MUSIC REVIEW: LOS LOBOS PIG OUT IN THE PARK SPOKANE RIVERFRONT PARK SPOKANE WASHINGTON AUGUST 29, 2014
By Phil Seahorn
To catch a music act free in a park is one thing. It is an entirely different experience when one can enjoy music from music legends. That was the case with Friday night’s performance in the park by Los Lobos, and all free. After one historic music performance in St. Louis over the 4th of July holiday (En Vogue), then travelling 1200 miles and two plane fights, that trip was made a little better to The Pig Out in the Park at Spokane Riverfront Park in downtown Spokane, Washington. Cesar Rosas and David Hildago, both at ages 59, took the stage with the rest of the band promptly at 9 o’clock to a crowd at about three thousand in a very small stage area. This was kind of puzzling to me, as this was not the main stage, but was used as the main stage. One reason I think is that it was the farthest away in the park from the residential and business districts that line the riverfront of Spokane. The main stage just featured lesser known or regional bands. The very first song of their set hit me personally like a musical brick to the head. ”The Neighborhood” was sung with almost gospel like intensity with the soaring vocals and guitar of Hildalgo, who asked the audience on the very first song of their set to sing along, with the verse “pray for peace
in the neighborhood.” AND GUESS WHAT THE SONG WAS DEDICATED TO? Motherfucker! I travel 1200 miles to get away from the Lou, and the bullshit back home follows me half way across the fucking country. The only downer to the entire set, but glad it was the first song out of the box. The rest of the set erased the first song and the context away like the Spokane Falls (literally, real water falls) cascading two hundred feet away. Rosas, who is my all-time favorite Latin guitarist (sorry Carlos, but you have been playing the same shit for fifty years, not too creative) who closed every other song with “Thank You, Music Lovers!” That is what makes Los Lobos music legends. They play EVERYTHING. And that’s EXACTLY what they did last night, from rock to soul (“Poppa Was a Rolling Stone”) to Tex Mex , to traditional dance hall Latin music. And they even did an actual gospel song! (“Tears of God”). But the set that made me and the crowd go totally apeshit was the “Santana” set. How the fuck good of a performer are you that you can make the original source songs sound better than the original, which were already classics? Los Lobos did just that last night with a Santana medley and guitar solo by Rosas that , I’m sorry, made Carlos look like the little Japanese guy standing by the Fried Glazed
Donut Cheeseburger stand in Spokane River Park last night buskering , with only two and a half chords ( and even THEY were played badly). I still don’t know if Rosas and Hildalgo were like “okay, I’m gonna smoke you tonight, but you can try your damdest to smoke me” on guitar solos, but I and the crowd was in guitar playing fucking heaven. These cats played so good, one guy behind me summed it up to his pal standing next to him: “I can’t fucking believe this. This is incredible”. Not a declaration, but a statement of fact. This performance at Pig Out in the Park in Spokane was too good to be free. Now, still reeling and cheering and clapping until I’m hoarse during and after the Santana set, hard to even write this, but it just got better. These cats are known for “Grateful Dead” like jams, but when you have THREE guitarists who have been playing a combined 105 years, then what you get for a guitar and jam performance from Los Lobos just made me and the crowd almost buzzed, despite ganja being legal in Washington State. (Spokane is very, very conservative, but that is another article). The band jammed for ten minutes, then broke into the one song a lot of people came to see the band play:”La Bamba”.
Standing ovation for ten minutes, then an encore, and the set was over. Everybody came from that concert last night knowing that we all got something that, by every conceivable rights in commercial law, we should have paid for. I witnessed music legends playing an hour and a half long set last night, in one of the most beautiful cities I have been to, let alone this being my new home. Los Lobos was even better than the deep fried glazed donut cheeseburgers!