Rodriguez: Cold Fact

My friend at Saint Cleveland turned me on to this re-released gem from 1970. Sixto Diaz Rodriguez was a full-time factory worker and a part-time freak-folkie from Detroit. His music, a blend of the fading idealism of the 1960s and his own stark vision of the future, reflects the sense of dismay coming over many rust belt residents. While the social unrest and urban decay of Rodriguez’s home city weigh heavily on his songwriting, he ably combines elements of beat poetry, psychedelic rock and funky pop to great effect. The loping strut of “Hate Street Dialogue” calls to mind another Motor City fixture, only this street-walking cheetah has a heart full of worry, not napalm. The heavy-handed “Only Good For Conversation” is part “Smoke on the Water,” part “Big Bottom” – so much so that I can almost see Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls on the double bass when I close my eyes.

Actually, the most glaring influence on Cold Fact is Donovan: “Sugar Man” and “Crucify Your Mind” are both so Donovan-esque, with mystic hippie statements like “silver magic ships, you carry…sweet Mary Jane” over languid guitar strumming, that it’d be safe to call Rodriguez the Detroit Donovan. Conversely, “I Wonder” is straight-up doo-wop-pop with an infectious bass line and a counterculture bent.

The entire album is colored by a serious feeling of disillusion, made clearer with a pointed frustration not unlike Dylan’s. The second to last track on side two, “Gomorrah (A Nursery Rhyme),” is a haunting blues with a choir of ghosts singing “America the Beautiful” on the fadeout. The song details the seamy underbelly of not only his city (“the ladies on my street aren’t there for their health”) but “your city.” Observing Detroit as a place of poverty, squalor and depravity, Rodriguez applies his thinking to the rest of the country, commenting on the sad state of the union. Though I’m sure he wasn’t alone in his disenchantment, his record didn’t sell for shit. Here’s hoping that the recent reissue can reach a new generation of the pissed-off and bummed-out, if only so the music can be heard.