CRUZADOS’ ROOTS GROW PAST EAST L.A. BORDERS

When Los Lobos was still playing Mexican folk music on the East L.A. wedding circuit in the late ‘70s, a local rock band called the Plugz was using a punked-up version of “La Bamba” as its anthem.

Today, thanks to the success of the movie “La Bamba,” the song is completely the property of Los Lobos, who did the Ritchie Valens music for the score.

Tito Larriva, the singer/guitarist who fronted the predominantly Hispanic Plugz and now leads Cruzados, its descendant, says Los Lobos is welcome to it.

“It’s funny, ‘cause we feel in a way they’ve lifted a big black cloud from us,” the long-haired Larriva said recently in his Hollywood apartment. “Now that they have a big hit single with it, we don’t have to perform it. As the Plugz we had to do it even nights we didn’t want to.”

Why is Larriva so glad to be rid of the song that, now more than ever, is the musical symbol of Southern California’s Chicano culture? Because Cruzados is not, nor has it ever been, a part of that culture. Still, many people erroneously assume that the band (which opens for the Psychedelic Furs on Tuesday at the Pacific Amphitheatre and headlines the Roxy on Wednesday) shares roots with Los Lobos.

But where Los Lobos is East L.A., Larriva is more at home in Hollywood, where he moved 12 years ago after living in El Paso and Mexico City. Where Los Lobos celebrates its extended family of “homeboys and homegirls,” Larriva is a self-described loner with a small circle of close friends that includes the likes of Paul (Pee-wee Herman) Reubens, in whose early-’80s stage show he was a regular actor.

“It’s nice to hear a band where they all grew up together and went to school together,” Larriva said of Los Lobos. In contrast, Cruzados’ drummer Charlie (Chalo) Quintana also comes from El Paso, bassist Tony Marsico hails from Philadelphia and guitarist Marshall Rohner was born in Iowa and raised in Hawaii. “Cruzados has a Latin feel because I’m the singer,” Larriva observed, “but there’s a totally different influence.”

Indeed, the sound on the two Cruzados albums is closer to that of Midwestern Mellencamp than East L.A. Lobos, and Larriva feels that most people could completely miss the Latin aspect of his songs unless it’s pointed out to them.

“They’d never hear it,” he said of his heritage’s place in his songs. “I know because I sing it. But they’d never know except for ‘Flor de Mal,’ because it’s in Spanish. But that’s different from anything Los Lobos would do. They’d do a traditional song or corrida or norteno .”

Larriva acknowledges that there are some parallels between the songs of the two bands, notably the somber tone of the lyrics.

“A lot of my songs are about home,” Larriva said of the material on the band’s current “After Dark” album. “This record’s like that ‘cause Tony and our mothers were very sick, so we talked a lot about that. That’s why we wrote about home. And then they both passed away, and Charlie’s dad passed away a few months before.”

In the end, though, Larriva said, “If there are any similarities (between Cruzados and Los Lobos) it would just be like other songwriters . . . using the same cliches.”

That’s not to say the 33-year-old Larriva downplays his cultural background: He and his girlfriend, dancer Janet Carrol, recently put together a performance based on the life of Mexican artist Frida Khalo for the upcoming Fringe Festival/Los Angeles (performances will be held Sept. 12 and 13 at the Margot Albert Theater, Plaza de la Raza, Lincoln Park), and he regularly performs Mexican folk tunes in his solo acoustic shows.

But his roots are not ingrained in quite the same way as those of the four Chicanos in Los Lobos. In fact, though he was born into a large Mexican family in Juarez, Mexico, it wasn’t until he moved from El Paso (where he went to high school) to Mexico City in his late teens that he really made any personal connection with his cultural background.

“I never considered myself a Chicano until I went to Mexico City,” he said. “Then I discovered my heritage. I always thought I looked like David Bowie, but there I went, ‘Hey, I’m not white!’ ”

Some people, though, just don’t seem to understand that there’s a difference between Larriva’s Mexican background and that of Los Lobos. To a certain extent, he’s given into it himself with his latest acting role: a Chicano buddy of Cheech Marin in the movie “Born in East L.A.”

“See,” said Larriva with a shrug. “I can’t get away from it.”