This Week's Forgotten Gem of the '80s - Los Lobos' "Will the Wolf Survive?"

Shame on us all who knew Los Lobos back in the day only for the band's oft-heard 1987 cover of '50s rocker Ritchie Valens' "La Bamba". And I won't even begin to chastise us for not using that song as an excuse to learn a little Spanish, but that's an entirely different subject.

I don't know if my pre-teen ears would have been wise enough to appreciate it at the time, but this polished yet completely organic-sounding Mexican-American roots rock band from Los Angeles made exactly the kind of music during the '80s that, by the mid-'90s, I realized I had always loved. Of course, the band would likely be unsurprised at such an admission, having persevered through an era that usually smokescreened albums such as its major label debut, 1984's How Will the Wolf Survive?. In fact, despite that record's more than respectable Top 50 showing on the Billboard album charts, it's practically indisputable that only the chosen few would have ever even heard of Los Lobos or its brilliant, emotive track "Will the Wolf Survive?" without the heavy association with Valens. That's a mixed blessing the group can probably live with now, more than 35 years into an eclectic, largely independent career in the music business whose achievements add up to far more than mere survival.

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