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This week's Rock Garden Tour podcast features live sounds from the cab of Coach's combine. Tag along on a sonic adventure as he tells stories of harvests old, fingerless farm hands, and more. It's all right here on the Rock Garden Tour podcast. Keep it rural.
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Happy Birthday to the Rock Garden Tour. This week's podcast marks 52 in a row, in the spirit of the celebration we dipped into the historical archives. After you endure a few tracks of that, we think you'll enjoy our Thanksgiving show. It covers sex, and Puritans, and yams, and sweet potatoes, and haiku poetry, and rock & roll, and more. Enjoy a special edition of the Rock Garden Tour podcast, and as always keep it rural.
This week's Rock Garden Tour Podcast features less talk and more witty banter on the Yield Morphology Cultivar Assessment (YMCA for short). In addition, you'll hear some haiku poetry and a vintage clip from Lemmon, SD native Robert Schell, World Livestock Auctioneer Champion 1968. If you like the above image, you'll probably like this. Enjoy this week's podcast and keep it rural.
Driving today through that rough country just north and east of the Tavern Belt, I was witness to the mesmerizing harvest. Dusty combines, dump trucks filled with corn, and bovines methodically taking in the action. As a town kid, I’ve always romanticized this process; the back-breaking labor, faith in yourself and your tools, and a little gambler’s luck all coming together into this solemn process of machines across the horizon. But, as I was driving I looked closer, and I saw something that seemed maybe a little out of place: iPods.
At first glance this surprised me, but really it shouldn’t—I mean, sure farmers need a little musical giddy-up to help them get through the long, monotonous hours of scuttling over the crops. I’ve never farmed, but I do know the one time I was hired to do farm work (pressure washing pig barns), I packed an iPod with a carefully selected playlist along with my change of clothing, bed sheets, and Glade plug-ins.
It got me thinking: what would be the essential tunes on any farmer’s harvest playlist? When I was desperate to listen to anything that would help me stomach the sight of a couple football fields’ worth of slats covered in pig excrement, I reached for the high-octane, sugar-soaked pop tunes that had the disinfectant strength of cheap Clorox-arsenic blend: Ozma’s “I Will Never Skip a Rock,” Ben Folds Five’s “Tom & Mary,” The Flaming Lips’ “She Don’t Use Jelly,” and The Hopefuls’ “Pretty Bigmouth.” Okay, so weight room-quality adrenaline rock this isn’t; but blasting at enough decibels to clear the subatomic water hose at my disposal, these songs did the trick.
So, what would all the rock gardeners out there put on a harvest playlist? Remember, you’re working long hours—so extended-play versions are preferred—and likely sleep-deprived—so most of Jim Croce and “Boy with the Arab Strap” is immediately disqualified. Here’s my harvest playlist:
“Don’t Know What You’ve Got (Till It’s Gone),” Cinderella
Although we’ll forgive Cinderella for the melodramatic parenthetical (or will we?), they nailed this ode to crop-collecting climaxes. As every farmer knows, until the fields have been cleared bare and you’ve stored your crops away to take to the grain elevator, you can’t find out its true value. I’m fairly certain Tom Kiefer of Cinderella knew this, although word’s still out on how he got around an auger in those ruffled sleeves.
“Reeling in the Years” Steely Dan
When Donald Fagen asks are we “stowing away the time,” he could be pretty much talking about corn for the winter. Plus, the kicking guitar solo can carry you through the exhausting hours in the combine long after the buzz from your coffee has worn thin.
“I Cut Like a Buffalo,” The Dead Weather
If this song’s menacing zombie rock doesn’t scare you stiff in your driver’s seat, it’ll at least provide you with long hours of philosophical pondering about such things as, “Why does Jack White need another side project?” and “What happened to the organ solo on top 40 radio?”
“Working on a Sex Farm,” Spinal Tap
I’m not even certain this is the actual song name, or if a faux-band’s song can even count on this illustrious list. But, it’s the only song not by Kenny Chesney (who unfortunately didn’t make this list because the revolution will NOT be patronized) that I know talks about farms. Or even farms in the metaphorical sense.
“Harvest Moon,” Neil Young
Two thoughts immediately come to mind: 1) Is this song about that brand of sun chips at Subway and 2) I thought you said no slow songs. Well, to answer the first, I can say probably not. That’s Harvest Cheddar. And as far as slow songs go, well, after all that work, you’ll need to park the combine at some point, and when you do, you’ll want to look out over the field, empty except for the moonlight and playful shadows. When you do, for a moment, sit back, turn up your iPod, and let Young’s whimsical entreats pull you off to a winter’s slumber.
Now it’s your turn, what’s tunes are essentials on your Harvest Playlist?
A tip of the hat to Cousin Christopher, thanks for writing this post.
This week's Rock Garden Tour podcast reveals the origin of a loose meat sandwich called the Tavern, at least I call it the Tavern, you may call it a Sloppy Joe, Maid Right, Wimpy, Steamburger, Slushburger, Tastee, Loose Meat, or friggin' Hot Dog. We also talk about the Pioneer Power Show of Menno, SD. Enjoy this week's podcast and keep it rural.
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Bonus round: If you love podcasts about meat, you might also enjoy this week's Fresh Friday Podcast, another podcast produced by our corporate sponsor Fresh Produce Inc. www.pickfresh.com
