Live Lobos

Sometimes the best gigs happen in the strangest places. There I was, eating fondue on Saturday night, and getting ready to go see Los Lobos at Harrah's in Chester. "Los Lobos is playing a casino?" a friend of mine said. "Oh, how the mighty have fallen." Not really - though the low-ceilinged Harrah's ballroom where the east L.A. rockers played a wicked 80 minute set was a long steep escalator ride down from the casino floor.  Harrah's may be Tony Orlando and Ronnie Milsap territory, and the sparkly lights hanging behind wouldn't have been out of place in a high school gym. But there's next to no stigma left for rock bands playing casino showrooms anymore, and Los Lobos are a working band, 30 plus years down the road, who handle themselves with class whether they're playing the White House (which they did last month as part of Fiesta Latina) or a less august venue. And from the sound of the sextet on Saturday night, they're as good as they've ever been when it comes to reading an audience and thinking on their feet on stage.

Los Lobos only did one song from their excellent new album of Disney songs, "I Don't Want To Grow Up," from Jungle Book. "Did you see our video with the Seven Dwarfs?" Cesar Rosas asked. "You can't tell the difference between them and us," David Hidalgo quipped. Playing before a crowd that seemed equally divided between comped ticket holders who had no idea who the Chicano rockers were,  and old head fans thrilled to be catching one of the greatest of American bands in an unexpectedly intimate slot parlor showroom, Rosas seemed particularly impressed that one dude requested the blistering "High Places" from 1999's This Time. "Wow, you guys really are fans," Rosas said, and he and his bandmates segued effortlessly into a deliciously stretched-out take on the Allman Brothers' version of Sonny Boy Williamson's "One Way Out." Earlier, when Hidalgo broke a string, Rosas ordered up an impromptu romp though Jimmy Reed's "Baby What You Want Me To Do." Later, By it was party time, with everybody on their feet for "La Bamba," followed by "Good Lovin'," and a closing encore of  Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl," in which the Hildalgo's playing was so hot that he appears to ready to catch on fire in my fuzzy cell phone photo above.

Previously: Will Get Fooled Again