Coming from Reality [Extra tracks]

Sixto Rodriguez | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (May 5, 2009)
• Original Release Date: 1970
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Extra tracks
• Label: LIGHT IN THE ATTIC
• ASIN: B001TCHDPS
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #766 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #12 in Music > Classic Rock > Psychedelic Rock
  • #32 in Music > Rock > Folk Rock
  • #46 in Music > Pop > Singer-Songwriters

Editorial Reviews

Vinyl LP pressing. Digitally remastered and expanded reissue of his 1971 album. Coming From Reality is another treat for fans new and old, designed as Rodriguez s vision of a perfect Pop album. Coming From Reality found Rodriguez decamping from Detroit to London s Lansdowne Studios, where the album was recorded with some of the UK s top talent including Chris Spedding and producer Steve Rowland), who recalls Coming From Reality as his all time favorite recording project. The reissue also includes three previously unreleased bonus tracks recorded in Detroit in 1972 with Cold Fact collaborators Mike Theodore and Dennis Coffey, representing the last thing the trio ever did together. --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reality Comes Back - at Last!, May 29, 2009

By 

Richard B. Luhrs (Jackson Heights, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Coming from Reality (Audio CD)

You could say that the good news is the bad news concerning this long-overdue reissue, since with its release the entire recorded output of Detroit singer/songwriter Sixto Rodriguez is available to the public for the first time in over thirty-five years. That output consists of exactly two albums - 1970's COLD FACT and this 1971 follow-up - as well as three additional songs recorded later and first released many years after that. Not much of a catalogue, especially for one of the most unique and worthwhile songsmiths of the past four decades.
I've already touched on the mystery of Rodriguez - which, thanks to the extensive liner notes in these reissues, is no longer that much of a mystery - in my review of FACT, so I'll refer the curious to that nonpareil gem of musical criticism and get right down to brass tacks. COMING from REALITY is a fully worthy successor to FACT, with all of its creator's dizzying wordplay and compositional acumen intact, but it's also a very different album in many respects. Recorded in London with British session musicians and a full string section, REALITY inhabits a separate sonic territory from that of its Motor City predecessor. It's also a good deal less eclectic, which helps to enhance its "album feel" but also casts its weaker moments in sharper relief - not that there are all that many of them.
"Climb Up on My Music" is a tough, driving opener, instantly establishing that blown-glass balance of pop accessibility and esoteric intelligence which has always distinguished the greatest songwriters. "A Most Disgusting Song" is in fact a spoken poem (Proto-rap?) of deceptively humorous twists, while "And I Think of You" is one of Rodriguez's most affecting ballads, a lost love tale equal in its naked sentiment and plausibility to FACT's brief, brilliant "Forget It." "Heikki's Suburbia Bus Tour" brings on the social commentary which dominates the latter half of REALITY in its surreal story of middle America remade as a tourist attraction. "Silver Words?" is a lightweight love song, cute enough but probably a bit too happy for its own good.
Side two of the original LP opens with "Sandrevan Lullabye - Lifestyles," Rodriguez's longest track and a beautifully bitter assault on society's failures effectively sandwiched between two heavily orchestrated instrumental sections. "To Whom It May Concern" is the "snap out of it" tune on this collection, and like most such numbers it doesn't add terribly much. "It Started Out So Nice," however, is powerful stuff, juxtaposing a mythical yesterday of poetic prettiness against the dashed hopes of the present with the aid of a lovely and unintrusive string backing. "Halfway Up the Stairs" is pure fluff, but its mindless positivity almost makes sense as a prelude and first aid kit for "'Cause," Rodriguez's lyrical magnum opus and the most sublimely realized rumination on the very real horrors of human existence you're ever likely to hear. This song makes "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" sound like "Old MacDonald" and closes REALITY with nothing whatsoever left to say.
Not on this CD, however. The final fragments of Rodriguez's musical oeuvre have been appended to his final album for this release, and the listener benefits greatly as a result. Recorded in 1972 or '73 (presumably as the kernel of a planned third album which, like the man's work en toto, was regrettably nipped in the bud), "Can't Get Away," "Street Boy" and "I'll Slip Away" are all winners, the first continuing the episodic social criticism of earlier songs but with a more personalized slant; the second a tuneful, undramatized portrait of a lost soul; and the last a clever farewell number in the best Rodriguez fashion - first class all the way.
Where COLD FACT enjoys that peculiar perfect beauty which only pure accident can achieve, COMING from REALITY makes a concerted effort to be beautiful; and while it succeeds much of the time - resulting in several tracks which are, if anything, stronger than even FACT's best material - there's no denying that it's the patchier half of the pair overall. Nevertheless, "'Cause" and the bonus tracks easily elevate this disc to five-star status, as does the sheer inescapable quality of the artist. I cannot possibly recommend both Rodriguez albums highly enough to anyone reading this. The chance to grab the complete works of a man whose music can comfortably rub shoulders with that of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen or Bruce Springsteen in two easy purchases is not one to be missed. We are all the poorer for the long and storied career Sixto Rodriguez should have had; but we are certainly the richer for having what little there was of that career within reach once again.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another gem from Rodriguez., July 24, 2011

By 

John R. Rogers (Brisbane, Australia) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Coming from Reality (Audio CD)

After having his "At his Best" CD i thought i would see what his other CD was like. I am so glad i purchased this as it is in the same quality. You cannot go wrong with this one....the songs are infectious and who would believe this is from another era.
Sounds as fresh as today. This guy deserves more recognition.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars second great album, June 15, 2009

By 

E. Esquivel "RBT" (LA, CA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Coming from Reality (Audio CD)

more poppy and happy sounding than his first album; but altogether classic cuts from a master poet