The Real Eighties: Banging Drums And Old Guitars

As I noted (briefly) yesterday, once you get past the hairdos and the synth-pop and the hair-metal, the eighties were a time when American rock and roll went way way back to its roots.

And hardly anyone dug into those roots harder and further than four Latinos and a Jewish writer from Los Angeles who’d spent years as a bar band before an ever-so-brief flash of top-40 success, followed by three decades of fanatic cult fandom, Los Lobos.

Los Lobos is most famous for “La Bamba”, a mega-hit in 1988.  But before that they’d had minor hits, both English (the glorious “Will The Wolf Survive?”)…

…and Spanish:

And they tied ’em both together into one of the best live and and studio bands of the last thirty years, to say nothing of the past thirty years.

So I like to throw them at my daughter when she starts yapping about the “Safety Dance” …