprised no one objects to it being played now. It is like the meme about Blazing Saddles has been edited for TV it will air from 8:00 to 8:07. Jim.

 

[deo62]

And just like that AR fades away for another year…

 

[femurphy77]

And just like that AR fades away for another year…

Maybe but I don't want a pickle.

 

[deo62]

Maybe but I don't want a pickle.

I just want to ride my motorcycle

 

[DeadeyeChrista'sdad]

It was HUGE back in '69,
And when radio DJs were looking for something for Thanksgiving, this was "IT" for 30 years after that...

This, and the WKRP in Cincinnati turkey giveaway after that came out...

If Alice's Restaurant doesn't make you smile, even if you don't understand it's a protest song against the military draft, then there is something wrong with you...

As to the protest, you don't have to start a riot,
It can be polite, respectful, and a little sarcastic but not mean & hateful.

See any protest about anything now, screaming and threatening over not getting a salt packet at the fast food place...

Its just a little ditty about a young guys experience with law enforcement,
(notice he says 'Police Officers', not cops, pigs, etc)
... And how he wishes he would have reacted to the draft board...

This was the first generation born into a world with the very real possibility of nuclear war,
A hard line government that saw 'Commies' in their morning cereal and freaking out daily because they didn't grow up with the specter of nuclear extinction hanging over their heads...

It was also a time where you turned 18 and you could be immediately shipped off to Viet Nam.
Robert McNamara was drafting to put another 100,000 bodies on the ground a year in Viet Nam,
By lowering draft standards, forcing people totally unsuited for military service into combat areas.

Derogatory referenced as "McNamara's Morons", low I.Q. and mentally/physically challenged people were sent for a "Troop Buildup" (Cannon Fodder).

When this leaked out, the entire rational, reasonable people in the country took a second look at the Viet Nam war and how it was being conducted...
Protest songs like Alice's Restaurant popped up, and unlike TV at the time, couldn't be censored.

Of course, the 'Commie Happy' (slow on the uptake or committed to dogma) were in charge and doubled down on a totalitarian state standing,
You do what your told without question... Or else...

The big turning point for a lot of Americans was the shooting of 13 unarmed collage kids at Kent State (Ohio) in May 1970 by police & national guard troops.
A totalitarian state murders its own children over a peace protest/draft protest, 4 dead, 9 wounded unarmed collage students...

People talk about how "Dangerous" it is today...
During the 60s/70s, even into the 80s, over 1,000 bombings a year.

Particularly white supremists in the south,
Particularly schools, churches, even day care centers,
And criminal organizations used bombs to settle feuds...
Some even took up bombing on collage campuses.

All this while the nightly TV news showed death & destruction in Viet Nam, and even more graphic images from Viet Nam were in every print news magazine...
While today's culture has become desensitized to this because of horror movies, the sight of burned & blown apart bodies traumatized a generation of young people...

Alice's Restaurant is a light hearted ditty that was kind of a fun, bright spot in the times we were living in back then...
The 60s/70s are seen by people that DIDN'T live through it as tie dye, big hair, 'free love' times,
While that was the backlash fringe, that wasn't the real story...

I wish I could get my kids to read this and try to understand your perspective.

 

[churchmouse]

I think of that every time I go through TSA with all this metal, brackets, screws, artificial joints...
Enough scars I look like a human shaped road map,
Carrying letters from doctors, VA, VA card, etc, still stripped down to boxers and sitting on the "Group W" bench...

I wind up on the 'Group W' bench,
In my underwear,
Singing 'Alice's Restaurant'...

I ask them if they have twenty seven, eight by ten color glossy photos with circles and arrows on the front and a paragraph on the back explaining what each one was...
... Looking for the seeing-eye dog.

ALWAYS a blank look like I've lost my mind...

Way back when this crap started, I was on the 'Group W' bench, in my boxers,
With about a 5 year old boy... Screaming & crying...
......

Only one holding cell back then, and we all know that old, broken down veterans & 5 year olds commit 90% of the terrorist bombings...
And the correct thing to do is throw that kid in with a naked adult male you suspect of terrorism and disappear for an hour...

Maybe there is a song in this somewhere?
......

I was teaching the boy 'Alice's Restaurant' to calm him down while we sat there for about 40 minutes, and THAT really freaked out the TSA!
If I wasn't a terrorist before, I sure was now!

I'm POSITIVE the head TSA woman thought I had lost my mind!

Well done.
**** with them at every turn.

 

[JeepHammer]

I wish I could get my kids to read this and try to understand your perspective.

No actual history, no actual future.

No way to learn from mistakes & triumphs of the past.

Today, it's all noise, over stimulation...
It keeps people from thinking things through.

I like my little quiet spot, doing honest, manual labor, having time to think things through.
I had the benefit of working with my grandparents that lived though tougher times than we'll ever see,
Taking the time to enjoy the little things along the way, pride in your work.

Hard to stay mad when the fish are biting, the kids are playing or cooking a great meal with family & friends.