Mmmmm...broccoli...

I just learned that for the last chunk of the third chorus of Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' is:

"You're a vegetable, you're a vegetable.

Still they hate you, you're a vegetable.

You're just a buffet, you're a vegetable.

They eat off of you, you're a vegetable."

Wow.

Alice?! Who the hell is Alice?

There is a Thanksgiving tradition that is far more interesting than bird meat and mashed potatoes.  One I hadn't learned of until way too late.  Every Thanksgiving day, Arlo Guthrie's musical monologue Alice's Restaurant Massacree (1967) is played on the radio.  Probably not on all stations, as I can't see the local pop station that plays LMFAO's I'm Sexy and I Know It or anything by Justin Beiber also playing music from more than 10 years ago (though they do seem to be stuck on Eminem's Lose Yourself lately).  For those who feel like they've heard the Guthrie name somewhere before, Arlo is Woody Guthrie's son.  Yes, that Woody Guthrie.

Alice's Restaurant is a song-story based on true events.  It is about, as Arlo tells us from the start, Alice and her restaurant.  The catchy refrain, accompanied by a lone ragtime guitar, draws you in and  you are eventually encouraged to sing along, with feeling (and four-part harmony). After the business of establishing a legit song is taken care of, the monologue continues over the guitar accompaniment.

Launching into the song about Alice, Arlo describes an instance of littering.  He and a friend had been visiting Alice, who lived in an old church that had been turned into a house, and noticed that she had quite a bit of garbage piling up.  Being the kind gentlemen they were, they decided to collect the garbage and haul it away to the dump.  The dump was closed on Thanksgiving Day, so the fellows drive away, with tears in their eyes, to find another place to put the garbage.  The garbage is dumped over a cliff, on top of another pile of garbage, because "one big pile is better than two little piles."  He is subsequently arrested for littering.

Arlo sings the rest of the tune in a way that can't be beat, so I'll let him do that, but the saga rounds in on itself as he relates a second story about the military draft.  After being "inspected, injected, detected, infected, neglected, and selected" he is interviewed about any run-ins with the law where he relates to the sergeant his litterbug tale.  The song does a good job of pointing out that no matter how inconsequential the crime, anyone convicted of breaking the law could make the offender ineligible for the Vietnam War draft.  Oh, the irony.

Join me now, in four-part harmony and feeling:

 You can have anything you want
At Alice's Restaurant (excepting Alice)
You can have anything you want
At Alice's Restaurant.
Walk right in, it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can have anything you want
At Alice's Restaurant!

Humdingers

Several of my oft-visited websites are getting into the Thanksgiving Day spirit (the Thanksgiving holiday in itself is ultimately a slaughter sacrifice of an innocent bird followed by the consumption of way too many calories followed by sitting around on the couch watching an equally non-sensical sporting match all the while trying to tolerate family members you see perhaps twice a year who insist on repeatedly asking you questions like "well why aren't you married yet?").  One site offered not one, but TWO videos of animated turkeys doing something called "dubstep," and also included an MGM cartoon from 1940 called Tom Turkey & his Harmonica Humdingers.  These old cartoons always have the most interesting soundtracks.

This cartoon is about a turkey, let's call him Tom.  Not only is Tom wearing clothes (looking quite snazzy in a green suit and pork-pie hat) he's walking around a settlement run completely by barnyard birds who all, as will be seen, have great skill with musical instruments. I take some issue with this because birds lack lips with which to make a proper seal on a harmonica (or on a whistle, an instrument that pops up later) to produce a good sound, but no one asked me. Okay, so Tom is strolling around playing his harmonica, which I think is a chromatic harp because the music in the cartoon obviously changes keys.  A chromatic harmonica is much larger than a standard diatonic harmonica because there are literally more notes.  Chromatic harmonicas work the same way as a diatonic (that means organized by a scale, in this case a major scale), but they are larger and have a button on one side to shift a mechanism to close off certain holes.  In this way, the player can play in many keys, instead of just one.

Diatonic harmonicas have reeds that are tuned to produce a specific pitch when blown in and drawn out.  In other words, when you blow into a hole on a harmonica one pitch is produced, but when you suck the air back in, the reed produces a different note.

Anyway, Tom is playing his chromatic harp (harp is another term for harmonica) causing a bit of a stir to the other birds, and he wanders into a general store.  It isn't clear whether he knows the manager of this establishment, or even if harmonica playing is generally permitted in the store, but Tom walks (or rather boogies) right in playing a plucky version of Turkey in the Straw, which I think is a bit obvious, not to mention stereotypical, but what do I know about the inter-ornithological social and psychological workings of a town full of birds?  He manages to somehow offend a lady turkey on his way into the store.  It isn't made clear whether he knows the lady turkey or not.

The store is armed with a policebird, who is clearly more interested in shoplifting crackers than protecting the store from unseemly harmonica players.  I am tempted to play the "obvious" card again, but I can't tell for sure if the police bird is a parrot.  If he is, he is not very colorful or vocal, but that may be why he's working security in a quiet agricultural town.

Tom has a seat by the stove, announces his presence and dives into a spirited rendition of Darktown Strutters Ball.  The intro rouses the bird hanging around the storefront, who pulls out his own harmonica and joins right in.  Two birds playing checkers (loitering in a place of business, no doubt) hear the tune and leave their game to add some harmony.  Tom shows off his improvisation skills, then the ensemble collectively push the tempo, and throw in some super choreography.  The ruckus attracts the attention of an elderly gentlebird making his way past the store.  Harmonica music must have restorative properties, because he throws off his cane and ear-horn (the better to hear you with, my dear) and leaps into the store, armed with a whistle.  Entering the fray of harmonicas, the old gent is literally whistling Dixie.  The tune takes over the harmonica-ists (is that right?) and they fall in, marching along to Dixie.

