Los Lobos 1985-1986: An Essay in Discography

What I think of as the third phase of Los Lobos' career comprised the aftermath of How Will The Wolf Survive? and the run-up to and recording of their second album, By The Light Of The Moon. This took them two full years - the first album came out in late '84 and the second didn't come out until January '87.  And in that, they're once again not quite following the template for rock band careers.  They should have taken no more than twelve months to produce a follow-up.  How Will had been a critical favorite and almost a hit on college radio and the like - I was in high school at the time, not particularly immersed in underground music papers, and I remember reading and hearing a lot about it.  A late-'85 follow-up would have been a smart move, commercially.  But they took their time, and did it right.

In the interim they were touring heavily on that first album.  Nothing from that period has been officially released, but there's a perfect candidate for it on youtube:  a Canadian TV special filmed in Montreal on 4/22/85.  This is prime Lobos, and what's more it's full of rarities:  "Buzz, Buzz" (a Hollywood Flames oldie which they'd later record in the studio), the Howlin' Wolf classic "Three Hundred Pounds Of Joy," "Mighty Old Love" (a cover, but I can't figure who of), "The Town I Live In" (Thee Midnighters), and lo and behold, two years before they reimmortalized it, "La Bamba." This show is nothing short of a revelation.  The authority with which they rock Howlin' Wolf, the depth of the groove they get into on "Mighty Old Love," and the way they snap it straight into "La Bamba."  They're unstoppable.

Their cover of "Three Hundred Pounds Of Joy" actually made it to vinyl, but not this rendition.  They performed it live with Roomful of Blues on the latter's 1987 album Live At Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel.  Worth tracking down, but it's not quite as satisfying a version as the one from Montreal - it's shorter, and all those extra horns don't add anything that Steve Berlin's not already delivering on his own.

What the Roomful of Blues collaboration does is remind us just how much the band's critical acceptance was matched by their peer acceptance.  It's one of a long series of guest appearances that the Wolves made on other people's records, or that other people made on theirs.  In the period in question there are two others that I know about, each significant in its own way.

One is their collaboration with Ry Cooder on the traditional "Quatros Vicios," which he recorded for the Alamo Bay soundtrack in 1985;  it's widely available because it's on the El Cancionero box, but to me it's a little disappointing.  Rosas and Hidalgo get to sing, but Cooder himself handles the
accordion and bajo sexto parts - which is like asking Eric Clapton to sing on your record, but handling the guitar part yourself.  People wouldn't be making that kind of mistake much longer.

The other is the song "All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints," which closes off Paul Simon's Graceland album, released in 1986.  This would never show up on a Lobos compilation, but the thing is, it should.  Steve Berlin insists that the band wrote it, the music at least (he says nothing about the lyrics), and it's easy to believe him, because it sounds nothing like a Paul Simon song, and a hell of a lot like a song Los Lobos would have been working on to follow up "Will The Wolf Survive."  It has that kind of suspended-over-percussion gentle verse going into that chimey, anthemic chorus.  And of course the boys supply all the instrumental work on the song.  Regardless of how things went down between the artists, it's a great record, tight, crackling with energy, and I've always thought it was a key part of their '80s work. 

I know of one other rarity from this period, which is also easily obtained courtesy of the Cancionero box.  We've already heard their cover of the Fats Domino song "I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday" on the 1983 PBS special that celebrated their e.p.  They laid it down in the studio in 1986 for the soundtrack to the film A Fine Mess. 

There's a little live Lobos from '86 around, to complement the Montreal show.  I like this segment from a show in San Rafael on 11/21/86: not only does it include more cool covers ("Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher"! "Tequila"!), but it has them jamming with Carlos Santana.  Not quite a passing of the torch - there's not really a whole lot of similarity between what Santana does and what Los Lobos do.  But still it's a cool moment.

And that brings us to the second album, recorded in 1986 and released as the New Year (which would be Los Lobos' miracle year) of 1987 began.  By The Light Of The Moon was a much-labored-over album, by all accounts, and in the end all that work was overshadowed by the fluke success of La Bamba later in '87.  And that's an entirely different phase of the band's career.  So I like to try to hear the second album the way I heard it when I first bought it, when it first came out:  in isolation, with no inkling of what would come after.  Taken on those terms it's a beaut.  It's clearly trying to hit most of the notes the first album hit - you have the chiming-guitar anthem ("One Time One Night"), the rockabilly bruiser ("Shakin' Shakin' Shakes"), a Spanish number ("Prenda Del Alma"), and a bunch of chugging r&b with a Latin flavor.  But it feels no less original for that - rather, it just feels like this is a band that has staked out its territory, and knows how to work it.

Horie Toshiyuki: Kuma no shikiishi (2000)

Horie Toshiyuki 堀江敏幸  shared the 124thA-Prize, for late 2000, with Seirai Yūichi.

