The Atrocious Music Collection: #31 in a series
Artists: Various
Album Title: Overloaded Diesel
Category: Country Music CompliationYears: 1973
Cover art style: Low-budget trucker drawin’ …whoa, why is there a guy firing an oversized gun? What the…?
Audio: see below
Acquisition: Tracks Records, Bloomington, IN ca. 1990 ($1.99 - the sticker's still on there)
Click on picture for full-sized image
The Atrocious Music Collection offers little for the country music lover. Frankly, the curator of the Collection finds it a bit difficult to suss out the difference between run-of-the-mill Country and Atrocious Country, to be honest. That is not from lack of experience or knowledge. The curator's early origins include a fair dose a Country and Western, even if it wasn't the main part of what he consumed and played. There always seemed to be a high percentage of novelty music in country, and another large chunk was so streotypically genre, it often came off as parody.
This record, however, is mostly B-side country tunes sung by grade-D country “stars,“ which doesn’t necessarily mean anything... until you look under the hood, and get the trucker concept album that is Overloaded Diesel up on the lift, where you'll see it going to be heading straight down I-10 with a full load of blue-plate-special mud-flapping tire-blowing grade-Z Atrocious Music.
Released on the Power Pak label, a budget line of Nashville-based reissue-specialist Gusto Records, Overloaded Diesel is about as bare-bones as it gets. Power Pak record cover art seems to tend towards cheap, cheesy line drawings in general, and this one is pretty basic. On a sickly yellow background, we’ve got a straightforward trucker scene, black-and-white mountains in the background, rendered… let’s say adequately. The extra-long barreled handgun being shot by a giant-armed motorist is a bit jarring. I finally realized it's a depiction of the title track. I'll get to it in a bit.
(If you know Arlo Guthrie’s Significance of the Pickle song, this pic will bring to mind the “3-foot cop with a 4-foot gun” bit.)
Also contributing to the low-end feel is the all-caps liner note, rendered in middle-school research-paper quality, earning a grade of C+, at best:
Padding, anyone?
The note goes on to say that although the album is dedicated to truck drivers, any country music fan “WILL FIND AN ‘OVERLOADED DIESEL’ FULL OF FANTASTIC COUNTRY MUSIC.” This is old-school country, light years away from today’s pop-inflected bro-country hits, but I doubt the truth of this statement no matter how your tastes run. The various singers on Overloaded Diesel are going to be unknown to most “any country music fan,” which suggests the music is less than “fantastic.”
Singers aside, just by reading the titles, you know you are in for a truck-drivin’ themed treat with all of the final G’s removed; we’ve got I’m Movin’ On, Bus Drivin’ Son of a One, and Double Clutchin’ Truck Line. (There is one slip-up, Eighteen Wheels a Humming, Home Sweet Home, but “a-humming” is a pretty-darn good country phrase, it almost makes up for the unnecessary G.) I've not found I'm Movin' On online, which is unfortunate because it is the only track sung by a woman, so here it is directly from my record
There’s a number of songs about the trucker life, such as what I think is my favorite track, an ode to the Truck Stop Cafe.
There's also the completely-expected Truck Driver’s Blues, and, inexplicably, a song about New York City, New York. Thank you for clarifying – I thought you might be talking about New York City, Iowa. Uncharacteristic of much country music, this fellow can’t wait to get back to NYC. Times have changed.
A few songs are a little less directly about truckin’ and more about something else ending with “uckin’.” In particular… Midnight Cowboy – featuring the Calhoun Twins! – isn’t about cowboys. We’re told “he don’t ride a horse or he don’t wear a hat” right at the top of the number. No, our Midnight cowboy is a trucker (surprise!) who gets all the ladies “in our town.” This fellow is completely irresistible. Best line: “I don’t doubt that he can make out with a compact car.” Worst line: “There’s many a lady who wear his brand.” Ouch! And the Calhoun Twins look so wholesome!
The title track, Overloaded Diesel, should be about someone who just has too much cargo on their big rig, but the overload Jimmy Griggs is singin’ about is a married woman (“...but you knew I didn’t know,” he tells her, so it’s not his fault). He picked her up in Dallas, but with the husband after them, it appears she’s the extra freight mentioned in the chorus. Nice. Classy. Her hubby’s “burnin’ rubber in a standard stick;” I assume that means it doesn’t appear he’ll catch up to our hero who drives a manly 18-wheeler, but I really don't know enough about this stuff to be sure. Anyway, this is the lovely domestic scene the cover art depicts. I guess hubby has a gun and isn't afraid to fire warning shots.
Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down seems to turn the usual use of that phrase on its head. Normally, you want the deal to go down, but Benny Martin’s momma told him different. Benny seems to have some girl trouble, but I think more is going on because in the last verse things go really dark: “If you see me alive at your front door with a .38 in my hand/tell all the world I killed myself ‘cause you’re in love with another man.” The music is snappy and upbeat, just so you know. So wrong.
Two really clever titles round out the disc. Tiny Harris’ Endless Black Ribbon is downright poetic in describing the open road. My personal favorite title, though, is The Only Shoulder a Trucker Can Cry On. Now that’s a great play on words. Like most of these songs, Shoulder is about heartbreak and the loneliness of the road. I think these songs may cut a little too close to home for true truckers to listen to. This record is just going to make them depressed. How about some good-time country – songs about drinkin’ and hangin’ out? Or maybe they should just take in a funny podcast?
Nothing is over 3 minutes, and only three are longer than 2:30, so it’s easy to sample all 12 tracks in less time than it takes to listen to that podcast. But I can think of one other good reason to listen to these songs: if you were thinking of going to trucker school, this album will cure you of that impulse.