As a couple of you know, after a long stretch of working very weird hours I have developed a fairly solitary lifestyle and have developed an interest in movies that somewhat got out of hand. The damning evidence:

Kinda wish I’d gone the Netflix route, but then I wouldn’t physically *own* anything. So anyway, since I tend to grab a lot of foreign films, documentaries, and lesser-known movies, I thought I would share some of the better ones I find. Siskel & Ebert are gone, so welcome to Hignose’s movie review!

This documentary I was very skeptical about. I had never heard of Sexto Rodriguez, and I almost called MR (owner of too many orange crates of vinyl, so don’t judge me mister!) to see if he had ever seen this 1969 album:

Apparently this guy, whose music I thought was sometimes good, but nothing groundbreaking, was HUGE in South Africa ( and also known in Australia). Funny thing is, the South Africans didn’t know anything about him either. So in the late ’90s, two South Africans decided to try and track down details of his life, as there were wild stories about his death. (In one version, he thanked the audience in the midst of a bad performance, and blew his brains out on stage, in another he had self-immolated during a concert.) The filmers were shocked that no one from America they had talked to seemed to know anything about him. To them he was on the level of Dylan, so it would be like asking a brit about John Lennon and they answer “Who?”. After looking at some of his lyrics, they place him near Detroit, interview the owner of his defunct label, find his former manager, and eventually Rodriguez himself. He’s still working in the construction business, living in the same house he had 40 years ago, and had no idea anyone in South Africa held him in any regard. The most fascinating aspect of his story requires a look at the censorship and cultural isolation forced on apartheid-era South Africa. (He was wildly popular with the *white* South Africans who weren’t in the upper controlling class.) There’s also some attention paid to the money trail (or lack thereof), as apparently his music came to that country via someone’s american girlfriend and was then massively bootlegged, with a couple of SA record labels printing his album and claiming to pay royalties to a label that went defunct. (There’s a definite shift in attitude by the former american label owner when money is mentioned, but it’s not pressed and gets a bit murky. Possible libel issues? Not wanting to piss off the guy so he wouldn’t help the film? It’s not clear.) The interview with the manager is a bit odd as well, the guy just positively gushes over Rodriguez. Left out is the fact that Rodriguez did have some impact in Australia around 1980 and toured there, but it’s not relevant to the SA part of his story. The filmmakers arrange a few concerts in Capetown, and a guy who was clearing old drywall the week before finds himself halfway across the world getting red-carpet treatment, and playing for thousands of fans who give him a long standing ovation before he’s even done anything. Despite some unanswered questions and some nagging “Is this for real?” moments, this documentary does seem legit, and I’d recommend it as some slightly embellished, feel-good viewing of a little corner of rock ‘n roll’s history.

(Both of Rodriguez’s albums are easily found on YouTube,  just search “Cold Fact”.)