Total pros with a few bad decisions
by Upstill on 10/22/24Uptown Theatre Napa - NapaRating: 3 out of 5I've been onto Los Lobos from the beginning (well, since How Will The Wolf Survive?) and they've given me some of the best concert experiences of my life, so I was looking forward to catching up to them 50 years down the road. But their show at the Uptown Theater in Napa was definitely a mixed bag. The good news is that when you've played together for half a century, your band is a well-oiled unit. And they have lost none of their rockin' spirit. They're as tight as they come.
Now the bad news:
* The sound was borderline terrible. The vocals were overwhelmed to the point that it was impossible to make out any lyrics, which is a special shame when they have two such sterling vocalists. And they've adopted this trendy bass sound that makes it hard to pick out ANY other instruments, sounding more like farting than music and, ironically, making it impossible to follow the bass notes! Conrad Lozano is such a fine bass player; it's frustrating being unable to hear what he's playing.
* I hadn't seen them since Louie Perez moved from drums to playing a third guitar, and my main question is: Why? His playing would be a standout in any other band, but adding a third guitarist to the peerless team of Hidalgo and Rosas is the height of redundancy--and he adds nothing to the presentation. I'm pretty sure I never even saw him smile. I can only guess that letting him play guitar was the only way they could hang on to the guy responsible for some of their greatest songwriting.
* Speaking of songwriting, they apparently made a conscious decision to rock it up, even at the expense of honoring some of their most subtle songs. The plaintiveness of The Neighborhood was lost in the drive, and Kiko was almost unrecognizable.
I try to enjoy the show that I get rather than the show I wish I were getting, and sometimes I did, but I couldn't help imagining how special the show could have been if they had gone for tonal variation, dynamics, texture and drama, rather than pushing ahead as full-on rock. They're more than capable of it.