Los Angeles is five hundred square miles of area. By comparison, Manhattan is less than twenty-five. Even if you add in the other four boroughs, New York City is barely half the size of L.A. New York City is extremely navigable — organized into grids with giant parks marking the focus of each zone. New Yorkers are practical — a byproduct of too many people in too little space. They have dreams, of course, but they’re not particularly dreamy. Get a studio. Then a bedroom. Maybe two. And then, one day, move out to the suburbs and settle down. In The Big Apple, everything is either on the surface or a thousand feet above it. Its people on top of people. Floors on top of floors. Everything is in view. It’s all knowable. 

Los Angeles is quite literally the opposite. There’s no observable plan to the city. There’s no center. Everything — culture, money, power — is diffuse. The dreams are grand and unrealistic. In New York, people speak quickly and honestly — even when it hurts, even when they’re lying. In L.A. everyone is telling stories but nobody knows the truth. The most infamous serial killer in the history of New York was a loner named David Berkowitz who shot lovers in the head, wrote letters to the police about it and was arrested in a matter of months. The most famous serial killer in the history of L.A. was a guy who hung out with Dennis Wilson and may not have ever actually killed anyone. Meanwhile, the most famous murder in the history of L.A. occurred thirty years before The Son of Sam, when an aspiring actress was sawed in half, possibly by an affluent doctor who was never arrested and who cavorted with L.A.’s political, social and creative elite. Even at 2AM, New York is all bright lights. L.A., in spite of its endless sun, is dark as absolute fuck.

And yet, I, who lived in New York City for the better part of two decades, totally, completely love L.A. I love the romance of all those idealistic dreams. I love how millions of people take fake meetings and tell fake stories that will never amount to anything and keep doing it — day after day, lie after lie, fail after fail — because they need to believe. I love the ridiculous auto-dependency that passes for “car culture.” Obviously I love the sun and the ocean and the hills and the palm trees. I love the food and the art. I even love the dark underside of it all — the Raymond Chandler noir and the gruesome lore.

Yes — four decades after my first visit, I find L.A.’s unknowability as intoxicating as its superficiality. But the thing that I love the most about L.A. is the thing that took me longest to grasp — the ways in which the city has been defined by Latin culture, in general, and Mexican culture, in particular. The flavors in the food. The left lean of the politics. The aridity and the succulence of the landscapes. The art — the murals, the graffiti, the ancient and the new. Of all major American cities, Los Angeles is the most Mexican. Nearly 1.2 million Mexican Americans live in the city proper and nearly four million call the L.A. Metro region home. As a result, there are huge, sprawling Mexican neighborhoods. Countless Mexican restaurants. Dozens of Spanish movie theaters and nearly as many Spanish speaking, Spanish singing radio stations. There are more Mexican Americans in L.A. than there are white Americans. Mexican culture permeates all of L.A. It’s everywhere — everywhere, except, seemingly in its Rock and Roll.

The lack of Mexican representation is not specifically an L.A. problem. Of the nearly four hundred artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, only five have meanginful ties to Mexico — Santana, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt, Zack de la Rocha (Rage Against the Machine) and, of course, Richie Valens. Mexican Americans represent roughly ten percent of the U.S. population but roughly one percent of Club Wenner. Obviously, this sad stat is not merely a symptom of racism or suppression (though it is certainly both of those things). It’s also a matter of formalism — Rock and Roll was born from Southern Blues and (Mid)Western Swing and not from Mexican Folk or Pop music. Which is one of the many reasons why Ritchie Valens was so important.

Valens was just seventeen when he scored two top forty Billboard hits — “Donna” and “La Bamba.” The former, a romantic, mid-tempo crooner, was the bigger hit but the latter was the one. “La Bamba” was not formative simply because it was sung in Spanish. Or because it put the face of a young Mexican American on television. It was important because its chord progression became the chassis for countless future Rock and Roll hits, most notably “Twist and Shout,” written by Bert Berns, first recorded by The Top Notes, then made a hit by the Isley Brothers, and then made eternal by The Beatles. There is no “Twist and Shout” without “La Bamba.” Which means there’s no Ferris Bueller without “La Bamba.”

“La Bamba” was one of many songs whitewashed during the early Sixties — covered (or in this case, stolen) by white artists and businessmen who profited from structural racism. After Valens’ death — and with the minor exception of ? and the Mysterians and the major exception of Joan Baez — it would be another decade before a Mexican American ascended the Pop charts (Santana with “Evil Ways”). And then, after Santana, it would be another seventeen years before another Mexican American Rock act would break through. But when they did, they really did. In 1987 Los Lobos scored a number one hit with their cover of Valens’ “La Bamba.” And while most middle-aged Americans remember that delightful slice of nostalgia, very few of us understood that what we were really witnessing was not some prestigious cover band but rather the greatest band in all of L.A.

