FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
"It's better to have lost fame than to have never known it before."Is that something Ricky Schroder bitterly thinks aloud as he's leafing through another script for a movie of the week where he gets to play a crazed - but still baby-faced - black sheep son, who kills his brother and dupes his mom (presumably because he's so darned baby-faced)? Or is that something Danny, Donny, Jordan, Joe and Jon mutter amongst themuglyselves as they look fruitlessly for that final, magic combination of "girl," "love" and "forever?"
One group of people you won't find comforting themselves with that line are the members of Los Lobos. That's because there are more important things to them than that ol' Bitch Goddess Success.
Once a household name due to a song that's title we shall never speak, the band enjoyed the kind of "junk food" success most people can only dream of: Top 10 hits, tons of airplay and sold-out headlining tours all across North America. But that was a decade ago and things are different and quieter now. Yet still, there are no regrets.
"If this all ended tomorrow - without the big success and huge audiences we had - I would be really satisfied with what we accomplished... I'd be really proud of what we did," says Los Lobos' drummer and co-songwriter Louie Perez
"To a certain extent we changed the way people listen to music, especially the music that comes from Mexican-American people. As cultural ambassadors if you will, I think we've accomplished a lot.
"In this business, because you're always on the brink of obscurity at all times, if it all went away I'd still be doing it, I'd just be doing it somewhere else in a different way."
It's impossible not to believe Perez. Together for 23 years ("We're the elder statesmen of Chicano music," he laughs) he and his bandmates have been popular music's only major Mexican-American recording act during that time period and have had to deal with the stereotypes and expectations of a fickle public. And they've done an admirable job.
They released their latest full-length album at the end of 1996 called Colossal Head, and it's an album which some argue is their finest. The group of Los Angeles-born musicians continue to tinker and experiment with traditional rhythms and sounds, and go left when logic (as dictated by a free-market society) has advised them to go right.
Unfortunately (although again, not regrettably), those decisions have seen their audiences and record sales slide in an inverse relation to their creativity and critical acclaim.
"In that respect it is frustrating because we put a lot of ourselves into the songs we write and the records we make," admits Perez.
"But we're patient, we're grooving along doing what we know how to do and I think we've made some great records and it's unfortunate that more people haven't responded to it.
"We're willing to try anything and not be myopic about the things we do and the music we listen to. It's very easy being an ethnic band or more so being a Mexican-American... you kind of feel isolated to begin with and alienated sometimes. It's really easy to say, 'Okay this is my own little world and I'm just going to stay right here.' But we've never looked at things that way.
"We've never been political - outspoken that way - because we've always felt that just the fact that we exist is a statement. So it gives you a lot more flexibility and a lot more room to explore other things."
That even extends down to the Latin Playboys, a haunting and highly experimental side-project Perez and Lobos collaborator David Hidalgo formed with well-known producing duo Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom (who have been behind the board for most of Los Lobos' finest efforts, including their latest). The four men will return to the studio to finish the second album under that moniker in December of this year (half is already recorded) and it should be released early in '98.
Perez, conscious of the fact that some people view secondary bands as either ego-trips or as proof of discontent and a sure sign of a break-up, insists that instead, it's reason for Los Lobos fans to cheer
"It's kind of like when dad goes on a fishing trip," he says about the Playboys in relation to Los Lobos, "and he goes off and he does something that's just for himself and it feels good and when he comes back he's that much better of a dad."
And as everybody knows, not very many people get rich and famous by being a dad - but it can be highly rewarding nonetheless.
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