rodriguez

27august2012
i see rodriguez has a film out about him. me and the rodriguez music go back some 30 odd years. firstly, thanks to letterman for putting him on his show,  i quite enjoy some of lettermans stuff, but of late i haven't been into it, it becames the same, but i wonder if grinder girl is still grinding away. anyways, i first heard of rodriguez, around 1973, off a girl, i used to talk to after school, about music and stuff, she was into iggy and that, then, i was more into sabbath and cooper. anyways, she mentioned rodriguez cold fact, the tape, that was getting around, thanks to pirate taping in those days, if you had a tape deck in those days. most of us youth , just had radio really, and the odd album or singles. i talked to a few whose sister or someone had the infamous tape. don't worry them rumours where around even then, they just grew. i haven't seen the movie yet, but i read a few reviews, probably the thing with me was , this big search? here, he was found in 1979, so that ended the rumors.

28august2012
strange with some artists, it's like you've heard them before, maybe unconsciously you have , on the radio or somewhere. too this day i'm still , no i've given up really, but years ago , i'm talking 1965/6 something, i heard this song on a jukebox at the embassy cafe. it had the lyric, down the highway , in it. that's stuck in my head, the music , everything, for many years. later in life i chased that song, man. from alro guthrie to bob dylan to any fucking folk singer, i've given up. i've forgotten the song, and it don't matter no more. i think it was like a rolling stone, it sounds very much like it and time period, but no down the highway lyric.

1sept2012
rodriguez done that to me, deja vu, i'd heard that stuff , especially i wonder. probably now one of my least favorite. it's one of those songs you really like at first, then tier of, then like, etc. i love that bass though. at the time i had a semi legit tape must of been 1977, it goes like this, i was trail bike riding up the mountain, as you did. i stopped at the waterfall . a couple of mates were drinking and pissed, there. one had a new secondhand car, they decide to drive down the pool, i said i'll follow. they sped off pissed as. i only had a 175cc bike , up ahead i saw this cloud of dust. when i got up ahead, i saw skid marks on the road , but no car, the when i got there i noticed the car over the fence , upside down on the railway track, thinking the worst. they crawled out of the broken window with blackened dusty faces saying, did you get the number plate. i didnt know what he was on about. apparently, he reckoned some bloke sideswiped him off the road, from where i was i saw dust that's all, he was just holding his head and cursing words. i rode down the road and hid my bike in the bushes and ran back. when i got back some others were there. i said i'd hang and wait for the cops, it's a long time now, i think the others drove him home, and rang about the car on the line, cause trains could be on there way. while waiting i noticed a couple of tapes on the track, no blood though bob, maybe. one was elo new world record and the other rodriguez at his best, i went, rodriguez, what the fuck. never thought i'd ever see a proper rodriguez tape. i hung until they got the car off the tracks, the cops turned up, gave me the 3rd degree . wanted to know where the driver was, i said the others who rang up drove him home, they were shitty about him leaving , then his old man and the others turned up, they talked to the cops, me and these other young guys walked down to the bushes where i hid the bike, then i realised the tapes , i gave the elo to the young guys , i keeped the rodriguez, i didn't feel good about anything. i told him sometime later , he was thankful that i just hung there anyways.

4sept2012
you know i didn't know what to expect with that rodriguez tape, the look reminded me of a time in music, 1970 elvis, glen campbell , lee hazelwood etc. which was a far cry to what i was mostly listening to at that time , maybe dylan or van morrison, i had moondance and a few dylan, desire and blood and greatest hits. the sound was like that time , but had a few more things. sugarman was first on his best, i always thought a sugarman was the lsd peddler, you use to get lsd in a sugar cube, maybe i'm wrong. sugarman is a song you can get sick of lyrically, but i has this other that keeps it alive. crucify your mind is a classic , establishment blues is rap and subterranean homesick blues, street boy was me, i wonder great bass, a hook , one of my least faves.

