There’s something hauntingly familiar about the weary, soulful folk music of Rodriguez. I spent most of Malik Bendjelloul’s excellent documentary trying to figure out where I’d heard him before. Discovered playing a dockside dive bar in Detroit, he could have been the next Bob Dylan, but made only two albums – 1970’s Cold Fact and 1971’s Coming to Reality – before vanishing from the industry so definitively that rumours circulated about a gruesome onstage suicide.
But Rodriguez lives… in the hearts of South African music fans. There, he’s bigger than the Rolling Stones. In the 1990s, two fans – a record store owner and a music journalist – decided to find out what became of their hero. The results are undeniably thrilling, yet many questions remain unanswered about this enigmatic troubadour. We tend to celebrate auteurs and see fans as socially inept geeks, so it’s touching to witness culture’s emotional afterlife, away from its original creator.
Importantly, this quest couldn’t have happened in our era of vast online archives and ‘where are they now?’ listicles. I mean, these guys looked up a town mentioned in Rodriguez’s lyrics in an honest-to-god atlas! Perhaps we cherish fandom less when analogue mystique is lost.
WIN
Thanks to Madman, we have 5 dbls to give away! To enter, email
brisbane.win@thethousands.com.au with the subject ‘I wonder how many times you’ve been had’
Australian Competitions Club
