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Plenty had changed by then. For
one thing, the quartet of friends from
East LA’s Gar eld High School—Cesar
Rosas, David Hidalgo, Conrad Lozano,
and Louie Perez—had changed up their
act. ey’d incorporated electric guitars
into their sound, and they were starting
to develop their distinctive repertoire,
mixing American rock into Mexican
norteño and pan-Latin folk traditions.
Most important for all ve men—
the four members of Los Lobos and
Berlin—they were now on the same
bill. Berlin had become the newest and
youngest member of e Blasters, an-
other LA rock out t, and that night, Los
Lobos were opening for them.
“By that point, [Los Lobos] had
changed into a very di erent band.
From the very rst moment, I loved
their music,” recalls Berlin, chatting
with
Ravinia
Magazine by phone while
the band toured Massachusetts earli-
er this spring. “I loved the polarity of
having David and Cesar—two di erent
singers, two di erent writing styles, two
di erent viewpoints—so it kept things
interesting.”
Los Lobos was, in those days, a band
segregated away by Los Angeles County
geography and culture—yet here they
were, opening for e Blasters. “Every-
body thought they knew everything that
was happening [in the music scene],”
Berlin says, “and here’s this band from
just over the river that no one had ever
heard of, blowing everybody’s mind. It
was like, ‘Where did they come from?’ ”
( e group would play on that mindset
with the title of their rst album,
Just
Another Band From East LA
, and then
use it again for an early-’ s, two-disc
retrospective of the band’s career, com-
plete with live versions and outtakes of
well-known tracks.)
No gurative trumpets blared that
night either, but Berlin was clearly
impressed, and the other guys must’ve
liked the way Berlin played the sax.
Everyone was very friendly, he recalls,
and they made a casual o er: “ ey
said, ‘Some of these songs have horn
parts. Do you want to learn them?’ and
I said, ‘Yeah, of course I do.’ at’s where
it started. Song by song, I learned, and it
grew from there.”
us began Berlin’s interim years,
when he played with both e Blasters
and Los Lobos. A multi-instrumentalist,
Berlin gets credited on the o cial Los
Lobos site as “saxophonist, utist, and
harmonica player.” Nevertheless, he’s
more modest about his skills: “I can
noodle on a couple di erent things;
sax is the main one. I’m a mediocre
keyboard player, but that’s about it.”
(He’s similarly self-deprecating about
his Spanish skills, which he describes
as “very crappy. I took it in high school,
and I haven’t gotten any better. To be
perfectly honest, it’s not really a pre-
requisite for the job. I’m not signing
or writing. It’s not that big a deal to
anybody.”)
Before joining the band, Berlin had
started producing records, fatefully
co-producing (with T-Bone Burnett)
Los Lobos’
release,
…And a Time
to Dance
. Naturally, then, he began
gravitating to his newly adopted band,
despite his utter lack of familiarity with
the Mexican music that formed the bed-
rock of Los Lobos’ signature sound. By
, he had o cially le e Blasters
(“I don’t even think they noticed for a
couple months,” he jokes), turning Los
Lobos into a quintet.
DREW REYNOLDS
RAVINIA MAGAZINE | JUNE 1 – JUNE 17, 2018
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