Rodriguez at Lincoln Hall, courtesy of Enchufate.
“Rodriguez at Lincoln Hall, September 20, 2012â€
By Benjamin Ortiz, ChicagoMusic.org Contributor
September 21, 2012
The sold-out crowd of about 500 souls at Lincoln Hall remains unusually still, in church-like reverent quietude, except for a few stray catcalls of encouragement and enthused gratitude, while lone guitarist Sixto Diaz Rodriguez takes two or three minutes of false starts, whispering to his instrument and to himself, as he finds the right tuning for his song “Sugar Man,†that eerie, jangling, psychedelic gutter ditty full of wistful answers that make all existential questions melt away, the first tune on his first Cold Fact record from 1970 that has survived the mythologized death and total disappearance of that great American folk-rock voice that should’ve hit as big as Bob Dylan but simply (and almost) never was.
