LIVE EYE: Los Lobos
eye WEEKLY
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eye WEEKLY October 10, 1996
Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday
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LIVE EYE LIVE EYE
LOS LOBOS
Wednesday, Oct. 16. The Horseshoe, 370 Queen St. W. Sold out.
by
B.F. "MOLE" MOWAT
It would be easy to sum up the career of Los Lobos if your only
exposure to them had occurred in 1987. That was the year the East L.A.
band hit the mersh jackpot with its version of Richie Valens' "La
Bamba," thanks to the Hollywood film autobiography of said deceased
'50s Latino rocker. It was also the year they released By The Light Of
The Moon, a campus favorite back then.
At that point in their career, it looked like the band was set to
become a singer-songwriter's showcase ˆ la R.E.M., reserving such
roots-rock numbers as "Don't Worry Baby" for encore one, "La Bamba"
for encore deux.
Silly me. I should've known better. While it's true that group
lyricist Louie Perez is a thoughtful kind of guy, he's also the
drummer. Which means his concerns are -- how you say -- visceral. Or
in other words, the boom-boom imperative applies. Or howzabout they
roc, dudes.
"After doing this for so long, you know what feels good and what
doesn't," says Perez, 43, during a recent phone interview. "We've
always gone and done our own thing without really thinking whether
it's going to be commercial or not. And the nice thing is, we've
gotten away with it so far."
Perez, along with bassist Conrad Lozano, singer-guitarist Cesar Rosas
and singer and musical jack-of-all-trades David Hidalgo, formed the
band close to 23 years ago after the four of them graduated from
L.A.'s James A. Garfield High School. Former Blaster saxophonist Steve
Berlin has been with the group since 1983, which is long enough to
earn him honorary Chicano status.
After releasing one indie EP in 1978 with the great title of Just
Another Band From East L.A. (later used for the group's sort-of
greatest hits set), Los Lobos signed on in 1982 with Slash Records,
original home of X, The Germs and The Dream Syndicate. Ten years
later, they managed to get out of the deal. In the years between, the
group released three roots-rock albums (How Will The Wolf Survive, By
The Light Of The Moon, The Neighborhood), a great and Grammy-winning
Latino folk album (La Pistola y el Corazon) and an album of
exploratory if overly mannered outre-pop (Kiko).
As has been pointed out by wiser scribes than myself, the group's
latest, Colossal Head (Warner Bros./Warner), is loaded with boom-boom.
What sets it apart from the roots-rock pack is its ability to dance to
the beat of a different drum, to quote the Liquid Paper king. While
Kiko may have been the album that broke the pattern of roots
excursions for the group, it was The Latin Playboys -- a 1994 side
project consisting of Hidalgo, Perez and the group's
production/engineering team of Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake -- that
helped them turn studio experimentation into something that was
effective live. Plus, it was funky, in its own twisted way.
"Hey, it's always great when you can release demos as a finished
project," jokes Perez. "But it prepared us for Colossal Head in a
sense because a lot of it sounds spontaneous and lo-fi."
Perez points to Messrs. Blake and Froom as having become an essential
part of Los Lobos. "They're like band members now. For starters, they
remove a lot of the concerns about technology, which can be
intimidating. They create a suitable environment where we can forget
about peripheral things like that."
If Colossal Head sounds less airy than Kiko, it might have something
to do with the fact that the album was recorded and mixed relatively
quickly, in the space of just over a month. Which suits Perez fine, as
he prefers to work fast.
"I think it was Hank Williams Sr. who once said that if you have to
spend more than half an hour writing a song, it's not worth it. You
know, all these new age writers who've come out with the 'first
thought, best thought' philosophy? Well, that's nothing new. That
idea's been around for at least 6,000 years."
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