Saw Los Lobos last night (Aug 9th) at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle with Minus 5 opening up. I’ve never seen them before, but have always enjoyed their radio play music although have neverr actually bought a CD. My overall impression was that they are a super tight band and can rock the house, but song selections and some of their cuts from the new album coming out were weak as was the opening band.

We spent the entire opening set in the beer garden as Minus 5 was lame. The singing was like bad asphalt on a hot day and the energy was low. When Los Lobos came out, they played a new song from their soon to be released album first (which was not bad) then rolled into “Don’t Worry Baby” which got the place dancing. They played the Who’s “My Generation” which I thought was horrible because the main lead singer does not have the voice to pull that off and they played some slow songs from their new album that put me to sleep.

The did have some high points like bringing out two of the original members of War and playing some funky, mexi-blues with the additional harmonica and percussionist as well as playing I Got Loaded (fun) and Cinammon Girl as their final encore. They are clearly at their best playing up beat mexi-pop and featuring the musicianship of the band. They were at their worst trying to play beautiful music with the voice as the primary instrument.

I give the show a 3 out of 5 stars. Rhapsody has an excellent selection of Los Lobos albums at Los Lobos