Truck driving madness

Glen Campbell is like Southern Comfort served to Casey Jones with gasoline and coke

You know movies like Car or Maximum Overdrive, where some poor guy gets haunted by a psychotic truck driver? Or maybe the vehicle itself has an evil urge. The reason for this berserk behavior is never fully explained in the film, but I guess that in real life the reason would be a massive load of bad country in the car radio.

See, every year somebody gets an idea to put out a greatest hits album by a Legendary Hick Artist called The Essential Legendary Hick Artist (Different Running Order Than Last Year). So the mattress burner in a Texaco cap whose CB handle is something like Big Chief or Bosco keeps listening this monotonous set of old hits in his eighteenwheeler cabin and one fine day he just snaps and it's all road rage and hellfire. By these standards the New Glen Campbell collection is something to set any road warrior ready for an amok ride.

If you're about to purchase a Campbell recording for approximately 15 euros and want to get an impression of a musician more than just a rednecked rhinestone cowboy, I'd still go for the Capitol Years anthology released in 1998. It has all the hits, plus Morning Glory with Bobbie Darin, a take on Universal Soldier, the wicked Every Time I Itch I Wind Up Scratching You, and a couple of other rarities that give you a hint that Campbell was operating on a far more broader range at the time, than the coverage of a typical C&W station's AM tower was. There's some nice traditional tones in the Buffy Saint Marie cover, or Daniels' Folk Singer. And the perfectly lazy countryfunk of Southern Nights - I always use to imagine Lennon doing a version of that one... Campbell is quite a diverse guitarist after all. If you've ever heard his acid washed work on Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) by Kenny Rogers you'll know what I mean... Perhaps they should include that one on a compilation some day.

Glen Campbell: Greatest Hits
(EMI 2009)
Record rating: 5.5/10

Glen Campbell: The Capitol Years 65/77
(EMI 1998)
Record rating: 9.0/10