The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hip­pie-bat­ing police offi­cer, by the name of William “Obie” Oban­hein, arrest­ed Arlo for lit­ter­ing. (Cul­tur­al foot­note: Obie pre­vi­ous­ly posed for sev­er­al Nor­man Rock­well paint­ings, includ­ing the well-known paint­ing, “The Run­away,” that graced a 1958 cov­er of The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.) In fair­ly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the sto­ry isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Lat­er, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the pet­ty crime iron­i­cal­ly becomes a basis for dis­qual­i­fy­ing him from mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Viet­nam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bit­ter­ness as the song builds into a satir­i­cal protest against the war: “I’m sit­tin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, hous­es and vil­lages after bein’ a lit­ter­bug.” And then we’re back to the cheery cho­rus again: “You can get any­thing you want, at Alice’s Restau­rant.”

We have fea­tured Guthrie’s clas­sic dur­ing past years. But, for this Thanks­giv­ing, we give you the illus­trat­ed ver­sion. As a sad post script, Alice Brock, the own­er of Alice’s Restau­rant–died last week at the age of 83.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry Behind “Alice’s Restau­rant,” Arlo Guthrie’s Song That’s Now a Thanks­giv­ing Tra­di­tion

What Amer­i­cans Ate for Thanks­giv­ing 200 Years Ago: Watch Re-Cre­ations of Recipes from the 1820s

Read 900+ Thanks­giv­ing Books Free at the Inter­net Archive

William S. Bur­roughs’ Scathing “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

How to Potty Train Your Cat: A Handy Manual by Jazz Musician Charles Mingus

Charles Min­gus, the inno­v­a­tive jazz musi­cian, was known for hav­ing a bad tem­per. He once got so irri­tat­ed with a heck­ler that he end­ed up trash­ing his $20,000 bass. Anoth­er time, when a pianist did­n’t get things right, Min­gus reached right inside the piano and ripped the strings out with his bare hands — a true sto­ry men­tioned in the BBC doc­u­men­tary, 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz.

But Min­gus had a soft­er, nur­tur­ing side too. If you head to the offi­cial Charles Min­gus web­site, you will find a copy of the Charles Min­gus Cat Toi­let Train­ing Pro­gram, a lov­ing lit­tle guide cre­at­ed for cat own­ers every­where. The trick to pot­ty train­ing your cat comes down to edg­ing the lit­ter box clos­er to the bath­room, even­tu­al­ly plac­ing the box on the pot­ty, and then cut­ting a hole in the cen­ter of the box. Expect to spend about three weeks mak­ing the tran­si­tion. And who knows, Min­gus says, your cat may even learn to flush. The full guide appears here. Or read it below:

1

First, you must train your cat to use a home-made card­board lit­ter box, if you have not already done so. (If your box does not have a one-piece bot­tom, add a card­board that fits inside, so you have a false bot­tom that is smooth and strong. This way the box will not become sog­gy and fall out at the bot­tom. The gro­cery store will have extra flat card­boards which you can cut down to fit exact­ly inside your box.)

Be sure to use torn up news­pa­per, not kit­ty lit­ter. Stop using kit­ty lit­ter. (When the time comes you can­not put sand in a toi­let.)

Once your cat is trained to use a card­board box, start mov­ing the box around the room, towards the bath­room. If the box is in a cor­ner, move it a few feet from the cor­ner, but not very notice­ably. If you move it too far, he may go to the bath­room in the orig­i­nal cor­ner. Do it grad­u­al­ly. You’ve got to get him think­ing. Then he will grad­u­al­ly fol­low the box as you move it to the bath­room. (Impor­tant: if you already have it there, move it out of the bath­room, around, and then back. He has to learn to fol­low it. If it is too close to the toi­let, to begin with, he will not fol­low it up onto the toi­let seat when you move it there.) A cat will look for his box. He smells it.

2

Now, as you move the box, also start cut­ting the brim of the box down, so the sides get low­er. Do this grad­u­al­ly.

Final­ly, you reach the bath­room and, even­tu­al­ly, the toi­let itself. Then, one day, pre­pare to put the box on top of the toi­let. At each cor­ner of the box, cut a lit­tle slash. You can run string around the box, through these slash­es, and tie the box down to the toi­let so it will not fall off. Your cat will see it there and jump up to the box, which is now sit­ting on top of the toi­let (with the sides cut down to only an inch or so.)

Don’t bug the cat now, don’t rush him, because you might throw him off. Just let him relax and go there for awhile-maybe a week or two. Mean­while, put less and less news­pa­per inside the box.