The title story, Kuma no shikiishi 熊の敷石, is the winner:  a novella whose title could translate as “The Bear’s Paving-Stone.”  I’d be tempted to translate it as “Bear Paving-Stone,” for the pun, but there’s no pun in the original.  Rather, it’s a direct translation of a French proverbial expression, “le pavé de l’ours,” which comes from the story in La Fontaine’s Fables about “The Bear and the Gardener.”  A lonely gardener made friends with a lonely bear, and things were going well for a while, each doing the other favors, until the bear took it upon himself to chase away all the flies.  One landed on the sleeping gardener’s nose, and no amount of shooing would drive it off.  So the bear picked up a paving-stone from the garden and chucked it at the fly.  And killed the gardener.  Because bears aren’t too smart.  The moral being:  be careful about your friends. 

The effect of the story, for the Japanese reader (or any non-French reader, really, this one　included), depends on not knowing that proverb, though.  The story begins with a dream of the narrator’s about rambling in a forest, then realizing that the path he’s on is actually the backs of bears, all running toward a hill in the forest.  I.e., the bears themselves are (in the dream) paving-stones.  The dream isn’t commented on or explained, and only at the end do we have the narrator coming across the French idiom and learning its meaning and reflecting on how it fits his life…

The story is mostly flashback.  The present-moment frame is the morning after the dream.  The narrator wakes up in a house in Normandy.  He’s a guy in his 30s from Tokyo who makes a living translating from French to Japanese.  He was on a research trip to Paris, buying books and making notes on what might translate well before he approaches publishers, when he had a free couple of days and decided to call up an old friend, Jan.  Jan is about to leave the country for Ireland, but he invites the narrator out to Normandy to visit him for the afternoon, and the narrator ends up spending the night, and staying on a couple of days to work alone in the empty house after Jan leaves.

The bulk of the story has us following the narrator as he rides the train from Paris, meets Jan, and drives around the vicinity of Avranches.  Much of it is their conversation.  Jan is a photographer, and they drive picturesque granite quarries, the monastery of Mont Saint Michel, and various villages and cafés and country lanes.  Their talk runs to books – Jan brings up Jorge Semprún, and it’s at this point that the narrator realizes that Jan’s grandmother was a Holocaust survivor.  They also talk about Émile Littré and his Dictionary;  the book the narrator is scoping out for possible translation is a biography of him, and he’s amazed at the coincidence that he’s now in Avranches, because that’s where Littré’s family was from. 

The story ends with the narrator in Jan’s house after Jan’s departure.  He finishes his work on Littré, and in the process runs across the idiom that gives the story its title.  He finds a copy of La Fontaine’s Fables and looks it up, and takes from it the moral about being careful about one’s friends.  And as he’s eating lunch with Jan’s landlady before she drives him to the train station, he wonders if perhaps he wasn’t a bear to Jan’s gardener – doing him harm by forcing him to talk about things too personal or difficult for him, such as his grandmother’s experiences in the Holocaust.

I loved this story, and I loved it more the farther I got into it.  It’s unprepossessing.  The style is light but subtle – just off balance enough to force you to pay attention.  And the characters and their relationships are realized with the same graceful touch.  It helps that the situation and the setting are unfamiliar, so that we have to trust the narrator but we don’t know how much we can.  Horie himself is an accomplished French translator, so when he has his narrator getting together with an old friend like this out of the blue, staying at his house with no warning, we trust that maybe this is the way friendships work in France, or in Horie’s France.  And when Jan opens up, we assume the two friends must have a history to justify it – but we’re never told that, so we’re free to speculate all sorts of relationships.  And then at the end we find that the narrator wonders if he has been presumptious.  Like, it was a weird relationship all along, but the narrator never considered how weird.  And why not?  Because things always get weird for expats?  Because after all these years he’s still not sure he understands how the French do things? 

Jan’s landlady tells the narrator over lunch that Jan had talked about him before he came.  Saying that you can’t believe national stereotypes – we always hear that Japanese are workaholics, but I have a Japanese friend who’s as happy-go-lucky as they come.  And the narrator turns it into a nice joke – he’s adroit that way.  But for the reader it sinks in:  this story is about the fragility and unknowability of friendship at all times, but particularly across cultures.

There’s more going on than that:  I’ve only touched on the Holocaust theme, for example, which is handled very deftly and lightly, but with reverence.  And there’s the way photos and dream-images bleed into each other – there’s a lot of thinking about how the images captures thought, or transcends it.  It is, in short, a very deep story, but told with a wonderfully delicate and light touch.  This is the work of a master.

