Rodriguez Live At The Albert Hall - 27/05/2015

I’ve been to a lot of concerts in my life. Like nearly every music lover my age, I’ve spent half my life going to see bands play from the smallest bars to the biggest arenas. I’ve seen hot, new up and coming bands, acts at the apex of their careers and well established musicians that started playing decades before I was born. Rodriguez at the Albert Hall was not one that I will easily forget, but perhaps not for the reasons you may expect.  

The Sixto Rodriguez story is a good one. If you haven't seen it, the academy award winning documentary “Searching For Sugarman” is well worth your time. A little known singer songwriter from Detroit, his two albums, released in the early 70's, were commercial flops in the US, despite his obvious talent and the faith of his producers and record labels. His music career went nowhere and he settled into a life of manual labour and factory work.

Unbeknownst to him, he had become a huge success in South Africa. Despite the limited availability of his albums for some time, he had developed a huge following amongst the growing counter culture during the era of apartheid, becoming more well known and loved than both Elvis and the Rolling Stones. But he was nowhere to be found. With no knowledge of the success and adoration awaiting him in South Africa, Rodriguez never toured or recorded after 1973. It seemed to his fans that he had just vanished and rumours of an on stage suicide were rife. Eventually, in the late 1990's a couple of intrepid fans tracked him down and contacted him, eventually arranging a concert in South Africa and re-igniting Rodriguez's musical career. The film disregards some aspects of the story, notably the fact that he had toured Australia in 1981 and still had a following there, but it’s an undeniably interesting tale that’s made all the better by being told through an engaging film. So, since the 1990’s his career has been growing steadily, his two albums were reissued in 2009 and with the release of “Searching For Sugarman” in 2012, his notoriety skyrocketed. Now at the age of 72 Rodriguez is now playing sold out shows around the world, including two nights at the Royal Albert Hall.

I had heard Rodriguez’s records when the film was released and I enjoyed them. Both albums are the kind of tuneful, clever psychedelic pop that was a big part of my childhood. I could hear echoes of Love’s “Forever Changes” in the arrangements and hints of Dylan in the lyrics but with an original voice that kept it engaging. I didn’t quite see what had resonated so strongly with the people of South Africa but I’m a white man in London in 2015, far removed from the political and social climate of that time and place. Overall though I enjoyed his music enough that when the opportunity presented itself, I went to see him play.

I must have missed something. I’m sure of it. Whether the crowd at the show had all come from South Africa or I was just not paying proper attention to either the records or the documentary, I’m not sure. Whatever it was, the level of adoration and excitement for Rodriguez was beyond anything I’d seen before. First of all, the Albert Hall, which for those of you that are unfamiliar is a huge, prestigious, victorian concert hall in London, was packed to the rafters with fans. Who from what I could see, were predominantly white, older men, occasionally with their wives or kids in tow. Then there was a standing ovation for Rodriguez before he even got on stage. A good two minutes before. When he did finally come on stage, shuffling and supported by two of his daughters, there was even more applause, followed by near constant declarations of affection from audience members. This kind of unfettered love is rare to see at any performance but for a man who released two albums four decades ago and who most of these people have only been aware of for three years, It seems almost impossible. But, again, I thought to myself “I’ve just not picked up on something. I’m sure once he get’s going, I’ll get it.”

Rodriguez on stage at the Royal Albert Hall

My main thought about Rodriguez throughout the set was how frail he looked. His walk was a slow shuffle and he leant on a table placed next to him for support as he drank from two cups of tea between songs. At 72 he’s not a young guy but when I think of other performers around his age, Springsteen, Neil Young, Ray Davies all of who still have tonnes of energy, it’s a little jarring. That said, he played his guitar with gusto. A frenetic and complex strumming that, whilst not always audible, still looked like he knew what he was doing. His vocals on the other hand were often mumbled and slightly off key, sometimes lost behind the backing band. But the crowd loved it, roaring with appreciation at the end of each song and continuing to shout about how much they loved him as he conferred with his band between numbers.

For a man who has been praised for his song-writing and compared favourably to the great writers of his generation, Rodriguez seemed determined to cram as many covers into his set as he could. “La Bamba”, “Blue Suede Shoes”, “Somebody To Love” and others were all wheeled out, sometimes it seemed even to the surprise of the backing band who I could see pulling confused faces and occasionally shrugging to each other. As is sometimes the case with older artists, it was the band that was doing the heavy lifting. The rhythm section were tight and energetic and quite frankly I would pay good money to watch the lead guitarist jam out on stage any night of the week. Though they were able to cope with the curve balls they were being thrown, each song seemed to follow a distinct pattern. Rodriguez would start playing, the band would join in and halfway through the song, there would be an extended guitar solo that lasted for the rest of the number. After a while, the band would signal to each other and the drummer would make it very obvious that the song was coming to an end. I’m not sure how rehearsed or planned this was, but it seemed clear who was leading who. 

I’ve seen shows in a similar vein to this before. Brian Wilson is a great example. A revered, older songwriter plays his hits to an audience of devoted fans whilst the majority of the work is done by a tight group of much younger musicians. And to my mind, there is nothing wrong with that set up. It affords some people the chance to relive their youth for a couple of hours and for younger audience members to get a glimpse of musicians that have inspired countless others and made a huge impact on our cultural world. With artists like Brian Wilson, I completely understand the draw and I completely understand why they have such devoted fans. What perplexes me about Rodriguez, is that he has managed to garner the same love and appreciation from a UK audience in what is essentially a very short career and I don’t quite understand why. Both of his albums are great, but there are only 2 of them and they’re 40 years old now. To my mind, for an audience to respond with such adoration as they did to this show, there either needs to be a large, well known body of work to draw from (Brian Wilson again serves as an example) or a performance that dispels all doubt (ever seen Springsteen play a 3 hour show?), neither of which were present here. I don’t wish to come off as cynical or mean spirited, Rodriguez deserves success and recognition for his work and his story, but I saw and heard little to support the fervor of his fans. But in the end, being able to instil that kind of devotion in people is something to be admired, even if I’m not sure I see it myself.

