I posted it in the "What are you listening to" thread this morning. Tradition!Alice’s Restaurant. That is all.
Listen to it all the way through...Anyone care to shed some light on this tradition?
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.And it's made by and for commies.
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.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.
Anyone care to shed some light on this tradition?
Maybe but I don't want a pickle.And just like that AR fades away for another year…
I just want to ride my motorcycleMaybe but I don't want a pickle.
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...
Well done.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!
I wish I could get my kids to read this and try to understand your perspective.