Los Lobos "How Will the Wolf Survive?" (4.5*)

It may have peaked at #47 on the Billboard Albums chart with the single reaching the lofty heights of #78 on the Billboard Top 100, but the major label debut from Los Lobos certainly carved the band a viable niche in the musical environment around them. Granted, it’s a niche that draws on a cult following and critical acclaim, and one that didn’t (apart from their status as the La Bamba band) translate into anything resembling mass market success, but that’s in the nature of the niche, isn’t it?

...And a Time to Dance had established the band’s credentials on the good time party band you can get down to side of things if you were on board from the start (which I wasn’t, hence initial misgivings many years ago) but with the major label debut it was time to reveal the outfit as a dance band plus, pointing towards an eclecticism that took a while to work through. The result was an offering that blended danceable R&B, heartfelt ballads, traditional Mexican influences, down and dirty roots rock, and a swag of seasoned salsa.

Inspiration for the title and the title track came from a National Geographic article entitled "Where Can the Wolf Survive", a pertinent question for a bunch of Hispanic musos trying to find a niche while maintaining contact with their Latino roots.

Starting with a T-Bone Burnett/Louie Perez/Cesar Rosas composition rather than something from the more prolific Hidalgo/Perez combination, the album kicks off with a straight-ahead jump electric blues in Don't Worry Baby, stomping away in search of a good time with a darker twist (Life is a fight/And then you die), but don’t worry, maintain the faith and we’ll get through.

It’s much the same with the migrant worker crossing the border in search of a better life in A Matter of Time. There’ll be a temporary separation from the family, but don’t worry, it’ll all work out, We will be alright/And we’ll all be together/It’s just a matter of time. It’s a compassionate look at the concerns of illegal aliens whose status underpins the bottom rungs of the American economy.

Mexican norteño with guitarron, bajo sexto and Hidalgo’s accordion comes to the fore in Cesar Rosas’ Corrido #1, a giddy blend of traditional grooves and good old rock’n’roll that works a treat and shows what The Wolves had been putting down in their own community over the years before they hit the (relative) big time and the same is true of the break-up song that follows. Our Last Night, contrary to what you might expect when you’re talking termination of relationships isn’t one of those crying into the beer efforts, more a rock and roll it now and we’ll figure out where we’re going in the morning sort of thing.

Burnett, Hidalgo and Perez get the writing credit for The Breakdown, four minutes of accordion led feel good until you listen to the lyrics two-step, then it’s off to a seven day version of Saturday night or its equivalent for I Got Loaded’s Cajun R&B grooves (it’s a Little Bob & The Lollipops cover). Steve Berlin’s sax work, and masses percussive handclaps deliver a definite feel all right factor, though one wonders how things are going to look in the cold hard light of morning.

Things take a more serious turn for Evangeline, a tale of a missing seventeen-year-old runaway that still manages to rock along as Hidalgo croons the lyrics about the queen of make believe gone missing after going out dancing on Saturday night.

Rosas is front and centre for I Got to Let You Know‘s two and a half minutes of Mexican punkabilly, and we’re in folklorico territory for the instrumental Lil' King of Everything before Will the Wolf Survive, which kicks off with a joyous thump on the drums. Over jangling guitars Hidalgo invokes the chill of winter/Running across a frozen lake/Hunters hot on his tail/All odds are against him/With a family to provide for/The one thing he must keep alive/Will the wolf survive?

It’s a good question as the wolf is allegorically transformed into Mexican immigrants (and, I guess, young Hispanic musicians) trying to figure out a way to survive and provide for a family while on the run and maintaining a low profile.

It’s going on for thirty years since How Will the Wolf Survive? appeared in the shops, and Los Lobos have, over the intervening decades demonstrated exemplary musical taste, with an eclectic virtuosity that’s rarely flashy, world-class musicians who meld a diverse range of genres into a seamless whole.

A timeless album that was a definite sign of greatness to come...

Los Lobos "By the Light of the Moon" (4.5*)

 If you want to be pedantic it’s actually their fifth recording but (and it’s roughly contemporaneous with the La Bamba soundtrack) but it’s difficult to avoid the suspicion that we’re bordering on the old difficult third album syndrome hereabouts, but there’s a bit more to it than that. After the quantum leap from ...And a Time to Dance to How Will the Wolf Survive there’s an inevitable question of where next, and the answer mightn’t sit too comfortably with those who’d like a repeat of last time, thank you very much.

Things certainly kick off in familiar territory with One Time One Night, but a listen to the lyrics reveal a darker undercurrent running beneath an age-old song about the home of the brave/In this land here of the free and the difference between rhetoric and reality. That’s my reading, anyway, as Hidalgo and Perez take a look at the landscape, don’t particularly like what they see but mask the disappointment behind a lively slice of roots rock.

T-Bone Burnett and Cesar Rosas share the writing credit on the gritty Shakin' Shakin' Shakes, which bops along quite merrily, and makes a pleasant contrast to what’s happening on either side of it. Hidalgo and Pérez are back in the spotlight for Is This All There Is? directing their scrutiny towards a supposed promised land that fails to deliver and leaves tired souls with empty hands asking whether there’s anything around that doesn’t constitute disappointment. Cesar Rosas steps up to the microphone for the traditional Prenda Del Alma, a heartfelt romantic ballad with Hidalgo’s accordion swirling away in the background.