Field Recording: Horse, Carriage & Bus - Kensington Church Street

One of the odd parts of working in one of the richest and most well to do areas of London is that you occasionally see things on the street that you rarely see anywhere else in the city. Royal motorcades to and from Kensington palace, billionaires leaving their mansions on the UK's most expensive street and police armed with machine guns to name but a few. 

There's also a lot of horses. I'm not really sure why, but there seems to be more horses in Kensington than any where else in central London. In fact just the other day I saw a carriage being pulled by two horses weaving it's way through rush hour traffic on Kensington Church Street complete with two well dressed coachmen. It looked transplanted from a century gone by where that kind of transport was common place. If it had been in a film or TV show I would have called it a rather lazy British stereotype. I pulled out my phone but instead of taking a photo I made a recording of the horses as they passed a bus that had just pulled up.

Field Recording: A Glitch On The DLR

DLR map

Public transport in London is a fact of life. Unless you are one of the chosen few who can walk to work or drive, you will end up on public transport at least once a week. being confined to a small space for a long period of time on a regular basis will, unsurprisingly, become rather monotonous. I've spoken before on this blog about how I try to lighten up the 2 hours of each day I spend on the tube by listening to podcasts.

That said, every so often, something a bit strange happens that catches you off guard. Whether it's people in fancy dress, passengers exhibiting bizarre behavior or just something disgusting, public transport in London does throw you the occasional surprise. A few months ago I was on my way into work on the DLR (Docklands Light Railway), when I noticed that the automated PA announcements that tell you which station is next on the line had a weird delay effect. The result was a series of announcements that were pretty hard to decipher and for some strange reason, slightly unnerving. Because of these strange sounding announcements, passengers, some of whom see each other every day and never so much as acknowledge each others existence, we're smiling at each other and laughing slightly confusedly at what was going on. As I was standing next to one of the PA speakers, I pulled out my iPhone and began to record the announcements. 

The Tefifon

One of my favourite things about audio technology is the vast amount of strange, obscure formats and machines that exist in the world. For every innovation that changed the way people listened to music, the CD for example, there were a handful of lesser know ones that never quite made it (hands up who still owns a Minidisc player?).

The Tefifon is a little known audio format from 1950's Germany and utilises a thin, flexible vinyl strip to store music. It's coiled up inside a plastic cartridge much like an old 8-track tape would be. Techmoan, a youtube user with a wonderful channel full of interesting and informative tech reviews (I really recommend his HI-FI videos playlist), got hold of a Tefifon and has produced a detailed and pretty fascinating deconstruction of the machine.
 
 Whilst the machine can hardly be called groundbreaking and the audio quality isn't going to give vinyl a run for it's money, it's beautifully designed and the artwork on the cartridge sleeves is fantastic. It's a wonderful artifact and a clever idea, but I never want to hear that version of "Tutti Frutti" again.

Scott Carrier's Home Of The Brave

From https://www.facebook.com/homebravepodcast

If you've spent much time listening to This American Life, the wonderful weekly radio show and podcast from Chicago Public Media, then there is a good chance you have heard a story by Peabody award winner, Scott Carrier.

For me, what sets Carrier's stories apart form the other segment producers, writers and reporters on This American Life is his strangeness. His slow, careful way of talking and his high pitched voice make his segments on the show seem somewhat tense. Enhancing that feeling is the fact that his pieces are often quite personal in nature and punctuated with details of what seems like a uneasy life. For example, his latest appearance on the show, in the episode "Good Guys", he talks about his wife leaving him after an episode where he tore the walls out of the house with out warning.

But it's exactly this intensity and personal detail in his work that I find so compelling. Along with the slight uncomfortable feeling of hearing such details broadcast publicly, Carrier's humanity is really what shines through in all of his work, albeit in a slightly strange, other-worldly way. You feel that he really cares about the subjects he's talking about and the people he's talking too. There's a dry humor to his work as well. Often I feel, listening to his stories and his delivery, that I get some of the jokes in the work but not all of them. That some of the jokes are maybe just for Scott. Part of what keeps me listening is the hope that I maybe, later, understand a few more of them.

That's why his new podcast, and the first show dedicated solely to Carrier's work, Home Of The Brave is so interesting to listen to. Carrier is a man who at various stages in his life has always carried a tape recorder with him and each episode contains some of those recordings together with some narrative context. Whether it's a conversation with an old friend, interviews with people about the end of the world or a compilation of various fascinating recordings from around his neighborhood, the show invariably makes for compelling listening. Carrier has a great skill for capturing people on tape. His recordings are so evocative and well assembled that you get an almost complete sense of who the people he's talking to are. People seem compelled to talk to him and open up in a way they wouldn't to most men with a microphone.

The website for the show is almost a perfect visual representation of the show. Simple and spare on details, but containing all you need to get a perfect sense of what's going on. Carrier's, frankly brilliant, photographs accompany a simple audio player for each episode of the show. A perfect example of the dry humor I mentioned earlier is the promotional video on the "about" page. It's one minute and nineteen seconds of Carrier and his dog in the car, listening and occasionally barking along to "Television Man" by Talking Heads. That's it.

Augi Bear from Scott Carrier on Vimeo.

Home Of The Brave is the work of a man who has very thoughtfully and skillfully recorded and presented his interest in the world and people around him. The show is full of quirks and idiosyncrasies, but so is the world and so are people, so in that way, it's a perfect representation.