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It was a group called Los Lobos that had the unusual idea
of putting an accordion, a saxophone and something called a
bajo sexto alongside drums and Fender Stratocaster guitars
and then blasting a ranchera-flavored folk tune or a
Conjunto inspired melody through double reverb amps at about
twice the volume you'd normally expect to hear.
``They were Latinos who weren't afraid to break the mold of
what's expected and what's traditionally played. That made them
legendary, even to people who at first weren't that familiar
with their catalog,'' said Greg González of the young,
Grammy-winning Latino-funk fusion band Grupo Fantasma.
To the guys in Los Lobos, however, the band that began to take
shape some 40-odd years ago in the hallways of a barrio high
school is still ``just another band from East LA,'' the words
the group has used in the title of not one but two of its more
than two dozen albums.
As a yearlong celebration of Los Lobos' 40th anniversary gets
under way, having officially begun on Thanksgiving, much is
likely to be made of how the band began as a humble mariachi
group, toiling anonymously for nearly a decade at East LA
weddings and backyard parties before the unlikely arrival of
rock stardom.
That's, well, sort of true.
For long before there was mariachi in Los Lobos' life, there was
power-chord rock `n' roll. Before the Latin trio Las Panchos
had an impact, there was Jimi Hendrix.
``I actually went to go see him when I was 14 or 15,'' says
drummer-guitarist and principal lyricist Louie Pérez,
recalling how he had badgered his widowed mother to spend some
of the hard-earned money she made sewing clothes in a sweatshop
on a ticket to a Hendrix show.
``I sat right down front,'' he recalls, his voice rising in
excitement. ``That experience just sort of rearranged my brain
cells.''
About the same time, he had met a guitarist named David
Hidalgo in an art class at James A. Garfield High, the
school made famous in the 1988 film ``Stand and Deliver'' that
profiled Jaime Escalante's success in teaching college-level
calculus to poor barrio kids. Soon the two had recruited fellow
students Conrad Lozano and César Rosas, both
experienced musicians.
``César had played in a power trio,'' Pérez recalls, while
Lozano had been playing electric bass guitar for years.
It was sometime in November 1973 (no one remembers the exact day
so they picked Thanksgiving) when the band is believed to have
been born.
And the group might have stayed just another garage band from
East LA, had it not been for a Mexican tradition called Las
Mañanitas.
``It's a serenade to someone on their birthday,'' Pérez
explains, and the group members' mothers had birthdays coming
up.
``So we learned about four or five Mexican songs and we went to
our parents' homes and did a little serenade,'' Hidalgo recalled
separately.
They were such a hit that they began scouring pawn shops for
genuine Mexican instruments and really learning to play them.
Because they were at heart a rock `n' roll band, however, they
always played the music a little too loud and a little too fast.
That was acceptable at the Mexican restaurants that employed
them, until they decided to break out the Stratocaster guitars
they had so coveted as kids.
``They said, `Well, that's not what we hired you for,''' Pérez
says, chuckling.
So they headed west down the freeway to Hollywood, where
initially the reaction wasn't much better.
Saxophonist Steve Berlin recalls seeing the hybrid group
showered with garbage one night when they opened for Public
Image Ltd. Two years later, however, when they opened for
Berlin's group the Blasters, the reaction was different.
``It was quite literally an overnight success kind of thing,''
the saxophonist recalls. ``By the next morning, everybody I knew
in Hollywood, all they were talking about was this band Los
Lobos.''
A
few nights later, they asked Berlin if he might jam with them.
They were working up some tunes melding punk rock with
Norteño, a Latin music genre that uses an accordion and a
saxophone, and they needed a sax player.
For his part, Berlin says, he had never heard of Norteño music.
Something clicked, however, and soon he was producing the
group's first true rock album, 1984’s ``How Will the Wolf
Survive?'' At the end of the sessions he was in the band.
The next 28 years would be pretty much the same kind of
up-and-down ride as the first 12 were.
The group became international rock stars in 1987 with their
version of the Mexican folk tune ``La Bamba'' for the
soundtrack of the film of the same name. They melded 1950s teen
idol Ritchie Valens’ rock interpretation with the
original Son Jarocho style and sent the song to No. 1.
A
two-year tour and a couple of albums that nobody bought
followed, leaving the group broke and disillusioned.
So they poured their anger and disillusionment into the lyrics
and power chords of ``Kiko,'' the 1992 album now hailed
as their masterpiece. A new version, recorded live, was released
earlier this year.
The influence of Los Lobos' cross-cultural work can be heard to
this day in the music of such varied young Latino groups as the
hip-hop rockers Ozomatli, the Son Jarocho-influenced
alt-music band Las Cafeteras and the Latino pop-rock
group La Santa Cecilia, says Josh Kun, an expert
on cross-border music.
``All of these bands inherited, wittingly or not, the
experimental and style crossing instincts that Los Lobos proved
were possible while hanging onto and developing your roots as a
Mexican-American group,'' said Kun, who curated the Grammy
Museum's recent ``Trouble in Paradise'' exhibition that
chronicled the modern history of LA music.
For Los Lobos, winner of three Grammys, that was just the
natural way of doing things for guys, Pérez says, who learned
early on that they didn't fit in completely on either side of
the U.S.-Mexico border.
``As Mexican-Americans in the U.S. we're not completely accepted
on this side of the border. And then on the other side of the
border it's like, `Well, what are you?''' he mused.
``So if that's the case,'' he added brightly, ``then, hey, we
belong everywhere.''
Editor’s
Note: Los Lobos will be at the Forest Hills Fine Arts Center
in Grand Rapids MI on February 8, 2013 and at the La-Z-Boy
Center, Meyer Theater, Monroe County Community College) in
Monroe MI on February 9, 2013.
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