Cold Fact by Sixto Rodriguez (1970)

I'm a big David Holmes fan. And my favourite song of his is a track called 'Sugarman'. I used to play it all the time and it became a bedroom siren call when my then girlfriend would sing it to me coz I loved it so much ("Sugarman, won't you hurry, coz I'm tired of these things"). We even made our own recording of it ( in the style of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's 'Je t'aime, moi non plus').

Then I found out that David Holmes' had re-recorded Sugarman, and that it was originally penned and performed by an obscure folk rocker called Sixto Rodriguez in 1970. It's from his only album - Cold Fact. Turns out that Cold Fact is bloody brilliant.

Sixto disappeared after the album was released and the record company went bankrupt. Yet somehow the album found it's way to South Africa and became a symbol of optimism and freedom-fighting. He was a star in South Africa throughtout the 1970s and 80s yet nobody knew where he was.

Sixto was eventually tracked down in 1997 through an internet campaign, "The Great Rodriguez Hunt". He was working quietly as a labourer in his home town of Detroit, with no idea that he was a star in South Africa.

He has since started touring and recorded live albums, bringing Cold Fact to a new generation. You have to hear this album - the lyrics are poetry, the music is as beautiful as the best of Bob Dylan. And it is for the most part a really sunny album.

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