Anti-Alice’s Restaurant: 18 Minutes You’ll Never Get Back.
Thanksgiving starts the best month and a half stretch each year. Traditions, pro football, high school football, backyard football, Christmas decorations, shopping deals, drinking, eating, all the good things in life.
Alas, to every yin there is a yang. A dark to each light. Even the great Thanksgiving traditions have been unable to escape this fact 18 minutes at a time since 1967.
That was the year, Arlo Guthrie decided that the world needed him to talk-sing a story for more than a quarter of an hour. In Alice’s Restaurant, Guthrie goes on about an overblown issue of illegal dumping, and how it effected his military eligibility… sounds like a draft dodger making excuses if you ask me. The thing that gets me is this song was not made to be some Thanksgiving tradition, and in all my research (one Wikipedia page click), I can’t find why it has become a Thanksgiving tradition other than he mentions it was Thanksgiving in the song. Not every holiday needs some music shoehorned into it.
When asked to comment on the beginnings and continuation of this “tradition”, very talented, nationally recognized and widely awarded program director of WMGK and WMMR Bill Weston didn’t really give much of an answer other than it’s been around, “as long as anyone can remember and sort of became a Thanksgiving tradition because there wasn’t any music for Thanksgiving.” Well thanks for nothing Bill! I say to you, “with all due respect, and remember I’m saying with all due respect, that idea ain’t worth a velvet painting of a whale and a dolphin gettin’ it on.” (cred: Ricky Bobby)
Since nobody in management here at MGK listens to me Alice’s Restaurant is going to air three times on Thanksgiving. Paul Kelly will fire up this overcooked bird at 8am. If one airing wasn’t enough, Danny Ocean drops the fully frozen turkey into the deep fryer at 1pm, and if being punished is what really gets your meter moving Danny play it again at 4pm.
The John DeBella Show
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