Joe Moore wrote:
+1 for Sugarman .
In fact its going to be showing on DSTV MNET PREM channel 103 at 02.30 tomorrow morning 8)
Will be repeated again several times , I'm sure 8)
I finally got to see it.
I liked the overall arc of the movie - the story of a musician getting late recognition. And Rodriguez seems like the real hippy deal with his community activism and his inclination to take only what he needs and share the rest around.
I thought the editing was.... odd actually. There's a scene of Segerman parking a car that jumps around and makes the parking look very jerky. Why? Another where Rodriguez is being interviewed. There's some talk then an obvious cut (not a criticism, doccies have a lot of obvious cuts these days) to.... wait for it.... Rodriguez taking a sip of water. Then it cuts back to an interview.
Some of the special effects are cheap, but that might speak of budgetary constraints.
I don't trust much of what Segerman says about what went on with that record in SA in the 70s. Is he serious in suggesting that a single copy found it's way into SA and was repeatedly copied? Maybe he's repeating an urban legend but then why not mention that it's an urban legend and then tell the prosaic truth: You could buy that record in OK Bazaars and CNA. The copying mechanism back then would have been cassette - unless you had a buddy with a record cutting lathe and a record press and a pile of blank vinyl discs - and that would have meant degradation of quality with each generation of copying (unlike modern digital technology). Several of my class mates at school had that record (I finished school in '75, so that's the very latest that I saw these discs) and it was a vinyl disc in a sleeve - not a duplicate.
The connections he draws between liberal politics and listening to Rodriguez are very tenuous indeed.
It kind of feels like Bartholemew and especially Segerman have swallowed some propaganda of their own making.
But full marks to Rodriguez himself. He doesn't look like he's had an easy life (seems to struggle to walk upright and is unsteady of gait) but he seems not to be embittered by his lack of success (not something that you can say for, say, Nick Drake) and seems not to have allowed the very late recognition to go to his head. Nice for and of him. But I think the movie is untrustworthy as regards the peripheral stories.
And see Dave Marks's letter to the SA Rolling Stone. A big problem with this movie and it's revisionism is that will steal the thunder of the real deal musicians like Roger Lucey and James Phillips (strangely omitted when the names of the other Voelvryers are being chucked around) who DID take the stand and who DID pay a price for doing so.