3

One day, cut a small hole in the very cen­ter of his box, less than an apple-about the size of a plum-and leave some paper in the box around the hole. Right away he will start aim­ing for the hole and pos­si­bly even try to make it big­ger. Leave the paper for awhile to absorb the waste. When he jumps up he will not be afraid of the hole because he expects it. At this point you will real­ize that you have won. The most dif­fi­cult part is over.

From now on, it is just a mat­ter of time. In fact, once when I was clean­ing the box and had removed it from the toi­let, my cat jumped up any­way and almost fell in. To avoid this, have a tem­po­rary flat card­board ready with a lit­tle hole, and slide it under the toi­let lid so he can use it while you are clean­ing, in case he wants to come and go, and so he will not fall in and be scared off com­plete­ly. You might add some news­pa­per up there too, while you are clean­ing, in case your cat is not as smart as Nightlife was.

4

Now cut the box down com­plete­ly until there is no brim left. Put the flat card­board, which is left, under the lid of the toi­let seat, and pray. Leave a lit­tle news­pa­per, still. He will rake it into the hole any­way, after he goes to the bath­room. Even­tu­al­ly, you can sim­ply get rid of the card­board alto­geth­er. You will see when he has got his bal­ance prop­er­ly.

Don’t be sur­prised if you hear the toi­let flush in the mid­dle of the night. A cat can learn how to do it, spurred on by his instinct to cov­er up. His main thing is to cov­er up. If he hits the flush knob acci­den­tal­ly and sees that it cleans the bowl inside, he may remem­ber and do it inten­tion­al­ly.

Also, be sure to turn the toi­let paper roll around so that it won’t roll down eas­i­ly if the cat paws it. The cat is apt to roll it into the toi­let, again with the inten­tion of cov­er­ing up- the way he would if there were still kit­ty lit­ter.

It took me about three or four weeks to toi­let train my cat, Nightlife. Most of the time is spent mov­ing the box very grad­u­al­ly to the bath­room. Do it very slow­ly and don’t con­fuse him. And, remem­ber, once the box is on the toi­let, leave it a week or even two. The main thing to remem­ber is not to rush or con­fuse him.

Bonus: Below you can hear The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey read “The Charles Min­gus CAT-alog for Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Charles Min­gus and His Evic­tion From His New York City Loft, Cap­tured in Mov­ing 1968 Film

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats in the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & More

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Hear the Isolated Vocals of Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush in “Don’t Give Up”: The Power of Perseverance

Just by chance, could you use a song about per­se­ver­ance and over­com­ing adver­si­ty? Some­thing to give you a lit­tle encour­age­ment and reas­sur­ance? Then we sub­mit to you “Don’t Give Up,” fea­tur­ing the iso­lat­ed vocals of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

When he released the song on his 1986 album So, Gabriel told NME: “The cat­a­lyst for ‘Don’t Give Up’ was a pho­to­graph I saw by Dorothea Lange,… which showed the dust-bowl con­di­tions dur­ing the Great Depres­sion in Amer­i­ca. With­out a cli­mate of self-esteem it’s impos­si­ble to func­tion.” Else­where, on his web­site, Gabriel explained that the song was also “informed by the high lev­els of unem­ploy­ment under the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment of Mar­garet Thatch­er of the 1980s.” What­ev­er the chal­lenges they’ve faced, lis­ten­ers have sought solace in this song for the past 38 years. No doubt, for some, it will come in handy dur­ing the weeks and months ahead.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Dorothea Lange Dig­i­tal Archive: Explore 600+ Pho­tographs by the Influ­en­tial Pho­tog­ra­ph­er (Plus Neg­a­tives, Con­tact Sheets & More

Kate Bush Enjoys a (Long-Over­due) Revival, Sparked by Sea­son 4 of Stranger Things

Peter Gabriel Re-Records “Biko,” His Anti-Apartheid Protest Song, with Musi­cians Around the World

Watch a New­ly-Restored Peter Gabriel-Era Gen­e­sis Con­cert Film From 1973 in Stun­ning 4K Qual­i­ty

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

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Watch The Cure Perform a Three-Hour Concert in London, Celebrating the Release of Their New Album


Last Fri­day, The Cure cel­e­brat­ed the release of their new album, Songs of a Lost World, with a three-hour set at the Troxy in Lon­don. The band kicked off the show by per­form­ing all eight tracks from the album, before then play­ing anoth­er 23 songs, most­ly hits from their large cat­a­log of music. Orig­i­nal­ly live streamed on YouTube, you can now watch the entire show online. Just click play above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Cure Per­formed the Entire “Dis­in­te­gra­tion” Album on the 30th Anniver­sary of Its Release: Watch The Com­plete Con­cert Online

Watch The Cure’s First TV Appear­ance in 1979 … Before The Band Acquired Its Sig­na­ture Goth Look

