Los Lobos - Ride This: The Covers - Alternate Version (2004)

In 2004, Los Lobos released "The Ride," a studio album of all new material. Around the same time, they released "Ride This - The Covers EP," which, as it says, is an EP of cover versions. This album starts with the songs from the EP, then adds more cover versions to turn it into a full album.

The original EP is fairly long as far as EPs go. It's seven songs and 29 minutes, which is longer than some albums. Some big name guests appeared on "The Ride," and most of these extra songs have Los Lobos pay their respects to those guests. For instance, Richard Thompson played guitar on the album track "Wreck of the Carlos Rey," so they played his song "Shoot Out the Lights" as one of the EP tracks. That was also the case with Ruben Blades, Tom Waits, Dave Alvin of the Blasters, Elvis Costello, Bobby Womack, and others. Note that "Marie, Marie" (originally by the Blasters) is a live version that actually dates to 1999.

On top of that EP, I've added five more cover versions that all date to 2004 or 2003. Three of them come from various artists collections. One, "Mexicano Americano" is a song by Runel Fuentes that was recorded in 2004 but came out as part of the "Acoustic en Vivo" album one year later. "Baby What You Want Me to Do" is an unreleased live version, but it's from a soundboard bootleg and sounds just as good as all the other songs.

With the added songs, the album is now 47 minutes long instead of 29. Personally, I feel that, by 2004, Los Lobos's songwriting had declined since their 1990s "Kiko" peak. But they still were an excellent band, so of course they do a great job here.

01 Jockey Full of Bourbon (Los Lobos)
02 More than I Can Stand (Los Lobos)
03 Uncomplicated (Los Lobos)
04 Patria (Los Lobos)
05 Shoot Out the Lights (Los Lobos)
06 It'll Never Be Over for Me (Los Lobos)
07 Marie, Marie (Los Lobos)
08 Baby What You Want Me to Do (Los Lobos)
09 Never Take the Place of You (Los Lobos)
10 Mexico Americano (Los Lobos)
11 On a Night like This (Los Lobos)
12 Voodoo Music (Los Lobos)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15262580/LosLbs_2004b_RideThsTheCovrsAlternte_atse.zip.html

I used the exact cover of the "Ride This" EP... almost. For that cover, the words "The Covers EP" was written on the lower part of the image of the cassette tape. I edited and rearranged that slightly to just say "The Covers," since it's no longer an EP.