While on the surface All I Wanted To Do Was Dance comes across as smoky R&B there’s a touch of social commentary under the surface, and Rosas, whose assigned writing role seems to involve supplying the hopping and bopping antidote to the darker Hidalgo/Pérez material, is back with Set Me Free (Rosa Lee) which rocks along just fine.

The social realism’s back to the fore, as you’d guess from the title, in The Hardest Time, a portrait of loneliness and domestic despair, a topic you might have thought was being explored further in My Baby's Gone, but it’s Cesar Rosas with a  Chicago blues before the trio of Hidalgo/Pérez compositions that wind things up and present what looks awfully like a statement of the Los Lobos world view.

If you take the first of them, River of Fools at face value, there’s nothing on Earth that’s going to save you from the evils and general meanness that surrounds you, particularly, I guess, if you’re Hispanic and operating on the margins of The Mess We're In. We’re in it and there’s not much chance of getting out of it in this life,  the Tears of God will show you the way/The way to turn.

There is, I think, a definite progression in the emerging Los Lobos catalogue. ...And a Time to Dance was, to all intents and purposes, an introduction (obvious, but a point that needs to be made), a dance album that reflected the environment the band had been working to earn their bread and butter. Once they’d hit that wider stage How Will the Wolf Survive? took those elements and fleshed them out with doses of “this is where we’re coming from” (in other words, continuing the theme from the first one) and “this is what we want to say,” exploring the edges of the social issues and harsh realities of life in the Hispanic community while maintaining the R&B-flavoured rock framework.

By the Light of the Moon takes that a step further, introducing a contemplative side that delivers light and shade to the mix as they head towards more overt social and political comment. In that sort of environment they still need the good time material, and in those circumstances Cesar Rosas’ role is a vital element in the mix. You could point towards this as displaying a “curiously divided soul” but I’m more inclined towards a deliberate intention to leaven the topical exploration of social issues surrounding working-class people who see the notional promise of America passing them by.

Those last two tracks may be leaning towards wishing and hoping but there are, after all, circumstances where wishes and hopes, along with a strong dose of faith is all you’ve got.

Los Lobos "The Neighborhood"

Looking at the eighth album by eminent roots rockers Los Lobos it’s useful to remind oneself of the chronology that lead up to its 1990 release. In the wake of critical rather than commercial success with How Will the Wolf Survive and By the Light of the Moon they’d done the soundtrack to the Richie Valens biopic La Bamba, hit the notional big time with the eponymous single and then run into a big problem.

According to drummer Louie Pérez, We had released a bunch of cool records and then La Bamba happened and we became this big thing. It almost eclipsed everything else that we had done before. I think the band went through a little bit of an identity crisis because, here we were, 'The La Bamba Band.

The reaction was to retreat to their folkloric roots with the all-Spanish La Pistola y el Corazón (1988), and then head back with a collection of new rock-oriented material with the disc under consideration here.

From the start of Down on the Riverbed to the title track at the end of the album, The Neighbourhood runs through a variety of settings and genres, from a bluesy rock exploration of a vagabond existence where you really don’t want to make anything resembling a commitment even though the offer is made (Down on the Riverbed), a countryish hoedown with vocal assistance from Levon Helm (Emily) and a rocking statement of self reliance (a sizzling I Walk Alone).

There’s a semi-Cajun lilt to Angel Dance, a subdued hymn-like vibe with mandolin and rangy vocals from Levon Helm on the delicately minimalist Little John of God before the rock returns for Deep Dark Hole and the muscular fatback stomp of Jimmy McCracklin’s Georgia Slop. I Can't Understand offers an interesting writing credit of Cesar Rosas/Willie Dixon (yes, that Willie Dixon) and rocks along very nicely indeed and, with Hidalgo’s accordion to the fore The Giving Tree heads back into Cajun territory.

They drop it back a tad for Take My Hand then it’s off into Mitch Ryder house party territory  for Jenny's Got a Pony, four and a bit minutes of old-style sixties R&B before the swirling, accordion-led Be Still and a swing back into the territory we started in for The Neighborhood.

A glance at the personnel listing reveals what looks suspiciously like a vote of no confidence in drummer Louis Pérez, with session musos Jerry Marotta and Jim Keltner getting most of the action, but that’s possibly explained by the guitars, jarana, hidalguer in the credits after Louie’s name.

Looking at the big picture (with the benefit of some twenty-odd years’ hindsight) you can trace an evolution in the Los Lobos catalogue from the first two independent releases to the dance/party band (...And a Time to Dance), to eclectic roots rockers hinting at good things to come (How Will the Wolf Survive, great album in itself, but hasn’t quite got there yet) to stretching the wings a bit (By the Light of the Moon).

In my reading of things La Bamba is an understandable flirtation with the mainstream since the preceding  recordings didn’t race out the door by the semi-trailer load and someone had to provide the music for the Latino rocker biopic, so why not?

