Rodriguez live in London

[Jibe Monkey]

For those that are interested, he's playing Hammersmith Apollo in June

http://www.hammersmithapollo.com/rod...-06-08_7:.html

[Hugh]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-21446510

[boards_PaulP]

I see yer man is playing the Hop Farm festival this year, Arf

http://hopfarmfestival.com/

Friday night with MBV, Horrors and Dinosaur Jr looks good too.

[Arf]

tHAT hOP fARM L wOOOOOAHH.. Sorry, try that again:
That Hop Farm lineup has been spectacular over the years, not been yet but maybe this is the year, if it warms up by then.

[Capie]

Cold Fact was pretty much the soundtrack to my teen life too. My family used to camp on top of the dune at Robberg Beach in Plettenberg Bay for a month every December. Where the Euro mansions now sit, we used to put up our tents and fight off the mambas and the stale water-induced tummy runs. Every day, I'd carry a board down to the water and sail around the bay. My sister had a ghetto blaster that could do tape-to-tape recordings. It spent most days on the beach blasting out Rodriguez and it is probably responsible for two dozen bootlegged copies of Cold Fact. At night, we'd get a ride to the local discotheque (The Cave) and we'd all scream "How many times you've had sex," like it was the most rebellious thing you could say (which it probably was considering the song was banned and sex was evil during the dark days of Apartheid).

After democracy broke out, a bunch of has-been bands came to SA. We'd been cut off during the years of cultural sanctions so were happy to pay a fortune to see someone that hadn't had a hit in 20 years. It didn't occur to me that Rodriguez hadn't been a huge star in the rest of the world and I assumed this was another attempt to get me to pay to see a stale show. I'm so sorry I missed that show now. I made up for it by going to one of the recent concerts at the Grand West in Cape Town and though Rodriguez won me over with his personality and though his music is as relevant today as it was back then, from a musical perspective, I was disappointed. He battled to keep time and tune and the band struggled to find him in the music. If you're considering going to a Rodriguez concert, I wouldn't go because you want to see a great show. Go for the man, go to experience the dignity and the humility of this incredible person.

An interesting tidbit: the house we are renting in Cape Town is the one that Rodriguez stayed in when he was in Cape Town the first time. In the film Rodriguez is interviewed on our balcony and there are shots of him in our stairwell. Apparently he refused to sleep in the bed and curled up on the canape in the bedroom! Our neighbours heard that he was staying there and brought their 3 year-old son over to meet the legend. That little boy is now a teenager learning to play the guitar, struggling with the chords to Sugarman!