Some Guy in a Red Suit

Song 282: For this week’s playlist track, you can hear The Pause of Mr. Claus by Arlo Guthrie, who also wrote the song. The live cut that appears on the album Arlo includes a hilarious 6-minute-long spoken introduction preceding the song itself, which lasts about 2 minutes. When I posted the first Arlo track on the playlist 10 weeks ago (Song 272: Running Down the Road) I mentioned that I probably should have included him much sooner, but that I would make up for the oversight by posting another Arlo cut shortly, and with the holiday coming up this week, this one seemed like a good way for the playlist to observe the season. As I mentioned in the post for Running Down the Road, my appreciation of Arlo’s music took a little time to develop, but once I got there, his records were spinning on my turntable quite often, and the Arlo disc always made me laugh, long after I’d gotten to know the jokes very well. I played that LP so often, in fact, that without trying, I memorized the 6-minute spoken introduction on this track, and could recite it by heart, without hesitation. While the sheer absurdity of lines like “Santa Claus has a red suit, he’s a communist” never fail to entertain, in this modern era when some fool might throw a brick through the window of a book store named after the mythical Greek goddess Isis because that fool believes the store has some connection with a terrorist army in the Middle East, the parody actually lands much closer to reality that I would have guessed 4 decades ago, when I was first enjoying this cut. Sadly, the repeated question “Why do police guys beat on peace guys?” still needs to be asked, and could even be updated with timely references to pepper spray, but around this holiday, the phrase “peace on earth” comes along more often than it does in other seasons, and as it does, this song may also put a smile on some faces. Watch out for that Santa Clause guy, though, because, after all, “What’s in the pipe that he’s smoking?”