“Adios, amigos!”

We heard the voice boom over the loud speakers as we’d nearly made our way from the lawn parking around to the main concert area of the Champlain Valley Expo. Surely that pronouncement wasn’t to be taken literally: maybe an unfamiliar song title being hastily introduced? An ironic greeting to a gringo gathering in Vermont? But, alas, as we turned the corner to finally have the stage in view, it was empty. Not a Lobo to be found.

Celia and Skemmit, the Burlington-based hosts for my wife Laurie and I, were crestfallen – Celia, in particular, who’d made it known that although we were ostensibly coming for the back-half of the incredible double-bill, Tedeschi Trucks Band, Los Lobos were among her all-time favorite bands and her personal stated priority – as well as dumbfounded, after all I’d meticulously researched the “real” starting set times and confidently pinpointed our pre-show dinner and travel time accordingly. One moral to that story: band fan groups on Facebook may not be the most reliable sources of information (and another: never commandeer concert-planning control from local friends on their home turf).

Though they’d sadly said “Vamanos!” before we got in to hear them that night, I’ve now been loco for Los Lobos for – wait, is this possible? – exactly 40 years. Somehow they still feel like a new-ish band to me, but their major label debut, the ground-breaking “How Will the Wolf Survive?,” in fact, arrived in October of 1984, before I then proceeded to wear it out on my turntable. Rolling Stone would go on to rank it #30 on its list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980’s.

The self-proclaimed “Just Another Band from East L.A.” were something markedly different to the rock & roll world. Blending a west coast American upbringing with their Mexican foundational core, its members – originals David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas, Louie Pérez, Conrad Lozano, and later Steve Berlin – created a truly unique sonic aesthetic, which category headings like Tex-Mex, Chicano or Heartland failed to fully capture. In praising the group’s originality, Robert Christagau of the Village Voice wrote “Their debut LP makes it sound as if they invented the style.”

Over 16 studio albums, numerous other live ones, and thousands of genre-bending concerts for which sharper-witted people actually arrived on time, Los Lobos have continuously found an eclectic, Latin-inflected place populated by really no one else in pop/rock music. At the same time, their revved-up versions of many already well-known rock songs – most notably ‘La Bamba,’ ‘Come On, Let’s Go’ and ‘Donna’ for the Ritchie Valens biographical film “La Bamba,” and ‘Bertha’ for the Grateful Dead tribute album “Deadicated” – became almost de facto standards for the tunes. And, in an item entirely unrelated to any of that, Cesar Rosas, a short time following his appearance with co-band leader David Hidalgo at Eric Clapton’s epic 2013 Crossroads Festival at Madison Square Garden, also put on a post-show “performance” of blissfully inebriated lecherousness with his malo manos at a hotel bar across the street that my fellow attendees/witnesses, Zing and Messiah, and I, considered to be quite a memorable coda to the already historic evening.

I found it interesting to discover that that original Los Lobos album title, as well as its nearly eponymous record-closing track, ‘Will the Wolf Survive?,’ were inspired by a National Geographic article entitled “Where Can the Wolf Survive,” which the band members related to their own struggle to gain success in the United States while maintaining their Mexican roots. Louie Pérez recalled, “It was like our group, our story: What is this beast, this animal that the record companies can’t figure out? Will we be given the opportunity to make it or not?” Now four decades on from that pioneering industry entrance, I think we can safely surmise that Los Lobos – namely, The Wolves, in Spanish – have done well more than simply survive. “Hola otra vez, amigos!” I promise Celia I’ll be an hour early to the next show.