Tito Larriva

If Tito Larriva ever hits it big, he could assume the title Time magazine once hung on David Byrne: "Rock's Renaissance Man." For now, Larriva remains little-known, though the masses have heard and seen his work as a composer for movies and television and as a supporting actor in 27 films. (Among his credits is "True Stories," the Byrne-directed film that landed the Talking Heads singer on the cover of Time in 1986.

If Tito Larriva ever hits it big, he could assume the title Time magazine once hung on David Byrne: "Rock's Renaissance Man." For now, Larriva remains little-known, though the masses have heard and seen his work as a composer for movies and television and as a supporting actor in 27 films. (Among his credits is "True Stories," the Byrne-directed film that landed the Talking Heads singer on the cover of Time in 1986.

Chicano Song Contest: Twenty-three semifinalists of the first Nuevo LA Chicano Musicworks song contest were announced Tuesday by the sponsoring Plaza de la Raza. The songs--in classical, folk traditional, contemporary Latin and contemporary pop categories--were selected from more than 300 entries by a panel of judges chaired by members of Los Lobos, John Avila of Oingo Boingo, Tito Larriva of Los Cruzados, and salsa musicians Tito Puente and Celia Cruz.

Pop music, like sports, has its major and minor leagues--and the veteran Cruzados and Rave-Ups displayed different, though equally flawed approaches Friday night at the Coach House to dealing with life in the minors. Once considered one of the Southland's bands-most-likely, the Rave-Ups now appears resigned to going unheard.

Cruzados has endured a string of false starts and bad breaks that would cause most bands to pull out of the rock rat race altogether. But by the looks of things, this story may have a happy ending. In the local band's fiery, frequently stunning show Wednesday at the Roxy, singer-guitarist Tito Larriva and lead guitarist Marshall Rohner constructed frameworks for well-crafted songs over a variety of crunching, muscular rhythms.

"CRUZADOS." Cruzados. Arista. Yer basic AOR aquatic zip-gun boogie-woogie, "Motorcycle Girl," is getting all the airplay, but at least three tracks on Cruzados' first album are more interesting, original and representative of the El Lay quartet's meat 'n' tortillas approach.

RE "REBELS With a Cause" (by Agustin Gurza, May 10): While the "Vexing: Female Voices From East L.A. Punk" exhibition will no doubt add another layer to the rich history of L.A. music, I'm perplexed at the assertion in the article that Chicano punks were somehow rejected from the Hollywood punk scene (ditto the idea that the scene was male-dominated: The all-girl Go-Go's and female-fronted X, Alley Cats, and the Eyes were among the definitive bands of...

VARIOUS ARTISTS "Desperado: The Soundtrack" Epic Soundtrax * * * Except for the annoying snippets of film dialogue scattered throughout the album, this soundtrack is a well-designed collection characterized by the gritty feel of Ennio Morricone's classic scores for the Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns--with even more whistling.