Los Lobos
Ever since Elvis Presley bowed on the national stage, our greatest rock’n’rollers have transmuted personal experience and vision into universal art. So it is with Los Lobos, who have distilled their lives as sons of Los Angeles’ predominately Hispanic East Side into powerful, affecting, and uncommon music.
The group was founded in the early 1970’s by David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas, Louie Perez, and Conrad Lozano, who met as students at Garfield High in East L.A. The four musicians had played a variety of different styles in neighborhood groupsrock’n’roll in the manner of the Beatles and the Stones, R&B, soul, blues, heavy funk; Lozano had been a member of Tierra, the most popular Latino aggregation of the day. However, the four friends came under the sway of the era’s political and cultural ferment, which gave rise to the Brown Berets and the Chicano Power movement, and began listening to and studying the traditional Mexican music their parents played in their homes.
Deriving their name, Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles (the Wolves of East L.A.), from that of a popular Tex-Mex band, Los Lobos del Norte, the band developed a repertoire of some 150 traditional songs, and accompanied themselves on the acoustic instruments employed by their Mexican precursorsbajo sexto, guitarron, jaran requinto, and button accordian. In time, Los Lobos became a popular fixture in East L.A., playing prolifically at barrio restaurants, parties and weddings. In 1978, the band released an LP of traditional material; in a mockingly self-deprecating reference to an album by Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, it was titled Just Another Band From East L.A. But, as that title suggests, the group never left their rock’n’roll roots entirely behind: For one ongoing gig at an Orange County restaurant, they brought their electric instruments along, and shook up the house with a mix of rockers, R&B tunes, and blues covers.
Los Lobos made their first fateful foray outside their home base in May of 1980, when Tito Larriva, a member of L.A.’s Tex-Mex punk trio the Plugz, got the band an opening slot at the local debut of Public Image, Ltd., the English band fronted by the Sex Pistols’ former lead singer John Lydon, at the Olympic Auditorium in downtown L.A. The punk rockers in the crowd at the old boxing arena were unprepared for the sight of four long-haired Hispanics performing acoustic folk songs, and pelted the band with everything they could lay their hands on. At least one audience member was highly intrigued by the brief set, howeverSteve Berlin, a Philadelphia-born saxophonist who would soon be performing with the Downey-based roots-punk band the Blasters.
Ironically, it was the punk-rock audience that embraced Los Lobos little more than a year after that chaotic performance. The members of the Blasters had been impressed by the stylistic reach they heard on tapes of the Lobos’ electric sets and on the band’s self-released singles, which covered terrain from the traditional Mexican dance tune "Volver, Volver," to a cover of the Premiers’ old East L.A. hit "Farmer John." The Downey band helped secure opening slots for Los Lobos at the Sunset Strip rock fortress the Whisky A Go Go and soon the group was shaking the rafters at such punk strongholds as the Cathay De Grande, Club Lingerie, Club 88, and the Music Machine.
In 1982, Los Lobos were signed to Slash Records, the Warner Bros.-distributed record label founded by L.A.’s punk-rock house organ Slash Magazine. An EP, And A Time To Dance, recorded with Steve Berlin now on board as a member, was released in 1983; the record’s material ranged from such original rockers as "Let’s Say Goodnight" and "How Much Can I Do?" to a prophetic cover of Ritchie Valens’ "Come On Let’s Go" and the traditional two-step "Anselma." The latter song put Los Lobos on the national map: In 1984, it received the Grammy Award in the newly instituted category of best Mexican/American performance.
Through the mid-eighties, Los Lobos were recognized as one of L.A.’s most prominent and extravagantly talented bands. Their Slash albums How Will The Wolf Survive? (1984) and By the Light of the Moon (1987) found the group melding their traditional and roots-rock influences on a stunning brace of original songs"Don’t Worry Baby," "A Matter of Time," "Will the Wolf Survive?," "One Time One Night," "River of Fools;" both albums reached the national top 50 and topped critics’ year-end lists. They toured nationally and abroad, and their concerts at L.A.’s Greek Theatre became an annual summertime event that found punk rockers and East L.A. homeboys dancing in the aisles side-by-side.
In 1987, Los Lobos found unprecedented commercial success, after director Luis Valdezfounder of the Hispanic theater troupe El Teatro Campesino, and author of the breakthrough East L.A. historical drama Zoot Suitasked the band to supply the soundtrack for La Bamba, his feature about the life and tragic death of Ritchie Valens, the first Hispanic rock’n’roll star. The film became a surprise box-office smash, but the soundtrack album was an even bigger hit, selling two million copies; the Lobos’ version of the title track (which Valens himself had adapted from a traditional Mexican huapango) reached No.1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 Singles chart (trumping Valens’ original, which only went as high as No. 22 in 1958.
Los Lobos had arrived, but they instantly understood that their chart-topping status could become an artistic cul-de-sac. So, in 1988, the band returned to the foundations of their music with La Pistola y El Corazon, an album of acoustic traditional music; it won the group a second Grammy Award. In 1990, the release the all-electric album The Neighborhood, which summed up their major musical and thematic concerns.
By 1992, Los Lobos were hungry for new musical challenges, and they rose to those challenges with the release of Kiko. Co-produced by the band with Mitchell Froom, and engineered by Tchad Blake, the album took their music into head-spinning new sonic realms; the band’s skewed, experimental approach in the studio resulted in a kind of auditory equivalent to the "magical realism" of such Latin writers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This style deepened and widened on 1996’s Colossal Head; by the time that album was released, Los Lobos were also increasingly in demand for movie soundtrack work, and contributed to the scores of such major Hollywood productions as Desparado (resulting in a third Grammy), From Dusk Til Dawn, The Mambo Kings, and Feeling Minnesota.
Los Lobos continue to stake out fresh creative territory in 1999. The release of their Hollywood Records debut This Time was prefaced by a series of releases that found the band members probing the sources of their sound in unexpected waysCesar Rosas’ Soul Disguise (a stirring roots exploration by the Lobos’ rock’n’roll heart and soul), Houndog, (a kozmic blues recital by David Hidalgo and ex-Canned Heat member Mike Halby) and Latin Playboys’ Dose (the second avant-garde exploration of Chicano culture by Hidalgo, Louie Perez, Mitchell Froom, and Tchad Blake).
Like these releases, This Time ups Los Lobos’ artistic ante, and finds this extraordinary band with their feet in the streets of East L.A. and their heads in the stratosphere, forging an altogether unique and prescient music for a new musical millennium.
--Chris Morrishey whats up guys! man you guys rock! i've never had a chance to see a live show but hey keep me posted on anything coming up. best wishes and much love. peaceWe just finish this great song I think you should really check this one out! It's called 'Roll it up by 7thSign Music.
Here's where you can find it:
Band page: http://www.soundclick.com/7thsignmusicHey what are YOU guys doing here??? They just let ANYBODY in here don't they?!?
Anyway, I can't get NONE of your tunes to play. Don't know why. Doesn't matter, since I've heard most of your official stuff before, and it's all GREAT! It's nice to see y'all here - shocking, but nice.
If you want to check out my stuff, it was all recorded on four track cassette, on the cheap. I think it sounds pretty good considering. "Love To Love You" took #3 on garageband.com, so I must be doing something right.
Great to see ya here. Hope I can get your songs to work soon!All comments (13)
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