In theory, to be the greatest L.A. Rock band you must (1) have significant roots in L.A. (no transplants or transients, please) and (2) be a band. The first criteria disqualifies The Doors, GNR, Crosby, Stills and Nash (and Young), Weezer and most every other famous group who are only nominally from Los Angeles and who, moreover (and with the possible exception of GNR), are lesser bands than Los Lobos by every measure other than commercial success. The second criteria disqualifies Randy Newman, Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Beck and Billie Eilish. They are not bands. So, by my math, that leaves us with two bands who could compete with Los Lobos as L.A. best: The Beach Boys and X. It would seem craven of me to suggest that The Beach Boys were not as important or successful or inspired as Los Lobos. So I won’t. But if the criteria is based on the sum of the band — which group of musicians perform better together, or which group’s discography is more rewarding, I’d go with Los Lobos. The Beach Boys were more than just Brian Wilson, which is why, in some ways, they were also so much less than just Brian Wilson.

That leaves X — the Punk, Rockabilly, Country and Roots band that played countless shows alongside Los Lobos in the early Eighties. I think it's debatable as to whether X qualifies as an L.A. band given that several of its members grew up far from the West Coast. That being said, they are the apotheosis of L.A. Punk, a genre-less genre that was broadly influenced by Mexican culture and specifically influenced by Los Lobos. I love X. Probably more than I love The Beach Boys. But they were not as consistently excellent as Los Lobos. And that leaves one. Los Lobos, L.A.’s greatest all-time Rock and Roll band.

In fairness — and more seriously — it’s easy to underestimate Los Lobos. For one thing, they are extremely mild mannered dudes. They don’t court press and, when press courts them, David and Louie — their de facto spokesmen — are sparing with their words. Aside from their “La Bamba” soundtrack work, they’ve never had a song that even sniffed the charts. “”Kiko,” their best selling album, fell short of Gold status. And while they’ve won a bunch of Grammys, those were for less heralded categories. They are critically admired, to the point of adoration. But all those four and five star reviews never translated into the zeitgeist. “La Bamba” was not a precursor or breakthrough or validation. Culturally and commercially speaking, it was a blip.

However, the underestimation of Los Lobos is more than just a market conundrum — it’s a musical one. Los Lobos make songs that sound eminently familiar and improbably easy. They are the opposite of showy. Which is not to say that they are subtle (though they can be) but rather that they are extremely competent. Many Los Lobos tracks sound like they could have, should have been written by somebody else. Sometimes they sound like X. Sometimes they sound like Willie DeVille. Sometimes they sound like Tom Waits (minus the Tom Waits). Sometimes they sound like The Blasters or Steve Earle or like some Rockabilly song or Mexican Folk song you might have heard somewhere long ago. They sound like the sum of their influences but also their influences sound like them because members of Los Lobos have contributed to myriad esteemed Roots Rock albums over the years. For example, it would be fair to suggest that, in the Nineties, Tom Waits sounded more like “Kiko” than the inverse.

When you first hear a Los Lobos song, a common reaction might be something like: “That’s so good it must be a cover. It can’t be an original.” In fact, if you’ve never heard the band before, you might initially think that they sound generic — maybe even forgettable. But that’s Los Lobos’ magic power — to make songs that sound like better versions of so many great songs you’ve heard before, but which were less competent, joyful, rich and effortless than the Los Lobos’ version. Los Lobos are only generic in the sense that they are musically unspecific. But they are in no way average. Los Lobos are platonic in the sense that they are ideal.

Over the course of nearly fifty years and seventeen studio albums, Los Lobos have been many things. A wedding band. A Rock band. A Folk band. A Punk band. They’re omnivores — multi-instrumentalists, songwriters, radical interpreters and loyal cover artists. And because they do a little bit of everything, their members have appeared on records from pretty much every legend who's passed through Los Angeles — from Dylan to Clapton, from Parton to Raitt. But it’s also why they suffer from underestimation. Like their hometown, Los Lobos are diffuse. And like their hometown, they are Mexican. While Pop music comes in many forms, it gravitates to the specific and the English. Los Lobos' greatness is that they are barely either of those things.