The marching starts to shake apart the building, much like military armies can do if they don't break step while crossing a bridge.  The shop-owner only now shows any concern for the musical chaos that is taking place in his store.  And who could blame him?  His livelihood (and a lot of costly inventory) is about to get the earthquake treatment by a bunch of rowdy chickens!  He implores the policebird for some help, but as before, the policebird is too concerned with eating the inventory instead of protecting it.  Hopefully, his behaviour is reported to his superiors.

Of course, the musicians completely destroy the store (insert musicians destroying hotel rooms joke), with no hindrance from the police bird (insert lazy, donut-eating cop joke).  Out of the wreckage, Tom rises up, calling his fellows back to play.  The music used here is from a tragic opera called Lucia de Lammermoor by Gaetono Donizetti, written in 1835.  The title, Chi Mi Frena in Tal Momento, translates as "what restrains me in such a moment?"  Nothing, apparently.

Segueing into an unapologetic While Strolling Through the Park One Day, Tom moseys away, satisfied with creating such a terrible mess, singing the tune this time (he should stick to the harmonica) when he passes a mannequin in the shop's window.  The mannequin is not birdlike, but a lovely female human figure in a charming purple dress.  Tom grabs the gal and begins dancing to a harmonica band accompaniment. 

The shopkeeper is at his wit's end, trying to get the policebird to do something about all the unruly behavior, when he finally decides to take matters into his own claws.  Storming over to the shop window mannequin-Turkey dance party, the shopkeeper begs Tom to take some responsibility.  I really feel for the guy, he's so upset.  His shop and inventory is ruined, and in this economic climate, that kind of devastation can be really hard to come back from (unless he has some really good insurance coverage).

Walking by the store, again it seems, is the lady turkey that Tom had managed to offend in some way before he did his bull-in-a-china-shop impersonation.  Maybe Lady Turkey is Tom's girlfriend or wife; it's difficult to know for sure because Lady Turkey's character development in this saga is seriously lacking.  Anyway, she notices Tom's shadow dancing with the mannequin's shadow behind the shop window screen and is visibly unhappy about what looks like some disrespectful behavior.

The ruckus had alerted the significant females of the other harmonica-ists (really, is that right? It sounds wrong.) and they all storm into the shop, carrying various forms of benign weaponry (umbrella, rolling pin, frying pan) and take back their men.  As far as I could tell, the guys were really only guilty of property damage, but the gals may be angry because this will now lead to paperwork, visits from insurance people, and claims adjusters, and most likely the police force (if they stop eating crackers long enough to ask questions and make the necessary citations) and, possible, some jail-bird time.

The moral of the story: no harmonicas unless you have really good business insurance and some better-behaved friends.

P.S. humdinger is defined as a person, thing, action, or statement of remarkable excellence or effect. These birds were certainly some effectual humdingers.

Sparkle, sparkle!

Random factoid of the day.  I have a fondness for PBS programming, especially when it concerns music and the performing arts.  On a recent program about the history of Broadway music and theatre, there was a reference to Broadway as "The Great White Way." Why is it called that?  What's up with the nickname?

Like any good Zombie, I researched it.

Broadway is a 12 block stretch in New York City.  It is bound between W 41st and W 53rd streets.  Four theatres are on the street proper, with many other theatres are situated east or west of Broadway.  This is the current configuration.  Theatres have been in this area since 1810, and the parameters of this entertainment district have changed a bit over the decades.

Lost of things have changed since then, actually.  Electricity had a huge impact on the district, so much so that the area looked completely different by the turn of the century with the hundreds of lights and shining marquees surrounding the playhouses.  All of these lights and sparkling billboard displays inspired a journalistic nickname of the "Great White Way."

So now you know that it has nothing to do with a large aquatic predator or racial disparity.  On with the show!

The Man in Black

I am almost finished reading Johnny Cash's autobiography (written by Johnny Cash-with Patrick Carr).  It's a good read.  Autobiographies are fascinating to me because they help to push away notions about a person that is sometimes put on them by industry, fans or critics.  By that I mean: you think you know someone, but you are almost always wrong in some respect.

Mr. Cash had plenty of demons, which he addresses in his book.  His struggles with drug abuse and dealing with fame are fairly well-known (and this isn't his first book, Man in Black by Johnny Cash was published in 1975), as well as his TV show and public persona.  He is the Man in Black.  But he wasn't always in black.  When he wasn't on stage or in the public eye, he wore whatever he wanted.  Early in the autobiography, he addresses three big questions that he's asked most often, one of which is the man in black thing.  Much of the reason is explained in what you hear in his song Man in Black (written in 1971): he wears the black "for the poor and beaten down, livin' in the hopeless, hungry side of town," and "for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, but is there because he's a victim of the times."  He wore the black for "the sick and lonely old" and "the reckless whose bad trip left them cold."  He maintained these sentiments right up until his death in 2003.

But the other reason he wore the black comes from when he started performing, way back before the recording and record deals and touring and fame.  He was in a band (a trio with Marshall Grant and Luther Perkins) and they were deciding what they should wear for their first show.  All the men had a black shirt and blue jeans, so that became the uniform of sorts.

See? You think you know someone and it turns out you know nothing.  But you can always learn.