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Los Lobos
For Los Lobos, finding the band's voice involved going back to its heritage, then expanding the sound with more recent influences.
By PHILIP BOOTH
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 29, 2001
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The members of Los Lobos have been known to grumble in private, and sometimes publicly, about what La Bamba did to their careers.
The 1987 cover of the Richie Valens tune, from the movie of the same name, topped the pop charts for two months or so, permanently identifying the band with the lightweight reworking of a familiar folk melody.
The unexpected benefit: A chance to demonstrate pride about their roots in the Mexican culture of East Los Angeles.
"We realized that the No. 1 song in the nation was by a band called Los Lobos who were Mexican-American kids from Los Angeles, playing a 150-year-old traditional Mexican song," Louie Perez says from his home in Southern California. "We had the whole world singing along. That was a huge cultural statement."
The band followed up with La Pistola Y El Corazon, an all-Spanish album of traditional Mexican songs.
"We took that focus and we said, 'Let's put that spotlight on something that really means something to us and at the same time will communicate more and educate more people about our culture'," Perez says. "Plus, it felt right. Partly, it was to derail the commercial thing. We could have gone on to make La Bamba No. 2 and further trivialize our culture. We weren't about to become caricatures. We had to refocus."
Los Lobos, easily the most accomplished, innovative, eclectic roots-rock band in America, got the boxed-set treatment with El Cancionero: Mas Y Mas, a four-CD retrospective encompassing notable album tracks, B-sides, previously unreleased goodies and material from side projects such as Latin Playboys (Perez and David Hidalgo), Houndog (Hidalgo) and Los Super Seven, as well as Cesar Rosas' solo album.
Released at about the same time was Los Lobos Del Este De Los Angeles (Just Another Band From East L.A.), an artfully packaged reissue of the band's 1977 debut.
Steeped in the R&B, funk and Jimi Hendrix blues-rock of the late '60s and early '70s, the band members initially got together in 1973. On a lark, they decided to try playing traditional songs on acoustic instruments, even though it was the kind of music their parents listened to.
"We discovered an entire world of music," Perez says. "It was something that really excited us so much that we slowly but surely ended up putting the electric instruments aside and spent a good part of 10 years exploring music of our culture."
Joined in 1983 by Philadelphia-born saxophonist/keyboardist Steve Berlin, the band synthesizes many influences into an immediately identifiable sound. Folk, soul, '50s rock, blues, Tex-Mex and jazz elements filtered through Don't Worry Baby, A Matter of Time, I Got Loaded, River of Fools, Will the Wolf Survive? and A Matter of Time, among other '80s songs.
In 1992 they released Kiko, an arty, atmospheric pop masterpiece followed four years later by the even more daring Colossal Head. The somewhat grittier This Time was released in 1999, the same year as a number of side projects by band members.
"All of these solo projects made a lot of people uneasy that we were moving in all these directions," Perez says. "(They were thinking), 'Could that mean the end of Los Lobos?' I look at it like we went out on this camping trip and discovered these cool things and brought them back. Los Lobos is always going to be the main thing."
The death of Rosas' wife, Sandra, in a bizarre feud with her half brother, also cast some doubt over the band's future. She disappeared in October 1999, while the band was on tour, and her remains weren't discovered until last November. Her killer was convicted of murder and received a life sentence.
"There was no music for a long time," Perez says. "But we all got back onstage again, and at that point the healing process started. That's what we were put on this earth to do. Once we reconnected with that (the music), then things started to heal."
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