Lost Depeche Mode Doc­u­men­tary Is Now Online: WatchOur Hob­by is Depeche Mode

 

The Isolated Bass Grooves of The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh (RIP)

This past Fri­day, the bassist of The Grate­ful Dead, Phil Lesh, passed away at age 84. Almost imme­di­ate­ly the trib­utes poured in, most rec­og­niz­ing that Lesh was­n’t your ordi­nary bassist. As Jon Par­e­les wrote in the New York Times, Phil Lesh held songs “aloft.” His “bass lines hopped and bub­bled and con­stant­ly con­versed with the gui­tars of Jer­ry Gar­cia and Bob Weir. His tone was round­ed and unassertive while he eased his way into the coun­ter­point, almost as if he were think­ing aloud. [His] play­ing was essen­tial to the Dead’s par­tic­u­lar grav­i­ty-defy­ing lilt, shar­ing a col­lec­tive mode of rock momen­tum that was teas­ing and prob­ing, nev­er blunt­ly coer­cive.”

My first encounter with the Grate­ful Dead came when I was 16 years old. I vivid­ly remem­ber the guy who played bon­gos on my friend’s head when we arrived at the show. I also remem­ber the spin­ners trip­ping on acid, danc­ing down the halls and short-cir­cuit­ing my lit­tle mind. But the con­cert itself remains only a hazy mem­o­ry. And cer­tain­ly the artistry of Lesh, Gar­cia, Weir, and the drum­mers was lost on me. Only years lat­er, did it all start to click. That’s when I dialed into the Bar­ton Hall con­cert at Cor­nell (May 8, 1977) and encoun­tered Lesh’s bass lines at the start of “Scar­let Bego­nias.” Once you hear them, they’re hard to shake. The video above zooms into that per­for­mance, explor­ing the devel­op­ment of Lesh’s bass play­ing through­out the spring of ’77. The next video down lets you hear the com­plete Bar­ton Hall per­for­mance of “Scar­let Bego­nias” in all of its glo­ry.

When oth­ers try to cap­ture what made Phil, Phil, they’ll fea­ture anoth­er beloved show–Vene­ta, OR (6/27/72). Below, you can hear iso­lat­ed tracks of Phil’s bass work on “Bertha” and “Chi­na Cat Sun­flower/I Know You Rid­er.” (Click the links in the pri­or sen­tence to hear Lesh and the band per­form­ing the songs together–so you can hear how the bass ties in.) Trained in free jazz and avant-garde clas­si­cal music, Lesh infused rock with the influ­ences of Coltrane, Min­gus, and Stravinsky–not to men­tion oth­ers. And, with that, the bass was nev­er the same.

For any­one want­i­ng to get fur­ther into the Phil Zone, read his excel­lent mem­oir Search­ing for the Sound: My Life with the Grate­ful Dead.

Bertha

Chi­na Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rid­er

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

The Grate­ful Dead Pays Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in a 1982 Con­cert: Hear “Raven Space”

When the Grate­ful Dead Played at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

 

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Hear 2.5 Hours of the Classical Music in Haruki Murakami’s Novels: Liszt, Beethoven, Janáček, and More

Haru­ki Murakami’s hit nov­el 1Q84 fea­tures a mem­o­rable scene in a taxi­cab on a grid­locked free­way whose radio is play­ing Leoš Janáček’s Sin­foni­et­ta. “It is, as the book sug­gests, tru­ly the worst pos­si­ble music for a traf­fic jam,” writes Sam Ander­son in a New York Times Mag­a­zine pro­file of the nov­el­ist: “busy, upbeat, dra­mat­ic — like five nor­mal songs fight­ing for suprema­cy inside an emp­ty paint can.” Muraka­mi tells Ander­son that he “chose the Sin­foni­et­ta because that is not a pop­u­lar music at all. But after I pub­lished this book, the music became pop­u­lar in this coun­try… Mr. Sei­ji Oza­wa thanked me. His record has sold well.”

In addi­tion to being a world-famous con­duc­tor, the late Oza­wa was also, as it hap­pens, a per­son­al friend of Murakami’s; the two even pub­lished a book, Absolute­ly on Music, that tran­scribes a series of their con­ver­sa­tions about the for­mer’s voca­tion and the lat­ter’s avo­ca­tion, a dis­tinc­tion with an unclear bound­ary in Murakami’s case.

“I have lots of friends who love music, but Haru­ki takes it way beyond the bounds of san­i­ty,” writes Oza­wa, and indeed, Muraka­mi has always made music a part of his work, both in his process of cre­at­ing it and in its very con­tent. His books offer numer­ous ref­er­ences to West­ern pop (espe­cial­ly of the nine­teen-six­ties), jazz, and also clas­si­cal record­ings — fif­teen of which you can hear in the video from NTS radio above.

