The Best of Lobo

Best remembered for soft-rock perennials like "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" and "I'd Love You to Want Me," Lobo was the alias of singer/songwriter Roland Kent LaVoie, born July 31, 1943 in Tallahassee, FL. At 17 he joined the Rumors, whose ranks also included future luminaries like country-rock pioneer Gram Parsons, country-pop cut-up Jim Stafford, and noted drummer Jon Corneal.

Anyone who has ever loved "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" will find plenty to explore on The Best of Lobo, which contains 18 tracks including "I'd Love You to Want Me, " "Don't Expect Me to Be Your Friend, " "How Can I Tell Her, " and, of course, "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo."

Tomás Luis de Victoria was born in 1548 in Avila, the birthplace of St Teresa. Just as she seems to personify the religious ethos of sixteenth-century Spain (the good side of it, at least), so Victoria came to embody the best of the Spanish character in music. As a youth he learnt his art as a chorister at the Cathedral of Avila. So promising was he that he was sent to Rome at seventeen years of age, patronised by Philip II and by the Church, to study at the Jesuits’ Collegium Germanicum…

On this new recording, Coro Victoria offers a portrait of Alonso Lobo (1555-1617) through a cross-section of his sacred output (his works in Spanish are all lost). The group also illustrates the variety of interpretative practices of the period. The concluding O quam suavis est Domine is sung by a single soprano while the vihuela accompaniment supplies the remaining five parts. Church choirs sang this music in the liturgy, but minstrels also played it during processions, and there was free traffic between sacred and secular contexts.