“I just want to be remembered as an ordinary legend,” quipped Rodriguez Wednesday night at Barclays Center. Perhaps just plain old “ordinary” would be a better description.
The singer, who shot to fame off the back of last year’s documentary “Searching For Sugar Man,” gingerly played a set filled with uninspired folk¬-rock numbers, amateurish covers and corny jokes in a way that suggested his sudden fame won’t last long.
The 71¬year¬old has obviously been caught off guard by the recent attention and it showed throughout his performance.
Although Rodriguez is a legend in South Africa (where the anti¬-Apartheid movement used his songs as a clarion call), much of the singer’s cult fan base has long wondered why the two albums he released in the early 1970s were not more successful. The answer is simple: They just weren’t very good.
Rodriguez’s love of Bob Dylan clearly runs deep, but it quickly gets tiresome. Aside from the unmistakable nasal whine that Rodriguez constantly imitates, almost every one of his numbers steals liberally from Dylan’s run of largely peerless albums from the mid¬1960s.
You can hear it on songs such as “Crucify Your Mind,” which feels as if something that was recorded on a dud day during the “Blonde On Blonde” sessions. His signature track, “This Is Not A Song, It’s An Outburst,” also takes the mind¬-expanding lyrical lightning heard on “It’s Alright Ma, (I’m Only Bleeding)” and reduces it to a level of potency that is closer to a politically minded nursery rhyme.
It’s a telling sign that the crowd in the arena responded only to songs such as the lilting ballad “Sugar Man” and “I Wonder,” which feature prominently in the film. It goes to show that most of these “fans” aren’t here to herald the Detroit singer’s overlooked genius; they’re here merely to see and be a part of his Cinderella story.
In fairness, it’s hard to begrudge Rodriguez his moment in the sun, and even though the music isn’t up to scratch, he does exude a great charm and wisdom between songs.
“Hate is too strong an emotion to waste on someone you really don’t like,” he opined wittily at one point.
Later on, he also took an opportunity to make an impassioned plea to end violence toward women. He doesn’t just talk the talk, either. If the rumors are to be believed, he gives away his gigantic tour earnings for shows like this (and Thursday night’s gig at Radio City) to friends and family while still living the same modest life he always has done.
As a human being, Rodriguez makes a great impression. It’s a shame the same cannot be said of him as a musician.