The other two stories are somewhat less memorable.  The first, “Sunauri ga tōru 砂売りが通る” (The Sandman goes by) has the narrator getting back together with the younger sister of a deceased friend, on the third anniversary of the friend’s death.  She had been a child when the narrator knew her, but now she is an adult, divorced, with a daughter of her own.  Most of the story involves the three of them walking on a beach;  we also get reminiscences of the friend, the woman’s childhood, and the narrator’s time in France.  The second story, “Shiroato nite 城址にて” (At the ruined castle) takes place during one of the narrator’s earlier trips to France.  He visits a (different) friend in Normandy, and the two of them climb the wall into a historic site where an old castle is being excavated and rebuilt.  They’re caught by the crotchety caretaker and separated.  The narrator ends up wandering alone in the dark, broke, almost panicked before the friend and his wife find him.  These stories share the title novella’s prose style and its way of balancing the perspective of a lone individual against his need for others and/or others’ need for him.  They’re not quite as moving, but then maybe that’s why they didn’t get the Prize.

Third thoughts on Terrence Malick

So there we are.  Rewatched The Tree of Life and watched To the Wonder.  My opinion on the former hasn't changed at all;  and I'm sorry to say that I'm not even sure that watching the rest of his films deepened my understanding of that one any.  Having seen anything by Malick (in my case, The Thin Red Line) is probably advisable, just so you don't go in expecting anything conventional.  But too many probably would have blunted the impact.  It certainly did with To the Wonder.  It felt like self-parody in places.  I laughed out loud, rolled my eyes, and snorted as often as I nodded my head in appreciation.

To the Wonder is a puzzling film.  A lot of critics seem to be taking from it the same thing they took from Tree of Life, but I see it as trying, at least in part, to do something different.  That film was largely about an ecstasy (embodied/accessed by/through the mother) that can never be effaced - the light that never goes out.  This one is at least sometimes trying to be about what happens when that light does go out.  Loss of faith, God, joy, love, beauty, what-have-you.  That's a bold enough departure that I was swayed, sometimes.  Parts of the film are undeniably there.

But I suspect (and Malick's such an auteur that you almost can't help but judge his films based on the personality they present, even if it's not real) that Malick hasn't ever actually felt what his fallen priest Javier Bardem feels.  There's too much angelic twirling in the fields in this film:  too much of the Wonder seeps in.  So it feels like he's gesturing toward a depression that the mortals who surround him assure him exists, and that he feels he should probably try to address if he wants to get everybody to tune into the Wonder, but that in the end he's clueless about.

And again, I think it's because he's clueless about actual people.  The Real Oklahoma People that Javier Bardem encounters are not presented as anything but grotesques.  They speak, but just like the rest of the actors their words are drowned out by Emotive Music and whispered voiceovers by other people.  They're not individuals, and in the end they're hardly human.  We're certainly not invited to empathize with them as we are with Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, and Rachel McAdams.  And there's no in-between.  In Malick's universe there are Beautiful People and then there are grotesques. 

I'm starting to find myself puzzled by the cult of Terrence Malick.  His films are dazzlingly shot, provocatively edited, exquisitely scored, and in so many ways different from typical film that I can understand the initial excitement.  But so far he's only demonstrated an ability to do one thing, and it's not the kind of thing that lends itself to reiteration.  His themes are almost childishly naïve, and his spirituality is a combination of New Age facileness and old-style Catholic mysticism.  And his characters - okay, granted he's trying to deal in human archetypes, not individual characters.  But what are those archetypes?  Man goes out and works upon the world.  Woman stays home and waxes maternal.  I mean, he's utterly regressive. 

I imagine Terrence Malick as the cinematic equivalent of Sarah McLachlan singing "It's A Man's Man's Man's World."

Los Lobos 1980-1984: An Essay in Discography

The Wolves' story from this point on is better documented - but, surprisingly, there are some holes.  Some pretty big holes.

The story goes that, after having spent the '70s thoroughly exploring acoustic Mexican-American (and elsewhere) folk, they started to get interested again in the louder, rowdier, more physical music of their youth.  They started to play electric occasionally, and to hang out in the Hollywood clubs to see what was happening in rock in L.A. these days.  (As X reminded everyone, it wasn't getting played on the radio:  you had to go to the clubs to find the scene.)  And eventually they started playing those clubs, making converts out of everybody who heard them, no matter how skeptical they were at first.  And then they get signed to a major-minor, Slash, a Warners-distributed punk label, and that's how they get introduced to the world:  as somehow having emerged from the L.A. punk scene of the turn of the decade.  And that's why they get considered an '80s band...

