Sleeve notes from the album:
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Rodriguez: After The Fact ( originally titled Coming From Reality)
If ever there is an air of intrigue and mystery around a pop artist, it is around the artist known as Rodriguez. There is no air of intrigue and mystery around him anywhere else in the world (with the exception of Australia, Zimbabwe and New Zealand), because his two albums "Coming from Reality" (After the Fact) and "Cold Fact" were monumental flops everywhere else. However, South Africans took to Rodriguez like hot chewing gum to takkies, and his album "Cold Fact" was stuck to turntables all around Southern Africa. It has mainstream appeal without being anywhere near mainstream in content. The songs were about hard drugs, disillusionment, mysoginy and the depression of the inner city. But they were gems all the same. From the utterly stoned "Sugar Man" to the hard core cynicism of "I wonder", the songs were blasted out in motels in Trompsburg, on secluded beaches on the south coast and in schools and varsities around the country. Housewives would iron to lines like "Jumpers, Coke and Sweet Mary Jane" and presumably think the song was about jerseys, Coca Cola and the cousin from Port Elizabeth.
Whatever. The album was definitely great. South Africans loved it, learned it, exported it, sang it in a thousand bars, told their friends overseas
about it and those in exile would tape it from their friends in South Africa because they could never get it across the border and think of home.
Soon after the success of "Cold Fact" the first Rodriguez album "Coming From Reality" (already forgotten overseas) was found and released in
South Africa as a follow up and was renamed "After The Fact". After being around for a while, it was deleted and promptly dropped off the edge
of the world. At this stage, one could still find the odd rare copy of "The Best of Rodriguez", which mixed the best cuts of both albums with one
or two unreleased tracks thrown in for good measure.
So a mystery was born and a mysterious lost album was sought after. Record shops started getting bombarded with requests for "After the fact"
from teenagers who weren't even born when "Cold Fact" was a hit. Word got around that Polygram couldn't release it because they had absolutely
nothing. The masters were missing. They didn't even have a copy of the LP. There were no concrete cold facts about the artist known as
Rodriguez. It is not known if he is even alive or dead. Any musicologist detectives out there?
MAD ANDY AND SUGAR
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mythology |
forum |
cold fact |
after the fact |
best of... |
live fact |