Thoughts on an Arlo Guthrie Concert

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Friday night, my dearly beloved and I along with some friends saw Arlo Guthrie in concerto (for those born after 1975, I've included a Wikipedia link). He didn't play "Alice's Restaurant," but he played some new stuff that sounded mostly sad. As with all of us, he's getting older. I noticed he was getting out of breath and walking stiffly. Damn this not being twenty-five forever, you know? One of his stocks in trade is patter, sometimes in the middle of a song. He tells stories about playing at Woodstock, for example, which are pretty funny. At Woodstock, he thought he had time to indulge because he wasn't scheduled to play until the second day. All of a sudden, someone told him, "Arlo, you've got to play." "Play? I can't play. I can't stand." A new story he told was of watching the Superbowl (maybe or maybe not true) and seeing Lady Gaga perform "This Land is Your Land," a song his father the folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote and performed. He later saw her performance labeled "subversive." "Now folks, when 'This Land is Your Land' becomes subversive,' we're [the PG version] screwed." What made it more surprising is that he doesn't talk like that, at least not in public. And really the song, protest song that it is, is pretty innocuous. We sang it as kids in school. It speaks of inclusion, of sharing. When people start squawking about that, things are bad. Not everyone did. (Breitbart had the most hysterical article and one of the most sexy pics.) Some claimed she didn't go far enough. Ya just can't please folks, I guess.