And of course the last disc installment of this essay showed how silly that notion is.  But then again it's not totally wrong.  When they returned to electric music, Los Lobos made the conscious decision to work their way up through an authentic scene.  Maybe they perceived that as their only option, who knows, but the fact remains that, having already put in seven years of apprenticeship at one trade, they started from scratch in another.  And their first label was a New Wave label, and hell, you can even find photos of the band rocking the skinny-tie look.  It just didn't affect their sound in any noticeable way.  But that, too, is something that the L.A. punk scene allowed them that maybe no other would have:  X and the Blasters and Rank & File were also/already conscious of roots in a way that their New York and London counterparts were not.  And meanwhile some little part of the punk aesthetic does seem to have rubbed off on the boys - their early records especially were always short and punchy, no matter what idiom they were in.

And one more thing.  Before they signed to Slash, they put out two D.I.Y. singles, both in 1981. What could be more punk than that?  These were "Farmer John" backed with "Anselma" and "Volver, Volver" backed with "Under The Boardwalk."  And here's where our first big heartbreak comes, as Los Lobos collectors.  They've never been reissued.  Not on CD, not digitally.  And, except for that single youtube of "Farmer John," they don't even seem to circulate.  One assumes that "Anselma" sounds much like it would when they re-recorded it for the ep, and that "Volver, Volver" sounds much like it did when they played it live (and we have a live recording from 1983, as well as one from 1987 that was officially released on the 1993 comp Just Another Band From East L.A.: A Collection).  But what does "Under The Boardwalk" sound like when Loboized?  I would love to know.

The labels were reproduced in the 2000 box set El Cancionero: Mas Y Mas - we even get photos of the sessions.  But not the music.  It kills me.  Thank God the one side circulates, because it's revelatory.  Not least because the arrangement differs so drastically from the arrangements they'd use in live renditions in 1987 (when they played it at a gallop) and 1997 (when they turned it into the heaviest stomper you've ever heard) (neither of these versions have been released either). 

Let's note a couple more things.  First, on the "Farmer John" single they're still crediting themselves

as "Los Lobos Del Este De Los Angeles (Just Another Band From East L.A.)."  Did they actually consider that whole thing their name?  May be.  But on the second single (by the photographic evidence) they're just "Los Lobos."  So 1981 was when that change happened.  Second, both singles paired an R&B cover with a traditional Spanish-language number:  they were determined at this point to present both sides of their musical heritage as a single package.  A determination that has never wavered, although on their albums the English-language material usually predominates.  The point is, from 1981 on they knew what they wanted to do, and they did it.  Eventually the world would catch up with them.

Before we get to the e.p. there are two other early Lobos tracks that have to be taken into account.  In 1982 they recorded one song for a soundtrack that has never been issued on CD, Eating Raoul.  The first of a truly prodigious body of material recorded for soundtracks, tribute albums, and samplers over the course of their career, their contribution was "Diablo Con Vestido Azul," a Spanish-language version of "Devil With A Blue Dress On" first formulated by Mexican garage band Los Yaki.  Los Lobos' version, in true punk fashion, is taken at breakneck speed.  As a gesture it's almost too perfect - it's notable that they've never done Spanish versions of any other English-language tracks.  (The soundtrack also included a version of "How Much Can I Do," which one assumes is distinct from the e.p. version.  But how distinct?  Who knows?)


The other track is easily found because it was included on El Cancionero.  It's an original, "We're Gonna Rock," that was released (according to the box set's liner notes) in early 1983 (discogs.org says 1982) on a sampler called L.A. Rockabilly.  Maybe the fastest anybody's ever played anything. 

Note:  it's produced by Steve Berlin, saxophone player for the Blasters at that point.  He'd also co-produce (with T-Bone Burnett) their debut e.p. on Slash, released in autumn 1983:  ...And A Time To Dance.  He'd also play on it, but he wasn't an official member until after it came out.  And:  why debut with an e.p.?  Because they were on a New Wave label that was part of the doomed effort all through the '80s to get Americans to cotton to the e.p. format.  Again:  they're being marketed as New Wave.  (But then again, the title is a Bible quote.  Not very punk.)

This has never been released on CD, but it is available on iTunes and Amazon as a legal download.  Seven tracks, of which four are originals and three are covers, two are in Spanish and five are in English, and all are brilliant.  I never get tired, in particular, of "Let's Say Goodnight" (and how cool is it that an accordion is the first sound you hear on this record?), "Walking Song," "Why Do You Do" and "How Much Can I Do."  "Walking Song" in particular should be sought out - it never shows up on anthologies, but it's an addictive little two-step. 

The e.p. gained them a surprising amount of notoriety, not just because it was awesome, but because
in one of those flukes that Los Lobos' hard work would position them to capitalize on, that year the Grammies had a new category, Mexican/American, and "Anselma" won it.  They spent the rest of the year touring on the e.p., and doing TV when the opportunity presented.

