…is now up at reason. It’s from the May print issue. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

The Mexican-American rock band Los Lobos—Spanish for “the Wolves”—has always claimed it isn’t trying to document the immigrant experience, at least until their most recent album, The Town and the City (Hollywood/Mammoth). But the group’s career has in many ways traced the arc of Hispanic immigration in the second half of the 20th century, especially the tension between assimilation and maintaining a strong ethnic heritage.

Los Lobos was officially born in East L.A. in 1973, when a group of second-generation Chicano friends—Louie Perez, David Hidalgo, Conrad Lozano, and Cesar Rosas—decided to form a band. For five years, Los Lobos played dive bars, community centers, and anywhere else in the neighborhood they could get a gig. After releasing an independent LP in 1978, Los Lobos signed with the indie label and punk incubator Slash Records, an odd fit for the Tex-Mex jam band.

The musicians next found themselves opening for punk acts across Southern California. The audiences were at first confused, and sometimes hostile, but the band quickly developed a devoted critical and fan following based on its eclectic sound and epic live performances. They also picked up their fifth member. Keyboardist, saxophonist, and producer Steve Berlin was playing with the legendary punk band the Blasters in the early 1980s. He was fascinated by this foursome of folk artists playing the punk clubs, which he would later describe in liner notes to a Los Lobos live album as “like finding a tribe of Indians living under a freeway underpass.” Berlin started to jam with the group on stage, and gradually came on as a full-fledged member.

The interview is with Louie Perez, the band’s guitarist and lyricist. We chat about immigration, Hispanic integration, how globalization is affecting the music business, and what it was like for a Tejano roots band to open for bands like X on the 1980s L.A. punk circuit.

I hope to make a podcast out of this interview at some point. As soon as I force myself to sit down and learn how to use Garage Band.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 12:41 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.