In 1978, Los Lobos put out an all Spanish language album. But I don't see any reason to tinker with that. So we go forward to their next major release, an EP in 1983 called "....And a Time to Dance." I've used that as the core of this album. But that EP is short, only 16 minutes long if one removes "Come On, Let's Go," the song that is repeated on their 1987 soundtrack album "La Bamba." I do remove that, because I try hard to avoid repetition.
So my goal here was to find enough worthy music from the time to stretch the EP into a full-length album. I did so by grabbing one song from 1982, another song from 1983, and four songs from 1984. The songs come from a variety of sources, but all are of high audio quality - the two from live bootlegs are based on excellent soundboards. Just as importantly, the musical quality is solid too.
As it so happens, I pretty much doubled the length of music here, from 16 to 34 minutes. If I found more quality songs, I would have added more, but these are all the good ones I found from those years.
By the way, I changed the title slightly. The EP begins with three dots. I dropped the dots, to indicate this is something different, and also because I think it's awkward beginning an album title with that kind of punctuation.
Also, here's an interesting anecdote I came up with while researching songs for this album. The members of Los Lobos were so poor in 1983, then when they had some success with their EP that year, they used the money to buy a van, which enabled them to go on tour to other towns for the first time. How different it would be just a few years later, when they'd have a number one hit!
01 Let's Say Goodnight (Los Lobos)
02 Walking Song (Los Lobos)
03 Anselma (Los Lobos)
04 How Much Can I Do (Los Lobos)
05 Why Do You Do (Los Lobos)
06 Ay Te Dejo en San Antonio (Los Lobos)
07 Diablo Con Vestido [Devil with the Blue Dress On] (Los Lobos)
08 I'm Sorry (Los Lobos)
09 We're Gonna Rock (Los Lobos)
10 Soul Twist [Instrumental] (Los Lobos)
11 300 Pounds of Heavenly Joy (Los Lobos)
12 Sleep Walk [Instrumental] (Los Lobos)
https://www.upload.ee/files/15262422/LosLbs_1983_AndaTimetoDnceAlternate_atse.zip.html
The cover art is the exact cover for the "And a Time to Dance" EP.
COOL! I am a huge fan of Los Lobos, really looking forward to seeing what you post and see if you've found anything I've missed.
ReplyDeleteIf you had gone as early as 1981 you could have included Their single of 'Under the Boardwalk' and also their single of 'Farmer John. I have mp3's of both if you're interested.
I've got a lot of Los Lobos coming. They're one of those bands that leaves all sorts of stray tracks lying around. For instance, I'm planning on a supersized version of the La Bamba soundtrack, plus four albums of stray tracks just for stuff prior to 2000.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out those two early singles. Actually, I was aware of them and wasn't impressed. For instance, the cover of "Under the Boardwalk" sticks closely to the original and doesn't add anything special. So I decided not to use them.
Let me know if I find some good stuff you missed. I did a pretty deep dive for rarities and I was really pleased at what I found. It helps that they allow taping, so there are lots of soundboard recordings of them.
Cool, I look forward to whatever you post. I've really been enjoying your site so far.
DeleteI am concerned that you are posting so much. In that I don't want to see you get burned out and give up. Several blogs that I have enjoyed over the years have done just that. On average since you started, you've posted over an album a day. Please pace yourself.
The reason I can post so much is that, over many years, I just naturally organized my music collection into these various albums. So all I have to do is zip up the files and write something. It's pretty easy. The one thing slowing me down was making the cover art, but I haven't been doing much of that lately.
DeleteIf I ever get to the point where I've posted all the stuff I've done already, I'll probably slow way, way down. But I think that would be a long time off, because I still have tons and tons of stuff that I organized years ago.
I also have lots of great unreleased concerts to post. But I've hardly posted any of those yet because I figure concerts are easily found on the Internet whereas stray track collections are a lot harder to find.
Very cool. I actually have a Los Lobos album myself coming in a couple of weeks.
ReplyDeleteNice. What's the focus of your Los Lobos album going to be?
DeleteTributes
DeleteYou mean other artists covering Los Lobos songs?
DeleteDid a version of this imagined album as well:https://albumsbackfromthedead.blogspot.com/2020/12/los-lobos-and-time-to-dance.html
ReplyDeleteYou took a different approach, which is good.
Delete