It presented at least twice.  Once was an appearance on late-night upstart Alan Thicke's show, where they performed "Let's Say Goodnight" and "Come On Let's Go."  They sound pretty close to the e.p. versions (and they're gone from youtube now, so you'll never know), but Steve Berlin is with them onstage.  I think we can date fall '83 as when he becomes a full-time Lobo (although it's unclear when they made it official).  A momentous decision, in retrospect, to make him a member rather than just a collaborator like they would go on to do with drummers.  At first it was obvious, because saxophone fit in so well with their material, but as they evolved away from two-steps and '50s style r&b, Berlin was forced to find new ways to contribute.  He did, and the band was better for it.  To this day in interviews Los Lobos talk as if all of them have this shared East L.A. heritage, and Steve very deferentially never disagrees, but ever since 1983 he's been a member, and a huge part of their distinctive sound.

The other TV thing is another L.A. local PBS documentary that has washed up on youtube.  It's named after the e.p., but the striking thing is how many songs they play that aren't on the e.p.  The meat of the program is a live performance from 11/3/83 at L.A.'s Club Lingerie (Steve's onstage, although the anchor introducing the program still says the band's a quartet).  My favorite moments are a galvanizing take on "Why Do You Do," and three non-album tracks:  "Volver, Volver," "I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday" (a studio version of this would be recorded in 1985), and "Sleepwalk."  Amazing stuff. 

This period - post-e.p., pre-first l.p. - is the first time we can get a handle on what electric Los Lobos are like.  The documentary is priceless in that regard, because no live album has been released from this period.  That statement immediately needs to be modified, as the second heartbreak of the Los Lobos collector.  In 2006 the band made an abortive start on an official bootleg series, to be called Chuy's Tape Box, and Vol. 1 was a show from 1/14/84 at La Casa De La Raza in Santa Barbara.  If this ever actually was released it was immediately withdrawn, because I missed it in 2006 and have never located a copy.  It's not on the youtube, not on the usual bootleg sites, and not on Amazon at all.  Two key tracks had already been released on El Cancionero, and those are essential.  "I'm Sorry," about as greasy a slab of soul as you could ask for, and "Las Ojos De Pancha," a ranchera that really cooks.

Of course it all culminates with their first full-length (as Los Lobos del nothing) album, How Will The Wolf Survive? In commercial terms it kind of started everything for them, but in musical terms it's a good conclusion to an era, because it sounds very close to the e.p., and the next time they entered a studio they'd be heading off in new directions.  I feel like I don't even need to discuss this record.  It's perfect, every bit as good as every bit of praise that has been heaped on it.  I still feel it's their definitive record.  Not that they wouldn't continue to do interesting work for the next three decades (and counting)...

It came out in October 1984 and was followed by essentially two solid years of hard-core touring to promote it.  That's a story for the next installment.

P.S.  Here's your perfect disc for this period, but if the singles every become available, make room.

From a 1981 single:  Farmer John.

From the Eating Raoul soundtrack, 1982:  Diablo Con Vestido Azul.

From the L.A. Rockabilly sampler, 1983:  We're Gonna Rock.

From the ....And A Time To Dance e.p., 1983:  Let's Say Goodnight, Walking Song, Anselma, Why Do You Do, How Much Can I Do, Ay Te Dejo En San Antonio.

From Thicke of the Night, late 1983:  Come On Let's Go.

From And A Time To Dance documentary, late 1983:  Why Do You Do, Volver Volver, I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday, Sleepwalk.

From 1/14/84 show:  I'm Sorry, Los Ojos De Pancha.

How Will The Wolf Survive album:  entire.

From BBC's Old Grey Whistle Test, late 1984:  Don't Worry Baby.

Los Lobos 1973-1979: An Essay in Discography

This is an essay about collecting Los Lobos.  There are any number of short bios of the band out there, and lots of appreciations.  And I agree with basically every word of them:  they're on my short list of Best American Bands Ever.  But this essay, and the ones that will hopefully follow, is about collecting them;  it turns out that collecting them illuminates their bio, so I'll have some observations on that as we go along.  And as for the appreciation - the subtext of this whole project is that collecting Los Lobos only deepens one's appreciation of them.  They're a very deep band.

All the bios start with Los Lobos' formation in the summer of 1973 as a bunch of like-minded musician friends in East L.A.  They'd grown up on classic rock, but of course their neighborhood was steeped in Mexican-American music, and when they came together it was as a folklorico outfit.  All-acoustic traditional Spanish-language stuff.  They play in this mode for the rest of the decade:  lawn parties, weddings, college assemblies, restaurants, wherever they could get a gig.  They were a working band for a long time before they hit the charts.

There are a number of significant things about this first part of the bio.  It shows that their roots are thoroughly multicultural - or, if you want to put it differently, thoroughly of their time and place.  Throughout their career it's been possible to see Los Lobos in two opposite ways:  as a Mexican-American trad band who decided to embrace rock, or as a bunch of rockers who decided to embrace Mexican-American trad.  Both of these things are true. 

