Log #28 - Lost and Found, the Unusual Career Trajectory of The Sugarman

Like many I discovered Rodriguez through the superb Searching for Sugarman film. My partner wanted to go to the cinema and I'd read rave reviews about the film Argo which was also showing (also a brilliant film incidentally). I wasn't fussed about seeing the Sugarman film but I was wrong and it was fascinating. I knew nothing about him apart from through the track Sugarman which appeared on a David Holmes DJ mix album in 2002 entitled Come Get It I Got It.  And as I knew nothing and indeed had no idea if he was still alive the suspense in the film during "the search" was tangible. I'm sure the story of a poor manual labourer from Detroit achieving overdue fame and fortune in South Africa unbeknownst to himself was somewhat romanticised but still a great one.

*spoiler alert* I don't think there are many music fans left with an interest in his music who would not know the outcome of the film so it is ok for me to say that a still living Rodriguez was tracked down and by coincidence he appeared at Brighton Dome just two weeks after I saw the film in November 2012.

It was a superb concert where a fragile but strong voiced Rodriguez played most of the tracks from his only two albums Cold Fact and Coming From Reality plus a storming encore of Blowin' in the Wind (Rodriguez was yet another artist originally hailed as the new Dylan or could have been as good as...). The former album is the more famous and includes the Sugarman track but I actually think the Coming From Reality album is stronger. This edition includes a couple of new outtakes and B sides.

As a tragic aside the Oscar winning director of the Searching for Sugarman film shockingly took his own life in 2014: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/searching-sugarman-director-dead-thr-710882

1. Rodriguez - Coming From Reality
2. Bob Dylan - Desire
3. Iron and Wine - Around the Well CD 1
4. Neil Young - After the Goldrush
5. Calexico - Garden Ruin
6. Van Morrison - Moondance/St. Dominic's Preview*

A bit of a cheat on the whole selection this week as I was on holiday and away from the CD magazine. These are the CDs I had with me and was able to play in a hire car. Amazingly I really was on the way to some Aztec ruins in Mexico when I heard Bob Dylan sing: "Past the Aztec ruins and the ghosts of our people" from Romance in Durango off of my favourite Dylan album Desire. #evocative

Durango is a real place in Northern Mexico

*The last CD in the list is a home made compilation of two of Van Morrison's greatest albums (sometimes fun to do this when you can fit two on the same CD) - a combination not officially available.

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Log #27 - Four Tet Doing The Rounds

1. Rodriguez - Coming From Reality
2. Money Mark - Mark's Keyboard Repair
3. Fairport Convention - The History Of
4. Four Tet - Rounds
5. Wagon Christ - Sorry I Make You Lush
6. Van Morrison - The 1967 New York Sessions

Cover album is from Four Tet. I really like this DJ Artist, real name Keiran Hebden, who composes his own material. Seeing him live too was a good experience (not normally the case I find with DJ sets as a spectacle). This is the only album I have of his and by many accounts is the best one to start with. There are some great hooks and loops and lugubrious jazzy down beats similar to DJ Shadow's best stuff. Centrepiece is the piano piece Unbroken. And They All Look Broken Hearted is fascinating with it's phased Japanese koto.

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Log #26 - How to Tell the Temperature from a Cricket

1. Rodriguez - Coming From Reality
2. Money Mark - Mark's Keyboard Repair
3. Sly and the Family Stone - The Collection
4. Four Tet - Rounds
5. Wagon Christ - Sorry I Make You Lush
6. Van Morrison - The 1967 New York Sessions

Wagon Christ is one of the pseudonyms of Luke Vibert - a prolific DJ and mixer, like Aphex Twin, from Cornwall. What I admire about Vibert's output is that although he covers different styles (electronica, acid, disco, dance, trance) he always stamps his own personality on his music - a characteristic not all that common in the rather anonymous world of DJ mixing. I found my way into Luke Vibert via his Stop the Panic album with slide guitarist BJ Cole - an unusual marriage, but one that works brilliantly.

That cricket was chirping at 76 degrees fahrenheit.

Also on the playlist this week is an intriguing album from Money Mark. Money Mark is actually Mark Nishita who has played keyboards with The Beastie Boys. Hear this frankly bonkers but brilliant track Insects Are All Around Us and ponder if you have ever heard anything like it before.

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