This Is Not a Song, It's an Outburst: Or, the Establishment Blues - Rodriguez
I'm a sucker for "lost classics." There's just something great about discovering a record so out of touch with the times that it's quickly forgotten -- and then rediscovered sounding bizarrely prescient or beautifully archaic or naively lurid. Like Vashti Bunyan's Just Another Diamond Day or the Monks' Monk Time. Or Rodriguez's Cold Fact album.
Sixto Diaz Rodriguez was a Mexican-American from the Detroit area who issued two discs in the early '70s before disappearing forever (um, until now). He became an underground sensation in South Africa, Rhodesia, and New Zealand, where unbeknown to him his discs went multi-platinum. Overseas, crazy rumors floated -- about his self-immolation onstage, about a prison spell for slaughtering his girlfriend -- while he quietly gave up music and went back to work in industrial Detroit. Then, in 2002, British tastemaker David Holmes included Rodriguez's "Sugar Man" on his Come Get it, I Got It mix-CD, and crate diggers went nuts. This year, the always fascinating Light in the Attic label reissued Cold Fact.
Released in 1970, the album is very much of its time -- a Dylan-y cavalcade of words depicting urban devolution, drug-induced insanity, and wayward women, all told over fuzzed-out guitars and woozy folk-rock. You can't get a better depiction of the '60s scene than this couplet (from "This Is Not a Song, It's an Outburst: Or, the Establishment Blues"): "The pope digs population/ Freedom from taxation/ Teenieboppers are uptight/ Drinking at a stoplight/ Miniskirt is flirting/ I can't stop so I'm hurting/Spinster sells her hopeless chest." Rodriguez's depiction of a downward spiraling society sounds pretty modern at times.
Due to popular demand, the Motown man is going on tour, presented locally by the Folk Yeah dudes. He's co-headlining with the LA freak-rockers in the Entrance Band and local psych-stoners Sleepy Sun.
Rodriguez, The Entrance Band, Sleepy Sun, Matt Baldwin Electric Band @ Great American Music Hall on Sunday, November 23; doors 7 p.m., tickets $17-$19.
Released in 1970, the album is very much of its time -- a Dylan-y cavalcade of words depicting urban devolution, drug-induced insanity, and wayward women, all told over fuzzed-out guitars and woozy folk-rock. You can't get a better depiction of the '60s scene than this couplet (from "This Is Not a Song, It's an Outburst: Or, the Establishment Blues"): "The pope digs population/ Freedom from taxation/ Teenieboppers are uptight/ Drinking at a stoplight/ Miniskirt is flirting/ I can't stop so I'm hurting/Spinster sells her hopeless chest." Rodriguez's depiction of a downward spiraling society sounds pretty modern at times.
Due to popular demand, the Motown man is going on tour, presented locally by the Folk Yeah dudes. He's co-headlining with the LA freak-rockers in the Entrance Band and local psych-stoners Sleepy Sun.
Rodriguez, The Entrance Band, Sleepy Sun, Matt Baldwin Electric Band @ Great American Music Hall on Sunday, November 23; doors 7 p.m., tickets $17-$19.
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