ARLO AFTER 40 YEARS

We exchanged our tickets for La Bohème at the Metropolitan Opera, so we could see Arlo Guthrie at Carnegie Hall last night. It's his Alice's Restaurant Massacree 40th Anniversary Tour. 40 years!

Apparently he has been doing Thanksgiving weekend concerts at Carnegie Hall for many years. I've never been all that much into folk music, so I was unaware. My wife saw an ad, and decided she wanted to try something different from our usual classical music. So a couple of weeks ago when we were at Carnegie Hall for something else we stopped and got tickets. All that was left were balcony seats. I'm not sure the little plane we flew on the day before got as far off the ground as these seats--but with binoculars it was fine. The sound system was quite good, even up there.

The concert was really a family affair. It started with one of Arlo's daughters, Sarah Lee Guthrie and her husband, Johnny Irion. They were OK. They were joined for one song by The Mammals, who later did their own set. I'm not sure their combination blue grass/rock and roll sound really works. The drums really seemed out of place, even with the shortish drumsticks that were used.

After the intermission Arlo came out, backed by his son Abe on keyboard, and Gordon Titcomb on a variety of instruments, but mostly on pedal steel guitar. Arlo is just as much a storyteller as a singer, and his introductions were every bit as entertaining as his songs. He described how Bob Dylan showed up on the Guthrie doorstep when Arlo was 13, before doing an excellent rendition of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." "House of the Rising Sun" and "Coming Into Los Angeles" followed. Titcomb did a song from his new album.

Eventually he got to "Alice's Restaurant," his 15 minute song/story of his getting arrested for illegally dumping garbage he had cleaned up from Alice's home, and his subsequent draft physical (yes, they are connected). Curiously, last summer I was in that home, a former church that Arlo later bought and which is now the Guthrie Center. I heard an Oscar Brand concert there, sitting right in the room where the garbage had been stored. Anyhow, Arlo sang/spoke it, with only slight updating from the recorded version, and it eventually turned into a sing-along. Most of the audience knew every word already.

All the other musicians joined him for the last few numbers, including "This Land is Your Land"--where they brought out all of the musicians' children to join in. Arlo's remaining big hit, "City of New Orleans," was done with him playing the piano.

Arlo Guthrie's music is not particularly challenging--the contrast with the Dylan song was jarring. He certainly can sing heavier songs (his rendition of "Mr. Tambourine Man" was the best I've ever heard, including Dylan's own), but he can't write them--at least judging from the ones he sang in this concert. It was a nice concert, all in all, but I'm not sure we'll be making this an annual event.