If in their first and second acts, Los Lobos were perpetually underestimated, in their third act, they’ve hardly been estimated at all. Since 2004, the year that co-founder and erstwhile frontman David Hidalgo turned fifty, the band has released an album of Disney musical covers, a Spanish language Christmas album, and two well reviewed, commercially ignored albums of originals — “Tin Can Trust” from 2010 and “Gates of Gold” from 2015. Years were filled with lifetime achievement awards, a hundred plus days on the road and nominations — but not inductions — for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. By 2021, most of the band was closing in on seventy, the world was still reeling from a pandemic and more than half of America, and most Mexican Americans, were somewhere between horrified and terrified by their forty-fifth President. That was the context in which “Native Sons,” Los Lobos’ seventeenth studio album was released — aging, reeling and horrified. True to form, though, Los Lobos did not budge. They did not speed up or slow down or reel or overreact. They made a wide ranging covers album, traversing genres and decades, bound solely by place. As its title suggests, every song on “Native Sons” was originally recorded by an artist with ties to Los Angeles.

In spite of its novel theme, “Native Sons” was easy to pass by. No hits. No original songs. A few familiar titles but mostly obscure ones. On the album’s cover we see five anonymous guys — silhouettes really — consumed by shadows. Los Lobos still played seventy shows in 2021, but that was thirty to fifty less than most years past. That being said, “Native Sons” received a bunch of good to very good reviews. It even won a Grammy for Best Americana Album, which arrived in 2022 and felt more like a lifetime achievement award than album specific recognition. Looking back, I do recall reading those reviews. I heard about that Grammy. I listened to the NPR interview. But, until very recently, I admittedly had not heard “Native Sons.” I too passed it by. I underestimated.

Some part of my response was a response to the idea of an album of covers. Now, I love a good cover. I think everyone loves a good cover. Many of the greatest recordings in the history of Rock, Pop and Soul are covers: Aretha’s “Respect.” Otis’ “Try a Little Tenderness.” Elvis’ “Hound Dog.” The Beatles “Twist and Shout.” But, for the last fifty years — since David Geffen started calling musicians “artists” — the cover has been devalued. Cover songs are considered novelties. And whereas in the Seventies a cover band — like Three Dog Night — could enjoy chart success, fifty years later there was simply no such thing as a significant, mainstream cover band.

Cover albums, of course, are not the same thing as cover bands. Cat Power’s covers records are beloved. Dylan’s fourth (fifth?) phase is full of cover records. But Los Lobos is different from Chan and Bob in at least two significant ways: (1) Los Lobos have released is most famous for a cover song — meaning that the less initiated might actually think of them as a kind of, sort of, cover band and (2) unlike Chan and Bob, Los Lobos’ covers tend to be faithful, loving renderings more than they are bold reinterpretations.

But here’s the thing about “Native Sons” — it is important. And it is a bold reinterpretation. And, most of all, it’s good. It’s really, really good. Los Lobos tribute to L.A. is bold in that it widens the aperture for how we think about the city’s music, placing The Beach Boys and Buffalo Springfield alongside Lalo Garcia and Willie Bobo. Additionally, it rescues buried treasures from Thee Midnighters (“Love Special Delivery”) and The Jaguars (“Where Lovers Go”) — both artists of Mexican descent. Ultimately, though, it’s a recasting of L.A. music through a Mexican lens — a reverse whitewashing. “Native Sons” pushes back against Bert Berns, who stole “La Bamba.” It reminds us that Los Lobos were here first. On “Native Sons,” the band whose debut was entitled “Just another band from East L.A.,” reframe history while they reclaim roots.

None of this would matter quite so much if the music wasn’t so wonderful. Few bands balance wild breadth and radical consistency like Los Lobos. Whether it’s horns or cowbell or guitar solos, there’s never a hair out of place in a Los Lobos song. Even when they are covering WAR’s moody, sprawling, funky, stoned, eight minute epic, “The World is a Ghetto,” they are immaculate. Immaculate, but never unfeeling or cold. Los Lobos are warm and cool, qualities that elevate not one, but two Stephen Stills’ covers (“Bluebird” and “For What It’s Worth”) and a spectactular version of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’ already beautiful “Sail On, Sailor.”

As one might expect, Los Lobos’ politics are implicit more than they are brazen. There are no Rage Against the Machine covers on “Native Sons.” For every “statement song,” there are two festive numbers. L.A.’s greatest band, who were once L.A.’s finest wedding band, delivers a fiery rhumba on "Los Chucos Suaves.” And their cover of The Blasters’ “Flat Top Joint” — full of ribs, beer, jukeboxes and girls — is a swinging good time. By and large, “Native Sons” is exactly as serious as it is fun. Which I guess makes it serious fun. Which makes me feel that Los Angeles is knowable. Not to me. Maybe not to anyone else. But definitely to David, Louie, Cesar, Conrad and Steve. Los Lobos knows L.A. Los Lobos knows the unknowable.

by Matty Wishnow