By Larry Nager
The Cincinnati Enquirer

It's a sad testament to the state of the music industry when the best American rock 'n' roll band - and most American rock 'n' roll band - plays tiny theaters instead of large arenas. But that's what Los Lobos did Sunday night, packing 450-seat Parrish Auditorium on Miami University's Hamilton campus.

There was nothing sad about the band's 110-minute performance, a glorious celebration of pan-American sounds and styles, from Tex-Mex polkas to hard-edged blues, twangy country-rock, deep-soul ballads, spacey psychedelic jams, bouncy Colombian Cumbia and passionate originals.

After 30 years together, Los Lobos can seemingly do anything and do it well.

Sunday night, lead singer/guitarist David Hidalgo did his soulful ballad, "This Time," before it morphed into Bob Marley's reggae classic, "Waiting in Vain," sung by co-lead vocalist/guitarist Cesar Rosas.

They weren't finished, as the groove again shifted, almost imperceptibly, into Billy Stewart's doo-wop pop-soul hit, "Sitting in the Park," as his band mates joined in harmony.

They performed similar magic in a Grateful Dead segment that moved from Hidalgo's crooning "I Got Loaded" to two favorite Dead covers, Bobby Bland's "Turn On Your Lovelight" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," before mutating into the Dead's "Bertha."

Hidalgo and Rosas traded leads with third lead guitarist Louie Perez, who, for most of the past 30 years was Los Lobos drummer. But like I said, these guys can do anything. No other band has mastered so many different styles, so many different instruments, and made them all so confidently its own.

Much of the night focused on the new CD, Good Morning Azatlan, the usual Los Lobos melting pot of American music. But there also were songs from throughout the group's recording career, all the way back to the first full-length, major-label album and Rosas' rocker, "Don't Worry Baby"

It was like a rock 'n' roll Jumanji, Los Lobos opening its Pandora's repertoire and an entire continent's music comes pouring out. Parrish wasn't big enough to hold it all, in one of the best nights of music I've heard in 35 years of concerts.

E-mail lnager@enquirer.com