 Los Lobos at Mass MoCA, 5/30/99 by Seth Rogovoy
By the end of the outdoor event, the diverse audience, ranging in age from
six to seventy, was on its feet and twisting to the sounds of "La Bamba,"
the band's greatest hit and the song which in some ways encapsulates
everything the band is about.
Given the setting and the occasion, it is tempting to make much of Los
Lobos's artier aspects, such as the way in which the band deconstructs
classic folk, rock and pop song forms and reassembles them in new and
suggestive ways, echoing much of the artwork inside the galleries at MoCA.
That artful aspect was there, but for the most part it was hidden behind the
mask of a chameleonlike party band. Los Lobos is many bands in one, and in
the course of its two-hour show it took concertgoers on a journey through
its various guises.
The group kicked off its set with the title track to its upcoming album,
"This Time," a bit of soul with a deep funk groove. The musicians then
segued into one of its better-known songs, "One Time One Night," a
country-rock tune laden with a taste of socio-political protest. The song
was arranged Grateful Dead-style - a hint of things to come later on in the
show - with lots of spaces for the soloists to stretch out and breathe, sort
of like the unusually large gallery spaces behind the brick walls of the
buildings that enclosed the courtyard.
Guitarist/vocalist Cesar Rosas upped the ante with the crunching blues-rock
of "I Walk Alone," followed by guitarist/vocalist David Hidalgo's "Angel
Dance," a modal rocker that featured a Celtic-sounding bridge and some
extended solo jams. Hidalgo then brought out his accordion, and the band
launched into a new song, the first truly Mexican-flavored number of the
night.
Suddenly the crowd came alive, with people popping up into the aisles to
dance. The band responded in kind, and soul and blues gave way to zydeco,
polka and the group's signature, revved-up Mexican folk, including such
favorites as "Anselma" and "Volver Volver," the latter a showcase for Rosas'
vocals.
Before anyone knew what happened, an enormous conga line of dancers was
snaking its way through the aisles and in front of the stage, and the party
never let up for the rest of the night. More soulful, groove-rock ensued,
with guitarists Hidalgo and Rosas working together like twin painters,
Hidalgo laying down a fuzzy, wavy base of chords atop which the left-handed
Rosas scattered clean, stinging, single-note lines.
The Grateful Dead was resurrected once again when the show climaxed with a
version of that seminal band's "Bertha," an upbeat piece of jam-rock that
included a very un-Deadlike, mercifully brief, psychedelic jam section. As
huge as the party was up until this point, it was "Bertha" that got the
entire audience on its feet, where they stayed to bring the band back to the
stage for its encore. Multi-instrumentalist Louis Perez strapped on an
electric guitar and crunched out the instantly recognizable opening chords
of Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl," which the band then delivered in a
note-for-note rendition, with Hidalgo providing uncanny, David Crosby-like
harmonies.
Coming directly after "Bertha," it was suddenly classic-rock territory, the
logical place to be from which to make the leap into "La Bamba." Far from a
throwaway, however, Hidalgo used the song as a launching pad for some very
psychedelic guitar work from the catalog of Byrds-era Roger McGuinn, and the
group even mixed in a few riffs and phrases from the Young Rascals' "Good
Lovin'."
The courtyard proved to be a great venue for this sort of event, with
terrific sight and sound, both enhanced by the architecture, which provided
visual and sonic focus to the stage. Whether it is necessary to have
theater-style seating all the way to the front of the stage at rock concerts
is questionable; perhaps next time the presenters might experiment with
providing room up front for dancers and picnickers, and let those who prefer
to remain seated do so at the rear. And, outdoors or not, it's time to
enforce strictly a no-smoking ban at such events, or at least to confine the
smokers to a corner by themselves.
Considering it was the first of its kind in this setting, the event was an
unqualified success, once again suggesting that there is room, either at
MoCA or elsewhere, for this sort of programming, which has become the most
elusive meal on the menu at the "Cultural Berkshires."
Seth Rogovoy rogovoy@berkshire.net music news, interviews, reviews, et al.
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