oddly enough, my girlfriend was playing his music one day and i asked her what it was. she said her dad was a big fan and listened to "Alices' Resturant on every Thanksgiving. as a "rock guy" im not usually interested in folk music, but i immediately fell in love with his

As a kid , the local country station would play 'City of New Orleans'.
This was before "New Country" (argh-choke) it was a station that played "True" country late 70's early 80's.

I always liked that tune, and when I saw the Woodstock movie I thought Arlo was a real character!
Late one night , Alices Restaurant came on the CBC.
I was hooked ever since.

I am new to the forums, so I thought this would be a good way to bump this thread.

I discovered Arlo after listening to a lot of Woody Guthrie in elementary school music classes. Growing up in Washington State, I heard several of the songs from the Columbia River Collection, which included "Roll on Columbia Roll On" which is now the Washington State "FolkSong" -- it was the state song when I was growing up.

With my mom's family being descended from Okies who became migrant farmers in Eastern Washington, I also learned to appreciate deeply the Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger songs about the dust-bowl.

Finally, in high school I was roaming around the local library and found the movie "Alice's Restaurant," I picked it up because of the Guthrie name and I watched it and loved it. I have been a huge fan ever since.

I have introduced my 9 and 11-year old sons to folk music, the younger one loves the more humourous songs, the older loves all of Woody, Pete, and Arlo's work, from the dust-bowl and depression era songs, to songs like "Plane wreck at Los Gatos," and of course the humourous stuff like "The Motorcycle Song" and "Henry, my Son"

Santa will be bring tickets to the Alanta show on 18 Feb for my older sone and I.

It was in 1990. I was 18 at the time. My mother rented the Woodstock video and I sat and watched it with her. Her stories of being a hippie in the 60's fascinated me and I fell in love with the lifestyle upon watching all of these beautiful people being so free and giving so much love.

I was instantly impressed with Ritchie Havens, though I'd never heard music like that before, but when Arlo came on I became speechless. Something about him moved me. Something I can't really explain. My mother told me about Alices Resteraunt and when I saw it I knew he was special.

I started recieving The Rolling Blunder Review and saw him in concert several years later when he performed at the Firefly Festival in South Bend Indiana.

My favorite Arlo song is I'm Going Home.

Dreamx, I agree, he is special. Welcome to ArloNet.

I guess I should also put up my story so far.

I was also 18 at the time, and I had been considered by a everyone that I met as a hippie even though I hadn't ever thought of myself like that. So I bought the Woodstock DVD's and watched them. It was from then on that I knew why people called me a hippie.

I saw so many amazing performers playing and singing, and although I had been listening to 60's n 70's music for a while, I had never heard of so many of these performers. I sat there in awe of their musical skill in comparison to most performers these days. The next day I went out and tried to find as many old records and recordings of all these performers. That was my first actual realisation of the folk genre. Before that I was one of the mixed up kids listening to whatever bands the media told me, all kinds of metal and electronic stuff.

When I heard Richie Havens playing so simply and truly and meaning what he sang I knew that I would no longer be able to listen to anything that didn't have some meaning or purpose behind the song. This music was always greater than the sum of the whole. I always thought that acoustic instruments were the way music was supposed to be played so I noted which performers were on acoustic and went out trying to find all that I could about them. It was then that I truly discovered Arlo, a sound that I had been looking for for so long. I looked through my LP's and I had his greatest hits amongst them. I put it on and couldn't believe what I was hearing. Since then I had been trying to find more recordings of as much folk as I could but it was all to no avail. I eventually started to buy CD's and then the only real folk I could find was Woody and Seeger. This was my first introduction to traditional folk, besides the few Aussie songs I knew as a kid.

3 years down the track I'm still in love with all these performers. I still spend so much time looking for more musicians considered folk and trying to find new songs. In this day and age I think its getting harder to track this stuff down unless your in the know which I most certainly am not. I continually find myself erring towards traditional, especially those from old England and Scottland/ Ireland. Although I am very Australian I still know more American folk tunes than I do of my own country this has always dissapointed me but when it sounds so good and means something I always find it hard to ignore.

I'm just glad I found Arlo.

I was 17 years old in 1969. Just graduated high school. Things were looking pretty bad for me because I am a Native American. The draft was going to get me when I turned 18 and would send me into the army to fight in Viet Nam. I figured the safest place to be, if I had to be in combat at all, was right in the middle of a marine corps rifle squad, so I enlisted for three years.
I never went to Viet Nam. Never fired a shot at anybody and, more importantly, was never shot at by anyone. The only good thing I got out of my three year hitch in the marine corps was an introduction to Alice's Restaurant just right after boot camp. Some guy in the barracks had one of Arlo's albums and played it. Arlo had a lot of marines laughing with him.

