Posts Tagged ‘heavy 70′s’

Rodriguez – Cold Fact

Posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010

Praise for Rodriguez’ Cold Fact from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Pop quiz! Quick: who’s the “street poet” singer with no first name*, son of Mexican immigrants, born and raised in Detroit Michigan, whose debut album from 1970 sounded like a fuzz-soul-psych version of Bob Dylan and / or Donovan, and was an underground hit in South Africa of all places??  Duh, Rodriguez of course.

It’s about time his inexplicably obscure Cold Fact got the deluxe reissue treatment it deserves. Seriously, after listening to this for the first time, you’ll feel like you just heard a bona fide ’60s classic, and be amazed you had never heard these songs before. They ought to be all over “oldies” rock radio. It’s ridiculous like that. Songs like ‘Sugar Man’ and ‘I Wonder’ seem like they should be fixtures of the baby boomer memory lane hit parade. It’s so very of its era, ‘This Is Not A Song, It’s An Outburst: Or, The Establishment Blues’ is certainly a sixties song title, isn’t it?

Likewise ‘Rich Folks Hoax’, ‘Hate Street Dialogue’, and ‘Crucify Your Mind’… But, maybe he was just a little too freaky and right on, and (crucially) never got the right sort of record label support to become well known to the Woodstock Nation, though this album had some rather random, surprising success so far off in the Southern Hemisphere, in South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, which Rodriguez himself was unaware of for many years!

If left to his own devices, perhaps Rodriguez would have come off sounding a bit too much like Dylan. But Cold Fact was a “Theo-Coff” production, from the badass Motor City team of Mike Theodore and funk guitarist Dennis Coffey, and they helped accentuate the more underground and urban aspects of Rodriguez’s sound. With his hip, Dylanesque poetry set amidst lush orchestration and gritty grooves, Rodriguez’s Cold Fact is a super catchy, tripped out slice of street-level, soulful psychedelia, full of drug references and radical political critique. We alluded to “fuzz” above, but on the track ‘Only Good For Conversation’ we mean FUZZ. That track’s a stone(d) cold classic when it comes to heavy duty fuzz guitar crunch.

This reish comes in a nice digipack, with cover embossing and a big ol’ cd booklet stuffed with text (liner notes, lyrics) and photos. One of the several cd booklet essays explains in part Rodriguez’s unexpected appeal in South Africa – apparently, in that repressive society, it was due to the edgy, uncensored nature of his lyrics. ‘I Wonder’, for instance, with its lines about “I wonder how many times you had sex / And I wonder do you know who’ll be next” was considered so risque that if you were a teenager and wanted to be cool, you HAD to have this record.

Apparently, many folks in South Africa thought of Rodriguez as being a star up there with the Beatles, and when they didn’t hear more from him, all sorts of wild rumors spread that he’d died, been accidentally electrocuted, OD’d, or even committed suicide on stage! When, in fact, he simply had no idea how “big” he was in South Africa, and his recording career had stalled out elsewhere after his sophomore album, 1971′s Coming From Reality (also soon to be reissued). Turns out he’s still alive and well, today, and has actually gone to South African to pay arena (?!) shows in recent years.

In fact, when we’ve had album in the store before, it was only available on cd as an expensive import – from South Africa! So we’re, again, super stoked that Light In The Attic put the effort in to do this long overdue, definitive domestic reissue.

*actually, his first name was Sixto, but he usually just went by Rodriguez.

At 40 years old, Aquarius is the oldest independent record store in San Francisco. We try to only carry music we love, and we’re always searching for more new, cool, weird and wonderful music. All of which we then share with you, our loyal customers.

Tags: album of the day, Aquarius Records, Cold Fact, Dennis Coffey, heavy 70's, Light In The Attic, Mike Theodore, psychedelica, Rodriguez
Posted in 2010, Album of the Day, Roadburn Recommended | No Comments »

Dzjenghis Khan – Hey You

Posted on Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Priase for Dzjenghis Khan‘s Hey You (Motorwolf) from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records: Hey all right!! We hadn’t heard much from these local, long haired, lost-in-time rockers for far too long, ’cause their singing drummer moved away for a while, but is back in town, and now they have a new ...read more

Album of the day: Sir Lord Baltimore – S/T (LP)

Posted on Monday, August 9th, 2010

Praise for Sir Lord Baltimore‘s S/T from San Francisco’s aQuarius Records:  In the annals of the “early heavy”, the Sir Lord Baltimore (from Brooklyn) is up there with the likes of Dust, Bang, and yes Blue Cheer. Too bad their two albums have been pretty much out of print for ...read more

Ripple Music ‘Re-Unleashes’ Poobah’s Debut LP, Let Me In

Posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

With the original 1972 LP fetching upwards of $300 a piece at various auction sites, Poobah and Ripple Music decided it was time to “re-unleash” the album that started the madness. The fuzzed-out, psychedelic, proto-metal masterpiece is set to hit the streets on October 12th, 2010 and will be available ...read more

Stone Axe To Re-Issue Debut Album With Vinyl And Deluxe CD Editions Via Ripple Music

Posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

Fresh off the success of their first collaboration, a 7″ split single between Stone Axe and Mighty High, multi-instrumentalist and rock preservationist T. Dallas Reed has signed with Ripple Music to re-release the critically praised Stone Axe self-titled debut on both vinyl and deluxe CD packages. Originally released in 2009 ...read more

Album of the day: JPT Scare Band – Acid Blues is the White Man’s Burden

Posted on Saturday, June 26th, 2010

Lovingly pinched from Bill’s Music Forum: Banded together during the tumultuous years of the early 70’s, JPT Scare Band fused a sound equally heavy in hard rocking blues as it was tripped out in psychedelia, creating a sound so imposing that it perfectly reflected the emotions of the era. Formed ...read more

The Obelisk: In Conversation With Stone Axe

Posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010

JJ Koczan of The Obelisk recently conducted an interview with Stone Axe ‘ T. Dallas Reed . A few excerpts from the chat follow below. When I spoke to Stone Axe multi-instrumentalist, occasional-vocalist, recording engineer and principle songwriter, T. Dallas Reed, he was, as I imagine he often is, working ...read more

Album of the day: Brutus – Brutus

Posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Lovingly pinched from Sea of Tranquility: Evoking the spirit of bands such as Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath, Brutus have released a debut album of hard hitting, heavy blues rock that in some quarters would be described as stoner. However the Brutus sound really stems from a time before there ...read more

Album of the day: Necromandus – Orexis Of Death & Live

Posted on Saturday, May 29th, 2010

Lovingly pinched from Record Collector: A particularly sad tale, this one. Necromandus were signed to Vertigo in 1973, largely through the prompting of band manager and evangelical superfan Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. Iommi produced Orexis Of Death for the label and supplied guest guitar on the title track, but ...read more

Album of the day: Humo del Cairo – S/T

Posted on Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Praise for Humo Del Cairo‘s S/T from San Francisco’s Aquarius Records: If Argentina’s awesome Los Natas was once considered a Kyuss clone (a band that had many clones) what does that make fellow Argentines Humo del Cairo? ‘Cause it’d be easy to tag ‘em as “Los Natas” clones, indeed at ...read more