Play Album Harvest

My truck has a built in MP3  player. I simply plug in a USB thumb drive with all my music on it and I’m off. I control the player using voice commands and in response I get a computerized female voice back. A typical conversation starts by me pressing the “talk” button on the steering wheel.

She: yes?

Me: play all songs, shuffle on

She: playing all songs

I avoid using it to play individual artists, albums or tracks. Quite often it's hard to guess how she thinks a name sounds. For example Derrick and the Dominos to her, sounds like Derrich and the DimInInoes. If she doesn't understand the name I say she almost always responds with:

She: "playing album Harvest"

I was returning to the farm from an 80 mile Manhattan Kansas Starbucks run. I was thinking that every place has a tenor or vibe that resonates with the local energy. For example the Valley has a frenetic vibe with the perfect song being "21St Century Schizoid Man". I was trying to figure out what music fits the tenor of the northern Kansas plains. And then it struck me ... Neil Young’s Harvest album is the perfect fit. I wanted to listen to it now. It should be easy to get my truck to play that one. So I pressed the talk button on the steering wheel and the conversation began:

She: yes?

Me: play album Harvest

She: playing artist Elvin Bishop

What ???  No … press the talk button again …

She: yes?

Me: play album Harvest

She: playing artist Ronnie Montrose

GRRRR ... I need another strategy. So I pressed the talk button once more

She: yes?

Me: play artist Neil Young

She: playing track The Long Run

This went on for the next 10 minutes, me trying to say it fast, slow with differing emphasis when it occurred to me that I had lost an argument with a computer. She simply did not want to play Neil Young Harvest and she held all the cards.

F*#&  . . . So, giving up I pressed the talk button one more time:

She: yes?

Me: Play all songs, shuffle on

She: Playing album harvest

I swear there was a faint hint of mirth in her voice. So I just smiled, leaned back in the seat, bumped up the cruise control and listened to an incredible album while sailing across a sea of wavering wheat.

Joe

BTW: On the Harvest album there is a song titled Alabama. Lynyrd Skynyrd responded to this tune and another done by Neil Young, Southern Man, when they wrote Sweet Home Alabama and made sure that Neil Young knew their words were directed at him ;-)