Rodriguez - C/D

great movie but yeah how comes the 2 South African geezers didn't know he wasn't dead if he was big in Austrailia and toured there?!
i know it was the pre-Google era but still.

had yer man sen Beverly Hills Cop he'd have clocked Dearborn was in Detroit lol.

^^^^^^^^^^^

Director of the documentary has passed on

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/13/malik-bendjelloul-dead_n_5319001.html

saw that.

have to admit the documentary (and rodriguez's music) left me almost completely cold. the worst kind of music doc IMO, just a bunch of talking heads saying "this guy is so great, he's like... bob dylan." also the narrative was obviously a bit too perfect, eliding and moving things around for the benefit of a really canned, can-see-it-an-hour-in-advance drama. and IIRC you don't actually get to hear more than 20 seconds of a rodriguez tune before someone starts talking over it. which is all for the good, i suppose, given that rodriguez was a pretty 2nd-rate singer-songwriter.

oh well, it's always sad when someone so young (my age, exactly, in fact) dies.

As for why not Makeba or Masekela

? b/c south african boomers listened largely to rock music just like their american and british counterparts ?

there is no lack of attention paid to makeba and masekela and their role as ambassadors for SA's anti-apartheid movement. they are surely household names in 10,000x as many homes as sixto rodriguez, which is the way it should be.

south african white boomers i should note

i always feel like an asshole when people are like, "omg, did you see that rodriquez doc, what an amazing story! and the music is incredible--he's better than bob dylan!" and i just kind of sit there squirming.

it reminds me of that moment in luis bunuel's "las hurdes" when there's a shot of a doctor inspecting a young girk's perfectly-fine set of teeth and the narrator says something like, "these people suffer from a total lack of dental care, as you can see from the atrociously deteriorated state of this young girl's teeth." and most people are like, "oh, yes, i see, very bad teeth." i guess if everyone interviewed is saying "oh my, he was so incredible--like a bob dylan who disappeared off the face of the earth" enough people in the audience will just buy that no matter what they are hearing.

I finally saw this, I thought it was pretty good but it def could have used more of him and his family.

RIP

I am listening to Cold Fact - "I wonder how many times you had sex" interesting line

always figured it was a "sexual liberation" thing, the joy of being blunt

but it's a dumb line and one that instantly made me suspicious of some of the hyperbolic claims abt his songwriting prowess

I am susceptible to believing music is better when it is hyped by critics - I guess depending on the critic

true, I was thinking about the blurbs/talking heads in the doc saying stuff like "he was better than dylan"