They came by their rock roots the same way that everybody else of their generation did.  From the radio, where they were steeped in things like Cream and the Beatles, who they seem to have idolized like every other American kid did.  And from whatever local scene there was:  in their case, that was the East L.A. r&b exemplified by Cannibal and the Headhunters and Thee Midnighters (a scene that they've managed to mythologize in much the same way that Bruce Springsteen has mythologized the early Jersey Shore scene).  This, by all accounts, was the music of their teen years, and what they were playing in garages and on patios as they learned their instruments.  Which means that when they picked up the folkloric stuff it was a decision.  They came by it not as a chthonic thing but as a learned thing.

And yet of course it's true that, as all the accounts say, the boleros, the norteños, the corridas were part of the culture of their neighborhoods and their families.  So even though they had to apply themselves to learn the stuff, it was not a matter of learning about a foreign culture, but about their own, right?  Reclaiming their heritage.  They weren't Ry Cooder-like musical tourists.  This was where they lived.  And yet:  they did have to study.  It was a body of knowledge, of tradition, that required mastery.  They couldn't just pick up the instruments and naturally play.  Nor could they assume that what they grew up with in East L.A. was necessarily the final word on these songs.  Recall how carefully the style and region of each track is identified on their two all-trad albums.  That's the folk-music scholar in them, the student and educator.

This awakening to traditional music is happening against the background of the Chicano movement, of course, and that's significant.  They're not learning to play canciónes Mexicanas in a vacuum, but in a context where they have a particular meaning and significance to other people like themselves.  It's really cool that early Los Lobos were not just a gigging band but an activist band.  When, nearly twenty years later, they'd sing about "The Neighborhood," it's with a whole lot of lived experience and unquestioned commitment.

But it's also interesting that this journey parallels in a lot of ways those made by other American musicians of their generation or the previous.  Like Dylan they were into electric pop as kids, then when they grew up they embraced traditional folk, then when they grew up some more integrated the two things.  Like the Band they had an extended journeyman period, many years of living together on the road as a band, learning what it means to be a band, before they finally debut with a major label;  and the music they recorded later is vastly different from, and yet constantly informed by, what they played in their journeyman years. 

I've never considered Los Lobos to be an '80s band.  They fit in much more comfortably with '70s artists like The Band.  The closest parallels are probably Springsteen and Tom Petty, actually:  in both cases artists who came along just a little too late to be part of the '60s rock wave, who instead were experiencing that as impressionable young listeners, but who begin their own careers before punk comes along to erase the past.  Springsteen, Petty, and Los Lobos all share this relationship with the whole spectrum of American (and British) pop/rock/r&b, a delight in pulling out an obscure blues number or garage rock anthem or soul grinder and delivering it with authority and glee.  The idea of rock and roll (and rhythm and blues and folklorico) is important to them.

So it's easy to appreciate the importance of this first phase of Los Lobos' career, 1973 to 1979, when they were a trad acoustic outfit.  Easy to appreciate, and yet hard to really assess, because so little has been released from this period.  But there's a little more in circulation than is generally known, and it's instructive. 

In his liner notes to the 2000 reissue of Los Lobos Del Este De Los Angeles, Luis Torres mentions that as a budding documentarian he got Los Lobos to record the soundtracks to a number of small-budget productions.  Tantalizing tidbit: and how come none of that stuff has ever been released?  (That's going to be a constant refrain in Los Lobos collecting.)  Does any of it survive?

I don't know, but the Saints of Youtube have vouchsafed us one priceless document of early Loboism, and it does come in the form of a low-budget PBS documentary.  It's called Los Lobos Del Este De Los Angeles, same as the album, and it's a half hour from a concert the band gave at East Los Angeles College sometime in 1975.  It begins with a brief interview with one of the members, Francisco Gonzales, voiced over film of the band jamming outside on a hill overlooking the city;  then we join the concert.  It's fantastic stuff, including a tremulous early rendition of "Sabor A Mí," as well as a number of songs that weren't included on that first album, such as "Siete Leguas" and "Las Tres Huastecas."  It's good listening.

Wait - Francisco Gonzales?  I thought there were only four Lobos at first.  Yeah, that's one of the things this documentary reveals.  Los Lobos were originally a five-man unit.  The four we know:  David Hidalgo, Conrad Lozano, Cesar Rosas, and Louis Pérez, plus Frank Gonzales.  He never gets mentioned in the official histories - not in the notes to either of the box sets, at least, nor those to the first album reissue.  And yet not only is he taking most lead vocals, but at the end Louie introduces him as the guy who founded the band.  What happened to him?  It's a mystery.

