CDHDTA7012
If ever there is an air of intrigue and mystery around a pop artist, it is around the artist known as Rodriguez.
There is no air of intrigue and mystery around him anywhere else in the world (with the exception of Australia, Zimbabwe and New Zealand), because his two albums 'Coming from Reality' (After the Fact) and 'Cold Fact' were monumental flops everywhere else. However, South Africans took to Rodriguez like hot chewing gum to takkies, and his album 'Cold Fact' was stuck to turntables all around Southern Africa. It has mainstream appeal without being anywhere near mainstream in content. The songs were about hard drugs, disillusionment, misogyny and the depression of the inner city. But they were gems all the same. From the utterly stoned 'Sugar Man' to the hard core cynicism of 'I Wonder', the songs were blasted out in motels in Trompsburg, on secluded beaches on the south coast and in schools and varsities around the country. Housewives would iron to lines like 'Jumpers, Coke and Sweet Mary Jane' and presumably think the song was about jerseys, Coca Cola and the cousin from Port Elizabeth. Whatever.
The album was definitely great. South Africans loved it, learned it, exported it, sang it in a thousand bars, told their friends overseas about it and those in exile would tape it from their friends in South Africa because they could never get it across the border and think of home. Soon after the success of 'Cold Fact' the second Rodriguez album 'Coming From Reality' (already forgotten overseas) was found and released in South Africa as a follow up and was renamed 'After The Fact'. After being around for a while, it was deleted and promptly dropped off the edge of the world. At this stage, one could still find the odd rare copy of 'The Best of Rodriguez', which mixed the best cuts of both albums with three unreleased tracks thrown in for good measure. For years there were mutterings about the 'lost' Rodriguez album. It had been deleted so quickly that there were very few copies around. Then the rumours started. Just as a newer generation of South Africans were getting into Rodriguez, he was coming to tour S.A., then he had died of a heroin overdose, someone had seen him behind a counter of a deli in New York and chatted to him, he had murdered his woman and was in jail.
So a mystery was born and a mysterious lost album was sought after. Record shops started getting bombarded with requests for 'After The Fact' from teenagers who weren't even born when 'Cold Fact' was a hit. Word got around that Polygram couldn't release it because they had absolutely nothing. The masters were missing. They didn't even have a copy of the LP. There were no concrete cold facts about the artist known as Rodriguez. It is not known if he is even alive or dead. Any musicologist detectives out there?
To cut a long story short Mad Andy, Sugar Segerman, André Bakkes, Rob Allingham, Peter Pearlson (re-mastering) and Polygram S.A. had various parts to play in finding, acquiring, mastering and getting this CD into your collection.
So dig it, nobody else in the world knows it exists.
MAD ANDY AND SUGAR,
April 1996
Cash Box Review,
January 1, 1972:
This is the second LP from a man and a voice who is a pleasantly original amalgam of Jose Feliciano, Donovan and Cat Stevens. There's something for everyone here. Two MOR efforts in 'I Think Of You' and 'To Whom It May Concern'; a 'Season Of The Witch'-ish 'Heikki's Suburbia Bus Tour' and a long FM narrative in 'A Most Disgusting Song.' Remaining numbers touch all the beautiful boundaries in between. Programmers of every classification should find something their listeners can get into here are the singer/songwriter with receive wide attention through these efforts.
The Telegraph, Sydney 26th March 1979
A New Look, New Sound Rodriguez
Quite a change from Rodriguez's first album Cold Fact. On Cold Fact Rodriguez sang bitter, disillusioned songs about slums, drug abuse and broken love affairs. Something in between the two albums obviously changed his point of view because Coming From Reality consists mainly of love songs. And not the cynical odes to past affairs of Cold Fact - these ones are full-blown, sentimental Paul McCartney-type love songs. And even the social comment songs on the album seem less bitter and more resigned. The strings have been laid on with a heavy hand, on some tracks providing the only backing to Rodriguez's guitar and voice. But the voice shines through and the clever poetry on some tracks is as incisive as ever. But don't expect the same Rodriguez as you heard on Cold Fact.
- Roger Crosthwaite
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