Arlo and Nelson

Last night I went to see Arlo Guthrie play at Nelson A. Rockefeller Park in Lower Manhattan. That's the same Arlo Guthrie, who as a wide-eyed stoned kid sang "Coming into Los Angeles... Don't search my bags if you please Mr Customs Man..." in the Woodstock movie, the same Arlo Guthrie who sang "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant", even though it was never a song about Alice or even a restaurant, it was about oppressive cops and dodging the draft. Anyway Arlo is still a fun performer and has doggedly stuck to his peacenik principals over the years, however I could not get over the location of the concert.

Nelson A. Rockefeller was a former governor of New York State who designed some of the harshest anti-drug laws in the country. Basically, if it was upto Nelson, Arlo would have spent the last 25 years breaking rocks at Attica Prison. You can read more about the Rockefeller drug laws here. Incidentally he was also responsible for the massacre at Attica prison in which 42 people died in 1973 so maybe Arlo wouldn't still be breaking rocks....

Anyway, my favorite reason to name a park after old Nelson is that he made it to be Vice-President of the United States and also that he died of a heart-attack while shagging someone who wasn't his wife.

There's hope for Dick Cheney yet. I hope it's a guy he's fuckin.............

Nelson A. Rockefeller salutes Arlo Guthrie