Songoftheday 9/13/15 - Well now swing me swing me, swing me way down there darling...

"Come On, Let's Go" - Los Lobos
from the album La Bamba (Original Soundtrack) (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #21 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 7

Today's SOTD comes from the Hispanic-American rock band Los Lobos, who went from being critical darlings to pop stars with their #1 pop hit cover of "La Bamba" from the Richie Valens biopic movie of the same name. Their second single from the soundtrack was another Valens track, "Come On, Let's Go". It was his first hit single in 1958, but stopped just short of the Top-40 at #42 (though spending over three months on the chart)...

In 1966, the Indiana pop/rock band the McCoys took the song to the top-40 for the first time with their cover , which peaked at #22, but it stripped all the Latin from the song for a post-Beatles teenybopper style...

Lobos' version, pretty faithful to the original, did the McCoys one notch better in 1987... (The film's star Lou Diamond Phillips mimed their performance in the movie)...

Los Lobos' version of "Come On, Let's Go" just missed the American pop top-20 by a notch in November of 1987. The record also crossed over to the Mainstream Rock chart at #33, while  making it to #35 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary (or "easy listening") chart. Internationally, the single went to #18 in the UK, and top-10 in Ireland and Spain. It would be the band's last top-40 pop hit in America, though rock radio would still continue to play them through the rest of the decade. In 1992 they scored their most recent hit on that genre with "Reva's House" (#24), although they've have charting albums through 2010 so far.

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Los Lobos had been performing "Come On, Let's Go" long before their involvement in the La Bamba movie. Here they are on Alan Thicke's late night show in 1983...

..and again from a live date from 1987...

...and finally from a show this year in London...

Up tomorrow: British post-punk pioneers got some time on their hands.