Arlo Guthrie
Alice’s Restaurant
1967
Warner Bros
Thanksgiving tradition: give Alice’s Restaurant a listen once each year.
The title track itself was 18 1/2 minutes long. Note, the missing Nixon White House tapes were also 18 1/2 minutes long. Coincidence? Or was some listening to Alice in the Oval Office? Hmmm…
Remember when Adam Sandler was funny? I think it was a narrow window from 1993 through mid-1997. But in that time he gave us a few holiday tunes via Saturday Night Live. Here’s the Turkey Song – Happy Thanksgiving!
Pop music, especially in the modern rock era (which I define as roughly 1979 to 1999), has a lot of Christmas songs in its catalog. A lot. A whole lot. In fact, way too many.
Like Christmas itself throughout the same era, pop and rock bands have cashed in over the past couple of decades, using Christmas as a reason to offer up specific product. But, no one has really created big hits for other holidays since Bobby “Boris” Picket staked his claim on Halloween in 1962.
Enter Ray Davies. The first time I heard “Thanksgiving Day” in 2005, I could just picture Ray telling his friends that the song isn’t just a Thanksgiving song, but more importantly it’s NOT another Christmas song. After all, Ray and his band The Kinks already conquered the Christmas genre with 1977’s “Father Christmas”!
Have a listen below to Ray perfroming this on the old Conan show in 2005:
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