Reassert the roots with La Pistola y el Corazón, which I suspect has a bit to do with the array of traditional instruments in the listing below. It’s difficult to go much further than I suspect in that regard, since The Neighbourhood is the only album where the Wikipedia provides those details and the other results at the top of a Google search for Los Lobos discography don’t provide ‘em at all. Pistola presumably had them as well, and with the possibilities in the process of being explored things are being set in place for what was to follow.

What followed was, of course, Kiko, one of the great (for my money, anyway) albums. With The Neighborhood they’re well on the way but not quite there yet. Kiko and the subsequent consolidation of the territory is, however, well and truly on the horizon and The Neighborhood’s bringing-it-all-back-home portrait of the ups and downs of an urban existence delivers a slice of Americana (before that label existed as a genre) blending strands of roots music into an intriguing mix that’ll offer plenty of room for subsequent exploration.

Personnel (according to Wikipedia):
David K. Hidalgo - vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, 6-string bass, tiple, accordion, bajo sexto, violine, Hawaiian steel, koto guitar, drums, percussion
Cesar J. Rosas - vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, bajo-sexto, huanpanguera
Louie F. Pérez, Jr. - drums, percussion, guitars, jarana, hidalguer
Conrad R. Lozano - vocals, fender precision and 5-string bass, guitarron, upright bass
Steve M. Berlin - tenor, baritone and soprano saxophones, organ, clavinet, percussion

Jerry Marotta - drums
Danny Timms - organ, wurlitzer, piano
Alex Acuña - percussion, shekere, hand drums
John Hiatt - vocals
Jim Keltner - drums, percussion
Levon Helm - vocals, mandolin
Mitchell Froom - harmonium

Los Lobos "...And a Time to Dance" (4*)

Despite the existence of a brace of earlier recordings, Si Se Puede! (Yes, we can!) and Just Another Band From East L.A. (a.k.a. Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles) this, I guess is where the Los Lobos story really starts, folks.

That first title, a charity album with proceeds from album sales going to the United Farm Workers of America, looks to be a collection of traditional Tex-Mex instrumentals dates back to 1976, and the second, a similar collection which appeared two years later, was self-released. Both, as you’d expect, are available on CD, and we may well find ourselves setting out to track them down at some point in the future, but as far as the general public goes this is, to all intents and purposes, the start of the Los Lobos we’ve grown to know and love.

High school acquaintances David Hidalgo and Louie Pérez had bonded over an affinity for the likes of Fairport Convention, Randy Newman and Ry Cooder and spent a year listening, playing guitars, and experimenting with multi-track recordings of their own material before recruiting fellow students Cesar Rosas and Conrad Lozano to complete a core quartet that’s still together and functioning forty years later. The fifth member of the current lineup, sax and keys player Steve Berlin gets the co-producer’s credit here.

Hidalgo’s on record as crediting Fairport’s take on traditional English folk music as the inspiration for Los Lobos’ similar take on the traditional Mexican music they knew from their childhoods, and years of  playing weddings and dances in their own community sharpened their chops before they came to be noticed by the Hollywood hipsters, with their first major gig being an opening spot for John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten’s) post-punk outfit Public Image Ltd at the Olympic Auditorium in 1980.

Signed to Slash Records, the Los Angeles label that specialised in local punk and new wave bands and had major distribution though a deal with Warner Brothers, the band’s initial big label release was co-produced by T-Bone Burnett and Steve Berlin and garnered critical acclaim (voted best EP of the year in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll), attracting an A- from Robert Christgau and collecting a Grammy for Best Mexican-American Performance (Anselma).

It mightn’t have sold all that well (though 50,000 isn’t to be sneezed at) but the proceeds were enough to fund a van that allowed them to tour more widely and establish Hidalgo and Pérez as a long term writing partnership. Seven tracks, with the duo contributing three (Let's Say Goodnight, Walking Song and How Much Can I Do?) along with Cesar Rosas’ Why Do You Do and three covers set the pattern for subsequent releases.

While long term fans may well have most of what’s here on compilations $7.99 at iTunes is reasonable, and the EP’s inclusion in a Warners Original Albums series (five titles for around $30 though I picked this set up for $20) makes it an attractive proposition if you’re inclined to indulge those completist tendencies.

An accordion-driven Let's Say Goodnight kicks things off with a rocking surge, Walking Song might have slipped past the anthologisers but rocks along as a sort of blues-based polka and the cover of Anselma, as noted, was Grammy material and still turns up in the concert setlist from time to time close to thirty years later.  Ritchie Valens’ Come On Let's Go sets things in place for the band to pick up the soundtrack gig for the La Bamba movie, How Much Can I Do? sits rather nicely in the same territory, as does Why Do You Do and the accordion’s back to the fore for the cover of Don Santiago Jimenez’ Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio that winds things up with a lively crossing the border two step.

As a debut, it’s promising enough, but there’s no warning of the imminent leap forward that would come with How Will the Wolf Survive. Start from somewhere else and then head across to here and you may well be disappointed, but take a gander at the title. As a good time dance album, this works rather well, and works a treat with a chilled article and good company. There is, after all, a time for such simple pleasures.