Gig Review: Rodriguez (Oct 15, Wgtn)
Rodriguez
Opera House
Wednesday, October 15 Rodriguez returns just 18 months after his first victory lap on the back of the Searching For Sugar Man documentary. He still has a local pick-up band, nothing resembling stage-craft and his songs – for all the charm and how caught up in the myth and alleged mystery of this man the audience might be – are slivers are best, they build to absolutely nothing and then drop right off. They simply disappear. There’s nothing dynamic happening in a Rodriquez song – despite the very best efforts of Maree Thom (bass) and Brett Adams (guitar) – two exceptional players.
Adams manages searing guitar solos and quiet atmospherics in an attempt to replace – if not replicate – the strings and psychedelic treatments that nearly lift the songs on the original records.
But all of this heavy lifting can only do so much when the singer/songwriter, the frail and failing Sixto Rodriguez, has barely a thin scratch of his own distinctive guitar and a voice that’s lost, his meandering stoned-poetry and cod-philosophy is still applauded, songs from just two albums all but buried, kept alive by a small cult of fans until the documentary put them under the noses of almost everyone.
This performance was stronger than last year’s for many reasons – the venue a better fit, the band not left floundering and Rodriguez slightly more comfortable with being adored simply for turning up. But still the ghastly pub-covers of rock’n’roll songs and still the feeling that if Rodriguez simply jukeboxes out his “hits” to the fawning assembled he has done enough. People there to celebrate the man for (still) standing, the music they’ve only just been made aware of for lasting.
It’s sad to see and he’s not delivering a $100-value show. He is incapable. And if the songs were recently given to a Film Festival audience they’ve been passed on too swiftly to a Beer Festival crowd. People punctuating the awkward silences by constantly reminding the artist of his own name, so desperate are we now for heroes we’ll appoint a cult-figure more than his 15 minutes of fame far too late in the game.
This review appeared in The Dominion Post – I’ve reposted it here on Off The Tracks due to requests from people wanting to view it online