The second obscure document of early Los Lobos is not quite as obscure, because it was officially released on record, and has in fact been reissued on CD and mp3.  In 1976 they contributed to a United Farm Workers fund-raising/consciousness-raising album entitled Sí Se Puede!  It's not exactly clear who played on what track but it seems that Los Lobos (who still included Gonzales at this point) are the basic unit throughout the album, augmented by a few other musicians and a number of singers.  Basically the whole album, then, can be considered a Los Lobos project, but they don't really step into the spotlight.  They only get one vocal number - "Telingo Lingo," sung by Rosas.  But of course their musicianship is on fine display, behind singers including Carmen Moreno (that's how she's credited here, although on the web she's known as Carmencristina Moreno) and Geree Gonzalez.  Of particular note here is the song "Mañana Is Now," sung by Geree Gonzalez:  it's an original by the album's producer, Art Brambila, and what's interesting about it is that it's a pure '70s pop ballad.  Not too remarkable as a song, but that means that this is Los Lobos' first non-trad recording, and they play it beautifully.  And that's a revelation.  Like, we already knew they could do that (the trad stuff:  "Telingo Lingo" is a trip), but now we know they can do this as well.

The third and last document that I know of from Los Lobos' first period is what I've already mentioned, their real debut album:  Los Lobos Del Este De Los Angeles (Just Another Band From East L.A.).  It came out in 1978, but they had been planning it for a while, it seems;  it's teased in the liner notes for Sí Se Puede, and at the end of the 1975 documentary you can hear Frank signing off with the subtitle - "Just another band from East L.A.!"  That title is, of course, an ironic nod to Frank Zappa, which in itself is forward-looking.  They were playing trad, but rock was still among their cultural referents...  This album is now widely available, because it was reissued in 2000 (with a previously-unreleased bonus track, no less:  "El Bon Bon de Elena").  Good deal.

By 1978 they were a four-piece.  Gonzales was gone, and as I say, there's no reference to him in the

reissue's liner notes.  Cesar is the main lead singer at this point, although the others join in on choruses, and David takes one lead ("Cielito Lindo") and one co-lead ("María Chuchena), and Conrad (!) takes one lead (on "Guantanamera").  Back in the '75 doc, Gonzales makes a crack about David's vocals - "at least that's what he calls them" - and that, combined with his minor role here, suggests that in their early days David wasn't considered much of a singer by the rest of the band.  Maybe it was just that they didn't feel his style fit Spanish-language things - even after he became the band's usual lead singer (and one of the most soulful singers in rock, for my money), he tended to leave the trad songs to Cesar. 

One more telling point to be gleaned from the credits on this album.  They only use percussion on a couple of tracks, and it's played by a guest:  Charlie Tovar.  When they went electric they would prevail on Louie to play drums, but evidently he never really liked it, and when they got big enough to make it possible financially, they started using session drummers.  In fact How Will The Wolf Survive? seems (from a careful study of album credits) to be the only album on which Louis was the sole, or even main, drummer.  And they've been hiring extra drummers for tours at least since the early '90s - first Victor Bisetti, then Cougar Estrada, and now Enrique "Bugs" Gonzalez...  Given the tremendous importance of rhythm and percussion in their music I've always been a little puzzled as to why Bisetti or Estrada were never official members.  Then again, the fact that there have only been two lineup changes (minus F. Gonzales, plus Steve Berlin) in forty years means they must have figured out something on the personnel front, so who am I to question it?  Anyway, that starts here.  So far from being a drummer was Louie that when they needed one for two tracks on this record, they hired one.

As far as I know that's the entirety of what's available from the pre-electric, folklorico-era Los Lobos.  One documentary, one fund-raising album backing up mostly other singers, and one album in their own right.  All of it pretty damn good, but of course all of it very pure folk:  I'll readily admit that as beautiful as I find it, I never would have sought it out if it weren't for what came later. 

P.S. It adds up to a really nice single disc (78 minutes or so) if you do it like this:

From the documentary:  The interview into whatever song that is they're playing first (it begins, "Chicanos somos, señores"); Las Tres Huastecas; Sabor A Mí; Siete Leguas; vamping behind band introductions.

From Sí Se Puede!:  De Colores;  Corrida De Dolores Huerta #39; Telingo Lingo; Mañana Is Now; No Nos Moveran.

The entirety of (Just Another Band From East L.A.), including the bonus track.

Mystery Men (1999)

One measure of a genre's maturity is when it starts inspiring spoofs.  And yes, I guess those count for the project.  So:  Mystery Men. 

Good premise.  Some good gags.  I don't know, though.  I had the same reaction to this that I usually have when I watch American comedies:  I started wondering whether I really have become just another humorless leftwing academic. 

I mean, I can't stand Saturday Night Live and most of its spawn, and unfortunately SNL has defined the American comedic mainstream for, like, my whole life.  The basic SNL mode is class-clown obnoxious: bullying, smug, high-fiving, cruel, lazy, dumb.  I was about fourteen when I realized that the SNL strategy was entirely built around trying to find the next inane catchphrase that all the kids would be parroting on the bus next Monday morning.

