Los Lobos: Dream in Blue

August 1, 2015
A cultural institution for more than 40 years, Los Lobos started by exploring Mexican American musical traditions, playing countless weddings in East L.A. before incorporating various Latin styles as well as R&B and punk. Morris doesn't hide his enthusiasm for the group (they played his wedding in 1983) and relies on his many interviews with its members as he traces the band's lengthy recording history. Los Lobos' first record, the critically acclaimed, T-Bone Burnettproduced EP, . . . and a Time to Dance, won a Grammy in 1984 as best Mexican American recording but failed to make a dent on the Billboard charts, setting a template the band has never grown out of. In 1986, the band wrote the music for Paul Simon's The Myth of Fingerprints on the multiplatinum Graceland, a bitter experience that they never saw a single cent from. Their biggest hit, an incredibly successful cover of Richie Valen's La Bomba, was a fluke. The sonically adventurous Kiko is, perhaps, their masterpiece, but peaked at only 143 on the charts. Still, the hard-touring band's faithful still seek it out, and Morris' critical history will find a hungry audience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2015
The first "critical history" of Los Lobos. In his debut, former Hollywood Reporter music editor and Billboard senior writer Morris presents an overview of the seminal California band's four-decade career, focusing on how their musical palate expanded over time. A longtime supporter (his was one of the last weddings Los Lobos played), the author attributes "Los Lobos' totemic position in L.A.'s musical firmament" to their unique background and the individual members' restless open-mindedness. Initially, the youthful Mexican-American amateur musicians wanted to play traditional folk, in keeping with the era's Chicano consciousness. As they honed this approach in raucous restaurant and wedding gigs, they also found themselves inspired by LA's fertile post-punk scene, where they found kinship with bands like X and the Blasters. This incongruous fusion of Mexican music with punk's reverence for rockabilly and roots paid off; fervent early supporters and the band themselves were startled by a Grammy win for an early EP. With their major label debut, "it became apparent to the band's producers that something new was afoot in Los Lobos' music." Still, no one expected that their titular single from the 1987 film La Bamba (a Richie Valens cover) would be a sudden chart-topper. Unable to match its commercial success, despite the prodding of several record labels, the band went on to a series of experimental, acclaimed (but underselling) albums. As Morris summarizes, "after hitting a creative wall amid the snares of rock stardom, they forged into terra incognita." The author writes with an encyclopedic knowledge of California rock and effectively uses interviews with band members and producers. Although his primary focus is on a chronological analysis of the band's recordings and their production, Morris also deftly addresses insider aspects of the music industry, much transformed since the 1970s, adding depth to this otherwise brief account while clarifying how Los Lobos survived changes in styles and label politics to become an enduring cross-cultural institution. A useful cultural history that is sure to please fans and musicologists.

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