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured NTS, the Lon­don-based online radio sta­tion known for its deep dives on themes from spir­i­tu­al jazz to Hunter S. Thomp­son, for its “Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day” broad­cast of music from his nov­els. Open­ing with Le mal du pays from Franz Liszt’s Années de pèleri­nage, the NTS Guide to Clas­si­cal Music from Muraka­mi Nov­els con­tin­ues on to “Vogel als Prophet” from Robert Schu­man­n’s Wald­szenen, and there­after includes  Beethoven’s Sym­pho­ny No. 7 In A Major, Mendelssohn’s Cleve­land Quar­tet, Wag­n­er’s Der Fliegende Hol­län­der, and much else besides. You may not be able to recall where you’ve seen all of these pieces men­tioned in Murakami’s work right away, but you’ll sure­ly rec­og­nize the Sin­foni­et­ta the moment it comes along.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

A 26-Hour Playlist Fea­tur­ing Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Lat­est Nov­el, Killing Com­menda­tore

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Day: Stream Sev­en Hours of Mix­es Col­lect­ing All the Jazz, Clas­si­cal & Clas­sic Amer­i­can Pop Music from His Nov­els

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

B.B. King Changes a Broken Guitar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, and Doesn’t Miss a Beat (1985)

The scene is Farm Aid, 1985, attend­ed by a crowd of 80,000 peo­ple. The song is “How Blue Can You Get.” And the key moment comes at the 3:10 mark, when the blues leg­end B.B. King breaks a gui­tar string, then man­ages to replace it before the song fin­ish­es min­utes lat­er. All the while, he keeps the song going, nev­er miss­ing a beat and singing the blues. Enjoy.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Plays Live at Sing Sing Prison in One of His Great­est Per­for­mances (1972)

The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Elec­tric Live Per­for­mances

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

B.B. King Plays “The Thrill is Gone” with Slash, Ron Wood & Oth­er Leg­ends

 

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The Night When Luciano Pavarotti & James Brown Sang “It’s a Man’s World” Together (2002)

Luciano Pavarot­ti and James Brown are remem­bered as larg­er-than-life per­form­ers with an almost myth­i­cal-seem­ing pres­ence and dis­tinc­tive­ness. But it was­n’t so very long ago that both of them were active — and even active onstage togeth­er. In the video above, the King of the High Cs and the God­fa­ther of Soul get togeth­er on “It’s a Man’s World” in 2002. It hap­pened at the penul­ti­mate Pavarot­ti & Friends con­cert, one of a series of year­ly ben­e­fit shows that ran between 1992 and 2003, and also fea­tured the likes of Andrea Bocel­li, Grace Jones, Sting, and Lou Reed.

“It’s a remark­able per­for­mance on so many lev­els,” writes Tom Tei­cholz at Forbes.com. “James Brown is in top form, his voice strong and pure. He com­mands the stage, and he dom­i­nates — he is in every sense an equal to Pavarot­ti, who sings in Ital­ian with great sub­tle­ty, finesse, and emo­tion. The video is filled with moments of grace — such as when Brown, with a mag­is­te­r­i­al wave of his arm cedes the stage to Pavarot­ti to sing his solo, or when Brown says ‘my Bible says Noah made the Ark’ as if it was tru­ly HIS Bible.”

What’s more, this is hard­ly the James Brown only slight­ly exag­ger­at­ed by Eddie Mur­phy in those Sat­ur­day Night Live hot tub sketch­es a cou­ple of decades ear­li­er. “Brown’s per­for­mance is not about his staged the­atrics, not about his danc­ing, not even real­ly about Brown’s trade­mark grunts and growls,” Tei­cholz writes. “This is about singing and get­ting the song across,” a mis­sion cer­tain­ly not hin­dered by the kind of of orches­tral back­ing they have. “It’s a Man’s World” might seem like the kind of song you “could­n’t sing today,” at least if you take its title at face val­ue. But in any case, how many singers today would want to be sub­ject to com­par­i­son with this par­tic­u­lar ren­di­tion if they did so?

Relat­ed con­tent:

Pavarot­ti Sings with Lou Reed, Sting, James Brown and Oth­er Friends

Aretha Franklin Takes Over for an Ail­ing Luciano Pavarot­ti & Sings Puccini’s “Nes­sun Dor­ma” at the Gram­mys (1998)

Rare Video Cap­tures 29-Year-Old Luciano Pavarot­ti in One of His Ear­li­est Record­ed Per­for­mances (1964)

Two Leg­ends: Weird Al Yankovic “Inter­views” James Brown (1986)

The Best Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

Is Opera Part of Pop Cul­ture? Pret­ty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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