Today is the birthday of the awesome Arlo Guthrie (b. 1947). The son of Woody, friend of Bob Dylan, he had a few memorable hits of his own, the most epic of which is the unspeakably awesome “Alice’s Restaurant”(1967), which I used as a partial model for my own “Ballad of Jasper Jaxon“. If you have 18+ minutes to listen to it, you absolutely should! It”l take you on a lot of twists and turns, peaks and valleys! It was also turned into a feature film in 1969 by Arthur Penn, then at the peak of his powers. This, too, is an absolute must-see for every culturally literate American. And whatever you do, don’t litter in Massachusetts!
To find out more about the history of show business, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
And check out my new book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