10sept2012
that tape was played until it became just another. no car at that time just in the room, no walkman even. then around 78/79 came the big cold fact release, the tv ads on late night music shows like night moves. the stories where around about his death and such, then he was alive going to university, running for office etc. i remember seeing a current affairs show ,late60s/early 70s about the car industry in detroit and life after. it was a sad program , i always remember an small clippit interview of an unemployed car industry worker, when asked how he survived without work , and no real prospects , and want he ate. he said he made soup from water and ketchup. it only got worse. hearing that rodriguez was from detroit, that story always came to mind, a bit like jon voight in midnight cowboy, the sauce scene. anyways , it took me a few weeks and months to buy cold fact . i'm a bit like that, wait til the hypes over, you know i still haven't seen stars wars, maybe i have, all the little bits i'd seen on telly, put together. i thought cold fact was unreal , a great album, only one regret no street boy, then that was a good thing, cause all the trendies missed that one. they went for, i wonder, anyway . i wonder was release as a single, on blue goose, i regret not having bought that, singles are like that, i think they'll be real collectors items, maybe not. blue goose , i often wonder, i wonder, if that's the crumb blue goose?

  18sept2012
been thinking about , maybe i bought coming from reality before i got cold fact, doesn't matter really. coming from reality had some good songs, but you could feel it had this decline, 2nd album syndrome. it was like all the good songs were on , at his best , excepting 1 or 2, you could probably say the same about cold fact, i don't know, but there was something missing. i can probably listen to the whole album now, but back then , probably not. the song, i think of you, if it's original, i heard some woman, like a show type, like cabaret , do a cover of it, in the maybe late 80s , early 90s something. i thought i know that song, it's rodriguez, i had to get the old coming from reality album out of storage, and give it a play.

24sept2012
did a search for the , at his best, thinking maybe it survived past moves and a tape clutter throw out, it wasn't where i thought, maybe it'll turn up, like the john peel, but i doubt it. would have made a good photo under the origins story, i think it went a few years back , i have a vinyl and cd of it , so i think the tape went. if you can answer why you hoard something, you think has lost it's purpose , only a short time later after throwing , selling or giving , it comes to purpose, how many times. i could say the same with the alive album, i bought it at a time , when it came out , pretty much my post rodriguez stage. the music scene around 81/82 was far more different from the 70s period. don't get me wrong cold fact did get played from time to time, where as others never got a listen, a lot of laid back stuff just didn't cut it.   the alive album was interesting to a point, i hoarded it for some years, but never really played it, then sold it with a bunch in the late eighties. regrets, not really.

10oct2012
during the eighties there was a few little pockets were i listen to cold fact for a few weeks. one of them young guys got feed up down here and moved to alice springs , installing air conditioners , around 84 something. i caught up with him around 92, he told me he won a singing comp up there. he meet up with an indigenous american indian, he said he turned her on to cold fact, she loved it and never heard of it before . i thought i'd mention that cause i see rodriguez likes pow wows and things. anyways, pocahontas if you ever read this, steve died around 98 of an od.

11oct2012
i spent most of this evening looking for an mp3 i made from a tape of steve playing his mountain song a few weeks before he died. use the password - spms01

steve phillips mountain song 

12oct2012

i had another, knocking on heavens door, i could have also put up, but that's not rodriguez . you know i actually followed both letterman and rodriguez on twitter, but stopped ,awhile back, maybe 1 year or more, i made a policy only to follow who follow, letterman only follow his rivals. as for rodriguez , his twitter page stopped on tour of byron bay. funny that, the girl i talked to on the fence all them years ago, ended up being the mayor of bryon bay. as with my blogs i like to end at the beginning.

h.b. bobby

19august2013
i finally got i see the searchin for sugarman doco. what did i think , does it matter. no. was it worth the accolades? probably not. there's a punkest  saying of the late malcom mc laren , never trust a hippy. i can see a touch of that in this movie, the best part was clarence avant, he pretty much summed it up really. when you say dylan is timid compared to  rodriguez, and there was no other songwriters around that time, you got to question it???. sugerman is volkswagon frank

15feb2016
cleaning i found the tape