# Is Alice's Restaurant a tradition for your Thanksgiving? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** music\ **Created:** [November 24, 2011, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983 "2011-11-24T17:06:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Reeses\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reeses_monkey/32/2885_2.png) [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/101 "2012-11-23T00:17:21Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/102 "2012-11-23T01:07:21Z")
As I noted above, last year, I can quote damn near the entire thing. In harmony. A few years ago another Boomer and I got goin’, and what I didn’t remember he did. We got through the entire thing without missing a word. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/103 "2012-11-23T01:07:44Z")
I spend Thanksgiving with my parents, who are old-school Europeans. They don’t like very much music that’s been written since about 1940. So the answer to the question is a definite no. ---
**Author:** ![outlierrn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/outlierrn/32/3005_2.png) [@outlierrn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/outlierrn)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/104 "2012-11-23T03:26:31Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > I spend Thanksgiving with my parents, who are old-school Europeans. They don’t like very much music that’s been written since about 1940. > > So the answer to the question is a definite no. All they have to do to join is to sing it when it comes around on the guitar. ---
**Author:** ![Mixolydian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/da6949/32.png) [@Mixolydian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mixolydian)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/105 "2012-11-23T05:11:12Z")
I tried to start it as tradition today (before seeing this thread). Kids (9 & 7) liked it, and Mrs. Mixo was swayed. I blindly picked the 90s [version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjKF7aQthcQ) that came up first on YT, not the 60s version I always heard on the radio. Next year… ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/106 "2012-11-23T22:07:46Z")
I asked a friend today (the day after Thanksgiving) if she did “Alice’s Restaurant” with the family yesterday. She said, “No, I cooked at home.” ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/107 "2012-11-23T22:34:26Z")
> [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](#): > > 1. He was not drafted. They pointedly told him in the song “We don’t like your kind” and sat him on the Group W bench where all the criminals were. > > 2. The joke is that his arrest for littering, a particularly minor offense, kept him from being drafted because it was seen as a morals violation, during a war where the burning of villages and killing of civilians was commonplace. The story leading up to his reporting for the draft, when contrasted with what the Army was doing in Vietnam, was intended to be incredibly ironic. > > I’m OK with the fact that you didn’t like it. I enjoy it, but I have my own tastes and would not impose them upon anybody else. But if you did in fact listen to it the whole way through I cannot fathom how you didn’t discern these facts for yourself. You seem to assume a familiarity with the subject matter than I just don’t have. I didn’t know what Group W meant. And I don’t find irony funny in and of itself, so it never dawned on me that that was the point. If they clarified either of these points, I didn’t catch it–probably because I unknowingly tuned out for part of the song. Having made that bad a review of it, I’m not entirely inclined to listen to it again. With your explanation, I at least get why some of you would like the song so much. But the draft is so removed from me and my generation that it just doesn’t have the significance or dark humor for me that it has for you. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2012, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/108 "2012-11-23T23:23:58Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > With your explanation, I at least get why some of you would like the song so much. But the draft is so removed from me and my generation that it just doesn’t have the significance or dark humor for me that it has for you. Let’s hope that when the US feels the itch to enter another war (and history teaches us that it will), you will revisit _Alice’s Restaurant._ I’m sure you would feel differently if your life and those of your friends and children were on the line for no good reason except another generation’s asshole politics. We can laugh about it now, but it was no laughing matter in the 1960’s. ---
**Author:** ![mariposalabrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ad7895/32.png) [@mariposalabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mariposalabrown)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/109 "2012-11-24T00:39:12Z")
Saw The Last Waltz Revisited at the Ogden in Denver. When it started with Alice, the jolly drunk crowd’s chatter got louder to compensate. So I kind of heard it. ---
**Author:** ![Cub\_Mistress](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea666f/32.png) [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/110 "2012-11-24T02:40:36Z")
I first heard Alice’s Restaurant as a 12 year old hanging out with an Army wife in Germany. She put it on the record player, probably in an attempt to keep me amused and occupied. I fell in love with the song immediately. When it got the the part, where Arlo says “and if two people do it…” she raced for the turntable and ripped up the tone arm. It was years before I heard the rest of that song, but I have never lost my love for it. Years and years later, I was working for an attorney as a legal secretary. He brought in several huge blowups of aerial photographs to use as an exhibit in a case. I nearly died of delight and amusement. When I was working as a substitute teacher, a young man was telling me how he had forgotten he had a juvenile court appearance the next day, and had stayed up way too late the night before drinking and playing video games. To amuse myself, I asked him if he felt like “the All American boy from New York City”. He blinked twice and said “That’s from Alice’s Restaurant, right?” I felt a glimmer of hope in the next generation in that moment. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/111 "2012-11-24T02:44:54Z")
I didn’t this year, but I have many times in the past. The local iconic rock station, WBLM, the Rock and Roll Blimp, plays it every Thanksgiving, off the original vinyl they had when they played it for the first time in the trailer in Litchfield, Maine back in 1973. ---
**Author:** ![SCAdian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scadian/32/3292_2.png) [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/112 "2012-11-24T03:12:29Z")
Why in the world would that be a T-Day tradition??? ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/113 "2012-11-24T03:21:40Z")
Have you ever _listened_ to the song? It begins, “Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn’t live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog.” Part of the song is _set_ at Thanksgiving. And if you’d rather _read_ the lyrics instead of listening to the song, go [here](http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/alices.shtml). ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/114 "2012-11-24T03:35:24Z")
I hope I’m allowed to say “yes” even though it was yesterday. I didn’t set out to listen to it, but a radio station I had on happened to be playing it. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/115 "2012-11-24T05:36:14Z")
> [@outlierrn](#): > > All they have to do to join is to sing it when it comes around on the guitar. Actually, the fact of the matter is that I don’t think I’ve ever heard the song, on Thanksgiving or any other day. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2012, 7:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/116 "2012-11-24T07:05:53Z")
Here: [http://grooveshark.com/#!/search?q=alice's+restaurant](http://grooveshark.com/#!/search?q=alice%27s+restaurant) (I don’t think I’m breaking the rules doing this–but if I am, maybe it’ll get me off the list when the draft comes back!) ---
**Author:** ![Reeses\_Monkey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reeses_monkey/32/2885_2.png) [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2013, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/117 "2013-11-24T00:18:14Z")
Thanksgiving is this Thursday (here in the US) and it’s time for this thread again! ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2013, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/118 "2013-11-24T00:51:44Z")
So we’ll just wait for it to come around again on the guitar… ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2013, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/119 "2013-11-24T00:57:50Z")
Let’s hope we get 50 posts this year. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2013, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983/120 "2013-11-24T01:02:57Z")
I daresay, the only reason I know this song is from the Dope. I consider myself fairly well-exposed to music, but this song has always been a big black hole for me. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-alices-restaurant-a-tradition-for-your-thanksgiving/603983.md?page=7)