You Can Get Anything You Want At Alice’s Restaurant

We don’t have much in the way of traditions around my house come Thanksgiving time, but there is one that we do stick to every year around this time, that I’ve brought over to JamBase. For as long as I can remember New York’s classic rock station – which has rotated considerably over the years – has always played Arlo Guthrie’s satirically brilliant track “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” at noon on Thanksgiving.

The 18-plus minute track constitutes the entire A-Side of Guthrie’s 1967 album – Alice’s Restaurant. The song is a winding, interwoven tale based on a true story of a Thanksgiving weekend in 1965 gone awry that also happens to double as a biting and humorous anti-establishment, anti-war ode.

So when you have some time over the course of the long weekend, I highly recommend that you sit back and enjoy Guthrie’s masterful tale, which in concert has stretched to over thirty minutes long. Let’s check out this pro-shot version from the 2005 edition of Farm Aid that took place at First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, IL:

For the purists, here’s the studio version:

Guthrie has been on tour throughout 2015 and continuing into 2016 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the incident described in “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” Tune in to PBS tonight for the premiere of Alice’s Restaurant 50th Anniversary Concert with Arlo Guthrie, which was filmed in Pittsfield, Massachusetts earlier this year. Check local listings for the airtime.