TV sitcoms I avoid like the plague.

And it's no better with the other culture whose filmed production I'm familiar with.  I hate Japanese TV comedians, too.  Manzai acts, "variety" shows, all that shit.  Repulses me when it doesn't bore me, bores me when it doesn't repulse me.

So maybe I am a dour kind of guy.  And yet I can laugh hysterically, without restraint, at things I do find funny.  Coen Brothers.  Mitani Kōki.  Joss Whedon.  So I don't think I lack a sense of humor...

Anyway.  I didn't really laugh at this movie.  Chuckled occasionally.  I wanted to like it.  I like the premise.  I like the idea of sad-sack working-class superheroes.  Superheroes with weird, perhaps embarrassing powers.  I mean, it picks up on something central to the X-Men mythos, the idea that the superhero story is a story about physical or mental difference, and in the real world difference is not celebrated but denigrated.

But it just wasn't funny.

Second thoughts on Terrence Malick

I'm two-thirds of the way through a Terrence Malick project:  to see all of his films in a concentrated period.  In the last week I've watched Badlands and Days of Heaven, both for the first time, The Thin Red Line for the second, and The New World for the first.  By this time next week I expect to have rewatched Tree of Life and seen To the Wonder, which I somehow missed even hearing about when it came out.  I guess there's something to this ivory tower thing.

I expect I'll have more to say then, but for the moment, here's where I'm at.

I think I like Malick when he's at his most untethered.  He's not particularly interested in character or story, so he's at his weakest when he tries to stick closest to those things.  Conversely he's at his best when his material is so mundane that he's able to leap freely into the realm of what he is particularly interested in.  Accordingly, so far I think Tree of Life and Days of Heaven are his best.

I can follow him into the mystic.  Communion with nature, film as religious experience, the epiphany, the world infused with the glory of God.  All okay.  To be honest I'm not there right now in my life, but I was once, and the memory of it is still vivid enough that I will argue for it as an important human experience, and a valid subject for artistic creation.  I never want to get far enough into the material that I stop being able to appreciate Van Morrison or Gerard Manley Hopkins.  And that's the kind of vision Malick has, essentially:  "the world is charged with the grandeur of God."

That being said, I'm not sure that's the proper response to everything.  Proper isn't the word I'm looking for there, though.  I'm not sure that every occasion is created equal as an occasion for that sort of visionmongering.  There are some stories, some subjects, that perhaps might ask (in a polite, querulous tone) for a more conventional treatment.  Even if it might dictate different conclusions.

That's why The Thin Red Line and The New World leave me nonplussed.  The New World is a triumph of technique and feeling, but in the end it repeats the same old myths with the same old noble-savage rhetoric at heart.  The story demands more.  The history demands more.  The Thin Red Line is more promising - the bloodshed-in-Eden irony is rich with possibility - but the actual experience of guys in combat demands a little more respectful hearing than Malick gives it.  Both movies are notoriously filled with actors who are underutilized or even eliminated in the editing, and I think that indicates more than just an inefficient technique:  it indicates that stories are being considered and then discarded.  Suppressed.

Saying that Malick is uninterested in story and character is another way of saying that he's uninterested in people, at least as individuals.  As flesh and blood.  He's only interested in humans in the abstract, or in his own vision, which in the end is the same thing.  His mystic vision is the kind of religion that cannot allow for the messiness of real people.  It's antihumanist.  In a way that makes his films perfect for a particular kind of postmodernist:  a lot of us these days are very comfortable with the idea of humanity's perspective being decentered in favor of something else.  But this is also how the left wraps around and becomes the right:  Malick's diminution of human individuality in favor of the Big Truth isn't so different, in the end, from that behind an overtly religious epic like The Passion of the Christ.  Right?  There's no point in telling John Smith's story, or Private Witt's, really, because the only story that matters is the One Story.

Which is why I find Malick most satisfying when he's not pretending to do anything else.  Tree of Life and Days of Heaven are about nothing but themselves and the vision.  The Thin Red Line and The New World feel, especially the former, like they were supposed to be something else, something altogether more engaged with humanity, before the director gave up and retreated into his private world.

Badlands is the odd one out at this point, which is no surprise since it was his first.  I wish I could have known what it was like to see that without knowing what he'd go on to do.  It feels at first blush much more character-focused, much more invested in its people as people, actually interacting with each other and their environment, then his later movies.  But the archetypal aspects (retreat from man's world into the natural, yearning for the transcendent) are obvious.  And the nods toward a pop-culture-savvy cynicism, which might have seemed quite bracing in the early '70s when this was his only film, are now barely perceptible, and easily neglected because they're clearly not where Malick's heart lies.  Maybe they were then, though.