This song is about Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the
restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant,
Alice is just the name of the owner of the restaurant, and that's why I call the song Alice's Restaurant.

You can't get peppermint ice cream at Alice's Restaurant
You can't get peppermint ice cream at Alice's Restaurant
Had to go the Baskin Robbins Store,
Lucky for me it's right next door, 'cause
You can't get peppermint ice cream Alice's Restaurant

Now it all started three Aprils ago, that was, - three years ago in
April, when a local city official who didn't like me decided he didn't want me running for mayor, and he and his friends on the city council got together and had my name taken off the ballot. And havin' all them friends on the city council like that, he got by with a lot of shady conduct and often took advantage of those friendships by generally making an ass of himself. And since he did what he did, the guy who got elected mayor decided to put him on the city council. And all the garbage they did never got investigated for a long time.

So I drove by his house, and decided to flash an obscene gesture, and I rolled out my window and asked since when are Klansmen allowed to serve on the city council, when they really belong in the city dump.
And he and his wife answered back with a half a ton of garbage that I could not understand, but when they both came at me with shovels, rakes and other implements of destruction, I understood that they did not want me to remain in the vicinity and so I promptly hit the gas and drove off.

When I got home, I posted a big sign and a banner across the
driveway saying, "City Hall Sucks." And I had never heard of a Klansman being allowed on the city council before, and with tears in their eyes people drove by right before sunset and wondered how the new mayor could get by with putting such garbage on the city council.

So I decided to post another sign, and I looked for a good place to post it where there would be lots of traffic, and didn't find one. Until I came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was a fifteen foot landfill and in the middle of the landfill there was a cross burning going on. And I decided that was not a good thing, and that two Klan outposts were even worse than one Klan outpost, so I forgot about the sign and ran at the cross-burners with my vehicle and the shovels, rakes and implements of destruction the newly appointed alderman had thrown at it. And the Klansmen ran off and in no time all the burning crosses were extinguished, taken down, and left in the front yard of the still-angry newly appointed alderman with a note attached to the crosses that said, "I don't like your kind."

That's what I did, and I drove back to the house, had an Easter
dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when I got a phone call from officer Anderson. He said, "Mr. McVey, we found your name on an note attached to a burnt cross that was left in your Alderman's front yard, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Anderson, I cannot tell a lie, I put that note on that cross and left it out there for that racist piece of garbage."

After speaking to Officer Anderson for about fourty-five minutes on the telephone we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and he said that I had to go down and remove the burnt crosses, and also had to go down and speak to him at the police officer's station. So I got in my red S-10 pickup with the alderman's shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the police officer's station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Officer Anderson coulda done at the police officer's station, and the first was he could have admitted my actions were protected by the First Amendment, which wasn't very likely, and I didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have chewed me out and told me never to be see driving by the alderman's house again, which is what I expected, but when I got to the police officer's station there was a third possibility that I hadn't even counted upon, and I was immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Mike," because his first name was Mike, you know, and I said to Mike Anderson, "I don't think I can remove the burnt crosses with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what I did, got in the back of the patrol car and Officer Anderson drove to the quote "Scene of the Crime" unquote. I want tell you about the town of Sycamore, Illnois, where this happened here, they got about a dozen stoplights, ten police officers, and five police cars, but when we got to the "Scene of the Crime" there were twelve police officers and eight police cars, this being the biggest crime of the last hundred years, and all the local newspapers wanted to run a story about it.

And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station.
They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, DNA samples of the burnt crosses, and they took 27 digital color computer photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against me. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner, the southwest corner, the three burnt crosses, the note, and that's not to mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, I went back to the jail. Officer Anderson said he was going to put me in the cell. Said, "Mr. McVey, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt." And I said, "Mike, I can understand you wanting my wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?" And he said, "Mr. McVey, we don't want any hangings." I said, "Mike, did you think I was going to hang myself for disorderly conduct?"

Officer Anderson said he was making sure, and Anderson sure was, cause he confiscated my fingernail clippers so I couldn't slit myself on the wrist and bleed to death, and he took away my shoestrings so I couldn't bend the bars, tie the shoestrings together, hang the shoestrings out the window, climb down the shoestrings and have an escape. Officer Anderson was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice (remember Alice? This is a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Officer Anderson on the side, bailed me out of jail, and we went back to the restaurant, and Alice and I had a another Easter dinner that couldn't be beat, and we didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.

We walked in, sat down, Officer Anderson came in with the 27 digital color computer pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and sat down. Man came in, said, "All rise." We all stood up, and Anderson stood up with the 27 digital colour computer pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Anderson looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the 27 digital colour computer pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog.

And then at 27 digital colour computer pictures with circles
and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry,
'cause Anderson came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn't going to look at the 27 digital colour computer pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against me. And I was fined $100 and had to take back the burnt crosses in the rain, but that's not what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about getting a job.

They got a building up in Northbrook, it's the Aon training school,
where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected. I went down to file my application one
day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. 'Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from small-town Illinois, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from small-town Illinois, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I walked in and sat down and they gave
me a piece of paper, said, "See the phsychiatrist, room 204."

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill some Klansmen. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, Klansmen shot, mangled, mutilated, castrated, and eat their dead burnt bodies. I mean kill the Klan, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the manager came over, asked us what the hell was going on, and I told him how I wanted to kill every member of the Ku Klux Klan, and he pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections,
detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there, and I walked up and said, "What do you want?" He said, "Mr. McVey, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the alderman and the burnt crosses, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the words that were ... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Mr. McVey, did you ever go to court?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the 27 digital colour computer pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Mr. McVey, I want you to go sit down on that bench that says George W. NOW!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there was George W's picture there on the wall above the bench where they put you if you may not be moral enough to work there after committing your particular crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. There were mother rapers. Kidnappers. Kid rapers! Kid rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And
they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest kid raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?"

I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $100 and take away the burnt crosses." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, "Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench
there, and gave me some dirty looks and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And harrassing a public official." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, kidnapping, all kinds of horrid things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was drinking sodas and all kinds of things, until the Supervisor came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said.

"Gentlemen, this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say", and he talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the form with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:

("MR. McVEY, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?")

I went over to the supervisor, said, "Boss, you got a lot a damn nerve to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the George W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough to work for a company that outsources workers to China, uses their prisoners for free labor, and runs sweatshops in Mexico after flipping off my alderman." He looked at me and said, "Mr. McVey, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna download your criminal history and post it on our website."

And friends, somewhere on the Internet, posted on some stupid company's website, is a detailed description of my criminal record. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the employment office wherever you are, just walk in say "Boss, You can't get peppermint ice cream, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out. You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really crazy and by law
they have to take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both gay and by law they have take both of them.

And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization! And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant We Want Peppermint Ice Cream Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar. With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can't get peppermint ice cream at Alice's Restaurant
You can't get peppermint ice cream at Alice's Restaurant
Had to go the Baskin Robbins Store,
Lucky for me it's right next door, 'cause
You can't get peppermint ice cream at Alice's Restaurant

That was horrible. If you want to end discrimination and stuff you got to sing loud. I've been si