Oh I would have been about 7 or 8 (I'm just about to be 20 now), and our family friend who took in any and every animal that she found that was abandoned had just taken in a blind dog and named her Alice. My parent's asked her where she got the name from, and she said quite shocked "It's from the song have you ever heard it." From there she made a cassette tape for us, and I fell in love with-it especially Alice's Restaurant, but being an 8 year old my attention span wasn't that long so I thought it was just a funny song.

But as I grew older, following the things that pre-teens tend to do, I had almost forgot about Arlo. Then one day about 3 years ago now I was going through our old cassette tapes and found the tape that our friend had made for us. Listened to it, through the old warping from all the play it got all those years ago, and I finally understood the song. Then a few days later we went down to Perry Flordia to visit my grandmother for Thanksgiving, and played it for her (amazingly she had never heard of Arlo).

Then that all brings me to Thanksgiving day this year when I got word that Ridin' on the City of New Orleans was coming through Memphis, this being the first thing I saw when I woke up I ran out and just enthusiastically told my family about the news and my mom got me a ticket as an early Christmas present, one that definitely won't be forgotten..... and now after the Holliday season is over, and I get a paycheck with some extra money I plan on getting every Arlo CD that my work (Borders) has and then going out and looking for more, and also seeing if the local used record stores have any vinyl's as well.

Welcome to the site! It is sooo muich fun getting into Arlo. Thanks for 17 yrs of my life Arlo!

Actually, Arlo and I go back over 4 decades. Hey, I went to my 1st Arlo show at Glassboro College way back in 1978. Now-a-days we get to an Alro show at least once a year, usually at the Ocean City, NJ Music Pier during the summer. That reminds me of a couple of years ago when Arlo played a show in Williamstown, NJ. Since I live in Williamstown I figured, like Arlo would say; 'We better go to this show because it may be the only time he comes to our home town. Been right so far'.

Okay, back to the original reason for this post.

Yes, it was around 1965 when my cousin first taught me how to play a few chords on a guitar. Well, at the time, during the mid sixties, if you were learning how to play a guitar then you probably were attempting to play folk songs. Hey, even the rock groups during the mid sixties were taking folk songs and turning them into popular hits.

Most folk songs, like a lot of the music from those days contained basic chords which made them pretty easy to play. During those early years I began to get hooked on playing and singing songs by Dylan, Donovan, Simon & Garfunkel, the Beatles and of course it wasn't long before I started playing Arlo's music too.

I still try to play my guitar at least once a day. I especially get into playing Arlo's music around Thanksgiving. Of course, we also have the Alice's Restaurant movie which we always watch a few days before Thanksgiving too.

Hi, Mirrorfinish... I was at that Williamstown show. Took me over 4 hours to drive there from Reading, PA.... every single road was jammed cos nobody knows how to drive in rain! Been to 3 OC shows too! We've probably met at some point.

HI Terrie,

Thanks for the reply. Those Ocean City shows are the best. It's just such a great place to see Arlo. It's always good to get to talk with Arlo a bit after the show.

On Thanksgiving(this year actualy),we were heading to my Uncle's house and I was listening to the local classic rock station. And "Alice's resturant" came on. So a few days ago,I went and downloaded some more songs. And the rest,as they say,is history.

Went with my boyfriend to see the movie "Woodstock" in 1970. There was this boyish, lanky kid who said, "The New York State Thruway's closed, man!". The only one in the film who made an observation of the current situation.

We all were about the same age back then, and I knew I liked this guy. And then there was the song, "Coming Into Los Angeles" that was kinda existential as well as psychedelic-like.

I definitely like how this guy thinks.

The rest is internet and Church history.

*hi!*

Since I'm a newbie, I figured this was the best place to start. I first heard about Arlo and Alice's Restaurant in high school. I was a Junior when I took American history, and our teacher told us when we were talking about the Vietnam War (and Woodstock!) that he was going to bring in this record for us to listen to, because it was relevant to the time. He told us that every year he brought the album in there was usually *someone* in his class that really enjoyed it. Of course, I was the music geek--my original favorite is Elton John-- so I really got into it. I have my copy of Alice's Restaurant that I picked up a little later, and just yesterday I picked up the Best of... Album. All I can say is..wow...

I sitll keep in touch with that teacher--I've stopped back at the school a couple of times to show him my Arlo sitings along the way...from an Alice's Restaurant pic in California, to actually getting my picture taken with the man himself when he played at Epcot (disney).

Quick question if you don't mind the hijack...why was Coming into Los Angeles banned on radio? Was it a content thing?

Oh yeah...my current favorites are City of New Orleans, Highway in the Wind, and I'm going Home. Chilling of the Evening is pretty good too

-Teri Hi-C-