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Los Lobos uncork 'Kiko' in special concerts

Los Lobos will celebrate the holiday season by performing their highly acclaimed and widely influential "Kiko" album in its entirety in four cities.

The East Los Angeles band will play a two-night stand at the Fillmore in San Francisco Dec. 16-17 and hit the House of Blues venues in West Hollywood, Anaheim and Las Vegas at the end of the month. Details on the tour are listed below.

These performances will be Los Lobos' first live performances of "Kiko" in its entirety. Released in 1992, the album is still considered by many to be the band's masterpiece.

Prior to the release of "Kiko," Los Lobos were still battling a personality crisis created by "La Bamba," the band's worldwide hit from the Richie Valens' biopic of the same name.

"After 'La Bamba' we went back to our roots with 'La Pistola y La Corazon' and did 'The Neighborhood,' a big rock record," Los Lobos' Louie Perez said in a press statement. "We didn't consciously try to make a different sounding record with 'Kiko,' but we wanted to do something new."

With the help of producers Mitchell Froom and Tchad Blake, Los Lobos were able to indeed fashion a new sound for the band, one that married commercial polish with psychedelic elements.

"When we finished 'Kiko,' we rehearsed some of the new songs for the road, but we never thought about doing the whole album [in concert] until we started planning our yearly holiday shows at the Fillmore [this year]," Perez said. "We knew it would be hard work, but the fans have always said 'Kiko' was special, so we're doing it in part as a present to them."

In November, Los Lobos will begin work on a new studio record, which will be their first since 2004's "The Ride." The band's last CD was the concert set "Live at the Fillmore," which hit stores in March.

In other news, Perez and playwright Luis Torres, a Peabody Award winning reporter, have also been commissioned to turn "Kiko" into a theatrical production. A tentative debut date has been set for the spring 2008 theatrical season.