from: East Los Angeles, CA
website: www.loslobos.org
myspace: www.myspace.com/loslobos
Also helping out with the previews this year is my friend John, who you can find on WRVU every Sunday spinning on The Mixdown. He's also responsible for some of the best concert phototography in Nashville, and you can check out his photos on his website.
David Hildalgo is a musical genius. In the same way that Ray Charles is a genius. Or Neil Young. Or Prince. Or perhaps most appropriately, Bruce Springsteen. As Springsteen managed to capture the essence of growing up with sweat on your forehead and grease on your hands in suburban New Jersey, Hildalgo and his band of wolves have managed to distill the sounds, the feelings and the life of East L.A. and turn them into some of the best American music of the last quarter-century. Well, a bit longer than that actually, since the band celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2004, garnering three Grammys and a #1 single (their cover of Richie Valens' "La Bamba", which topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1987) along the way.
The guys who humbly referred to themselves as "Just Another Band From East L.A." (a Frank Zappa nod) came together in the early 1970s, with the core of Hildalgo playing guitar, writing songs and singing, Louie Peréz on guitar and percussion, Conrad Lozano on bass and perhaps the best left-handed guitarist since Jimi Hedrix passed, the amazing Cesar Rosas. They did mostly local gigs like weddings and barrio parties, but in 1980 got an opening slot for Johnny Rotten's Public Image, Ltd. project, garnering them both the support of the local punk community and their eventual stalwart sax player, Philly's Steve Berlin (via the roots rockin' Blasters.) Cougar Estrada is the sixth official member of the pack, adding drums & percussion to the mix. (The band are frequently joined live by Victor Bisetti, adding even more percussive attack to their hip-shakin' sound.) After a series of successful albums on Slash, culminating in the mainstream celebrity surrounding "La Bamba," they released an album of traditional Mexian music, La Pistola y El Corazon that won them a Grammy but didn't do well commercially. After 1990's The Neighborhood, the group turned to Mitchell Froom to produce their masterpiece Kiko, an experimental narrative that also did not fare well in the marketplace and they produced their last album for Warner Brothers in 1996, the similarly adventurous Colossal Head.
The band returned to recording on Hollywood Records in 1999, following a spate of movie soundtrack work and side projects (both Hildalgo and Rosas are still involved with the Latin all-star band Los Super Seven.) The highlight of this new crop has been 2002's Good Morning Aztlán but all of the band's work in the 21st century has been top shelf material. Never one to rest or their laurels, Los Lobos released their first live set in 2005, a CD/DVD capturing a performance at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore and their new album The Town and the City is due out September 12th, so plan on hearing some fresh music at the show!
"Kiko and the Lavender Moon" (from Kiko)
"Good Morning Aztlan" (from Good Morning Aztlán)
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