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"'''Alice's Restaurant Massacree'''", commonly known as "'''Alice's Restaurant'''", is a satirical [[talking blues]] song by singer-songwriter [[Arlo Guthrie]], released as the title track to his 1967 debut album ''[[Alice's Restaurant (album)|Alice's Restaurant]]''. The song is a deadpan protest against the [[Draft lottery (1969)|Vietnam War draft]], in the form of a comically exaggerated but largely true story from Guthrie's own life: while visiting acquaintances in [[Stockbridge, Massachusetts|Stockbridge]], Massachusetts, he is arrested and convicted of dumping trash illegally, which later endangers his suitability for the [[Conscription|military draft]]. The title refers to a restaurant owned by one of Guthrie's friends, artist [[Alice Brock]]
The song
== Characteristics ==
The song consists of a protracted spoken [[monologue]], with a constantly repeated fingerstyle [[Piedmont blues|Piedmont blues ragtime guitar
The track lasts 18 minutes and 34 seconds, occupying the entire A-side of the ''Alice's Restaurant'' album. Due to Guthrie's rambling and circuitous telling with unimportant details, it has been described as a [[shaggy dog story]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.chicagonow.com/booth-reviews/2010/11/song-of-the-day-alices-restaurant-massacree-by-arlo-guthrie/|title=Song Of The Day – "Alice's Restaurant Massacree" by Arlo Guthrie | Booth Reviews|author=Eric Berman|publisher=Chicagonow.com|access-date=2 June 2014}}</ref>{{dl|date=December 2022}} Guthrie refers to the incident as a "[[wiktionary:massacree|massacree]]", a colloquialism originating in the [[Ozark Mountains]]<ref name="mountain">{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.ecu.edu/ncfa/amfolk/mtnlang.html|title=Mountain Language|last=Blanton|first=Linda|date=1989|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Southern Culture|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050105213739/http://www.ecu.edu/ncfa/amfolk/mtnlang.html|archive-date=January 5, 2005|access-date=October 11, 2015}}</ref> that describes "an event so wildly and improbably and baroquely messed up that the results are almost impossible to believe". It is a corruption of the word ''[[wiktionary:massacre|massacre]]'', but carries a much lighter and more sarcastic connotation, rather than describing anything involving actual death.<ref name="ozeng">{{cite web|url=http://ozarque.livejournal.com/26331.html?nojs=1|title=Linguistics; Ozark English; "massacree"|date=October 3, 2004|access-date=October 11, 2015}}</ref>
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===Part One===
[[File:Alice Brock, 1969.jpg|thumb|right|[[Alice Brock]], the titular host of the Thanksgiving dinner who bailed Arlo and his friend out of jail]]
Guthrie recounts events that took place in 1965 (two years prior at the time of the original recording), when he and a friend spent [[Thanksgiving (United States)|Thanksgiving Day]] at a [[deconsecrated]] church on the outskirts of [[Stockbridge, Massachusetts]], which their friends Alice and Ray Brock had been using as a home. As a favor to them, Guthrie and the friend volunteered to take their large accumulation of garbage to the local dump in their [[Volkswagen Type 2|VW Microbus]], not realizing until they arrived there that the dump would be closed for the holiday. They eventually noticed another pile of trash that had previously been dumped off a cliff near a side road, and added theirs to the accumulation before returning to the church for Thanksgiving dinner. The next morning, the church received a phone call from the local policeman, [[William Obanhein|Officer Obie]], saying that an envelope in the garbage pile had been traced back to them. Guthrie, stating "[[Mason Locke Weems#Cherry-tree anecdote|I cannot tell a lie]]" and with tongue in cheek, confessed that he "put that envelope underneath" the garbage. He and his friend drove to the police station, expecting a verbal reprimand and to be required to clean up the garbage, but they were instead arrested, handcuffed, and taken to the scene of the crime. There, Obie and a crew of police officers from the surrounding areas collected extensive forensic evidence of the litter, including "twenty-seven [[Photo print sizes|8-by-10]] color glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was, to be used as evidence against us" amid a [[media circus]] of local media trying to get news stories on the littering. The young men were briefly jailed, with Obie taking drastic precautions to prevent Guthrie from escaping or committing suicide. After a few hours, Alice [[bail]]ed them out and held another Thanksgiving dinner.
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