November 19, 2007
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The Daily News
1 Welcome back to one of the biggest goof-off weeks of the year.
2 Be absolutely sure you do all your work this week.
3 Thanksgiving week.
4 Pretty underrated.
5 Already we start to to hear from friends and family, and it really becomes a time literally to give thanks, especially for all the people and things in our lives.
6 I always love Thanksgiving just because. It’s not a huge thing, but has all the right elements: family, friends, food, good times, and a very brief hiatus from our own idiotic worlds.
7 I also like it because I love listening to Arlo Guthrie’s classic album Alice’s Restaurant, the entire massacree. If you’ve never had the pleasure, you should just get the CD. I’m sure it holds up.
8 Arlo Guthrie, a folk artist in his own right, is also the son of folk legend Woody Guthrie, most famous for This Land is Your Land. Alice’s Restaurant is a classic Thanksgiving story about a hippy Thanksgiving that winds up with the narrator himself getting arrested for littering his Thanksgiving stuff. The second half is about his experiences with the draft board, and how his arrest ironically keeps him from being drafted.
Alice’s Restaurant album cover.
9 Simple, unique, and amusing, the story is also a bit of fun aimed at just how ridiculous a whole bunch of stuff is: authority, hypocracy, war, and the American way.
10 It’s also a great Thanksgiving story, and an annual autumn chuckle for many of us. It just seems to go with a turkey basting in the oven, and all the rest of the warmth that goes withThanksgiving. Purely American as peaches and pies, and pure folk rock.
11 Moving on: Last week I reported that our original band, the Ducks, was slowly starting to re-unite. I got a chance to have dinner with Geoff and Skinny Vinny the other night, and they may have located two other members of the band, both of whom are local.
12 Plus it turns out that Vinny has a studio at Reid-HIllview airport, and it’s awesome.
13 That’s about three scissors steps from the Chill-on-the Hill.
14 So to a few musicians who played together years ago, it’s looking as though we may just begin enjoying the purity and absolute buzz of creating some amazing music once again after a few thousand years away from the arena.
15 There were big smiles all over the place on Saturday. I won’t bore you with too much of it, but really, those guys inspired other bands that played in the Theatre as the years rolled on. They set the rock tone that remains in the YB Theatre to this day. There was a line of rock musicians who got to know one another through the years and who rocked that stage for years. Lots and lots of classic jams have happened at center stage. And it’s just this simple:
16 It all began with the Ducks.
17 We talked of all the fun songs we could do, and have done, from Journey to Led Zeppelin, and beyond.
18 Near the end of the night we thought about doing Hocus Pocus by Focus, but none of us is a eunuch. At least not that anyone would admit. Plus you need a guy who could yodel, and sing in lederhosen. There just aren’t too many non-eunuchs who could fill that bill.
19 Acually, the lederhosen could just possibly raise the bar just tight enough that we could possibly hit some of those high-end notes, but really, finding a volunteer could be at best tricky.
20 Moving on once more: Anyway, it’s Thanksgiving week. Don’t expect anyone to be too productive this week. Nobody is expected to be. So eat cookies at work, let your professors think you’re going to do nothing but concentrating on their insecure boushit, and then get with family and friends the very second you can.
21 This is YOUR time, not theirs.
22 I know, I know…
23 Just stay focused is all. All those other people come and go, but family and friends are the real deal.
24 Live life, love life.
25 Buy Alice’s Restaurant. It’s just fun. Get it today and give it a listen tonight. You’re sure to smile.
26 Peace.
~H~
