
School of Rock
2003
Two South Africans set out to discover what happened to their unlikely musical hero, the mysterious 1970s rock 'n' roller, Rodriguez.
Malik Bendjelloul
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3/14/2024
7/10
This is quite a curious documentary that at times made me wonder if the whole story was an hoax. It's all about Sixto Rodriguez who made a couple of albums in the early 1970s that had some critical acclaim but didn't track at all with the audience. Well not in the USA, they didn't. In South Africa it was rumoured that they shifted almost half a million copies before the singer was reputed to have set himself on fire - live on stage! Now this was long before there would have been any coverage and it seems the story became apocryphal - people claiming to have seen what they didn't. They didn't because the thrust of this piece is that someone has managed to track him down, very much alive and only just retired from working construction in Detroit. Imagine his delight when "Sugar" Segarman - a record shop owner and amateur detective in chief gets the chance to interview him! What ensues offers us a soundtrack of his music - I thought a sort of hybrid of Don McLean and Bob Dylan, whilst we listen to his version of events. A somewhat less exaggerated and newsworthy version at that. Peppered with a few interviews from music journalists along the way, Malik Bendjelloul delivers an intriguing look at this story. Do you believe it or not?
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