Los Lobos didn't make a good first impression on Steve Berlin.
The young band from East Los Angeles, enthusiastic in its embrace of Mexican folk tradition, was opening a 1980 concert by Public Image Ltd., the post-punk outfit fronted by John Lydon, then better known as Sex Pistols sneer-leader Johnny Rotten.
“They came out there and got spit on and anything anybody could throw, thrown at them,” saxophonist and keyboardist Berlin said of his future bandmates. “So, I wasn't necessarily sitting there going, 'Boy, that's the life for me.'
“It wasn't until a year or so later, they opened for The Blasters, the band I was in at the time, that's when they plugged in and obviously it's more of a rock band. That was the moment, for myself and for everybody around, everybody just went, 'Wow, where have these guys been?' And they were extraordinary.”
Since 1973, David Hidalgo, Louie Perez, Cesar Rosas and Conrad Lozano mostly had been playing traditional acoustic music, as documented on the delightful debut album “Los Lobos del este de Los Angeles (Just Another Band From East L.A.),” at parties and weddings.
DATEBOOK
“An Acoustic Evening With Los Lobos”
8 tonight;
UCSD's Mandeville Auditorium, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla;
$32-$36;
(858) 534-TIXS or (619) 220-TIXS
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Now, Los Lobos returns to those roots, after a fashion. The band's “An Acoustic Evening With Los Lobos” tour, which begins tonight at the UCSD Mandeville Auditorium, finds the musicians working up strictly acoustic versions of their electric, eclectic material.
“At this stage of our career, we're just trying to come up with new rocks to turn over,” Berlin said by phone from Vancouver, where he was producing an album. “It's really refreshing, among other things. You get to re-examine music in a different way. We do so much loud rock, it's really nice sometimes to just leave all that stuff behind and get back to the simpler things.”
Los Lobos' music is anything but simple these days. “The Town and the City,” which ended up on many critics' best-of-2006 lists, betrays the band's influences on the likes of “Chuco's Cumbia” and the Caribbean-accented “Luna,” but this is decidedly not a roots album. One can hear the musical sophistication of a progressive rock band such as Traffic – singer Hidalgo evokes Steve Winwood – and lyricist Perez's thoughtful reflections have been called “existential.”
The album is a far cry from what was expected of Los Lobos after the release of “La Bamba,” the 1987 film biography of short-lived Mexican-American rocker Ritchie Valens. The band's performance of the title song, a traditional tune rocked up by Valens, put Los Lobos at the top of the charts. It was an uncomfortable position.
“What we really wanted to do was separate ourselves from whatever people thought we were,” Berlin said, “which seemed to be 'La Bamba.' We felt we had to re-establish – not for anybody else, for ourselves – who we were and what we were about.”
Los Lobos made tracks with the Spanish-language “La pistola y el corazon” and the raucous “The Neighborhood,” and yet the fleeting success of “La Bamba” still hung over the band. Then came the 1992 album “Kiko.” A wide-ranging, career-defining recording – the group plans to release a live DVD of the material later this year – “Kiko” turned over all the rocks.
“We were very frustrated. We had toured for the 'Neighborhood' record, and for the first time ever we really didn't have a good time doing it. I think we let a little of 'La Bamba' go to our heads, so we were touring at a level we really couldn't afford or support,” Berlin said.
“So what we ended up doing was going into this studio in downtown L.A. and recording what we thought we're going to be demos of some new material, not knowing really anything. We just knew it was really different. It sure was.”
Mikel Toombs is a Seattle writer.
