Consumer Guide Album

Arlo Guthrie: Alice's Restaurant [Reprise, 1967]
The only sin of the title tale is kindness, but even in that, Arlo presents a fetching argument for hippie unsentimentality--for he's also funny, sly, intensely moral, and quite unmoralistic. The six tunes on the other side aren't bad as tunes, but they were recorded before Arlo learned how to sing. One-sided masterpiece. B−