<i> Conjuntos</i> : Memories for Sale, $5 a Song : Music: Oxnard’s Latino nightspots are popular with the bands who play requests and ease loneliness.

Like thousands of others, Raphael Moreno is a family man without a family.

A poor Mexican gardener who lives in a government-subsidized apartment in Oxnard, he earns barely enough to pay his bills and send $150 each month to his wife and four children, whom he left behind four years ago in Mexico.

For men such as Moreno, whose numbers grow every year as economic necessity drives Mexican laborers north, life in America can be an exhausting round of work and sleep, relieved only by an occasional beer with a friend--and the sounds of the conjuntos .

“They bring back memories of Mexico,” Moreno said recently as he listened to a band called El Trio Estrella (The Star Trio) play a request in a smoke-filled bar near 6th and Meta streets. “Good memories.”

These groups of wandering street musicians are becoming a fixture in Oxnard’s downtown restaurants and bars, serving as ambassadors of good will for lonely men far from home, much as USO performers once brightened the lives of American fighting men in Europe. Among the most popular songs is a melancholy tune called called Cruz del Olvido (The Cross of Oblivion), about a young couple who are separated.

“It’s the kind of song that makes you cry,” a musician said.

One musician said at least five conjuntos --roughly translated, the name means bands--and two mariachi groups call downtown Oxnard their turf. For the groups, the growing number of musicians means more competition. But for working-class Mexicans, more conjuntos means more music, more memories of home.

On any given night, as the day begins to fade and the streets begin to empty, the conjuntos can be seen carrying their brightly decorated instruments along Oxnard Boulevard between 5th Street and Wooley Road. The men--usually in groups of three and including guitar, accordion and stand-up bass--hit nightspots such as El Cielito Lindo (The Beautiful Heaven) and El Nuevo Nopalito (The New Cactus), charging $5 a tune.

The conjuntos form a special fraternity with their own code of behavior. Unlike the larger and more elaborate mariachi bands, who make the lion’s share of their earnings at parties and weddings, the conjuntos must pound the pavement and hustle requests.

The informal conjuntos usually don’t wear the expensive matching outfits preferred by mariachis. In most cases they sport Western-style hats, blue jeans and boots. The more successful groups sometimes buy matching vests.

On a recent Friday evening, El Trio Estrella played three or four requests at El Nuevo Nopalito , a small, smoke-filled restaurant on 6th Street. It had been a slow night for the group. By 10 p.m. the three men had only collected about $50. But the night was still young. By 2 a.m. they expected to visit a total of eight bars and restaurants before calling it quits.

Eduardo Gonzalez, a guitarist from Chihuahua, works in the fields during the day. He said sometimes the conjuntos don’t make enough for the evening’s supply of cigarettes and beer, but that half the reward of playing the music is spiritual and emotional fulfillment.

His partners, Antonio Gonzalez and Jose Luis Hernandez, both fieldworkers, nodded in agreement. “Whoever doesn’t love music doesn’t have a soul,” said Antonio Gonzalez, the group’s bass player.

The members moved from table to table soliciting requests, staying at one location until all the patrons have had a chance to hear their favorite songs. When they were through, they left to make way for other groups.

The groups never squabble with customers over money, Antonio Gonzalez said. If a customer refuses to pay for a song that the group has played, he said, the musicians simply take their business elsewhere.

“There are never any problems,” he said. “The law of the conjuntos is respect.”

Restaurant and bar owners have mixed feelings about the conjuntos. Some say the groups attract business, while others complain that the customers spend more money on requests than they do on drinks and food.

The groups hustle their songs at eating and drinking establishments in Simi Valley, Moorpark, Santa Barbara and Port Hueneme. But they say the best business is in Oxnard, where several dozen Latino bars and restaurants are located within walking distance of each other.

In general, the bands’ names are derived from the Mexican regions that they call home: two examples are Los Canarios del Norte (the Canaries of the North) from the northern state of Jalisco, and Los Cardenales del Sur (the Cardinals of the South), from the southern state of Michoacan.

Earlier in the evening, three of the Los Canarios del Norte stopped on the corner of Oxnard Boulevard and 6th Street to light cigarettes before heading to a restaurant down the street.

As the group waited for the signal to turn green, another conjunto passed them. The men exchanged greetings, shook hands and wished each other good luck for the evening. Guadalupe Cervantez, the accordion player for Los Canarios, said that despite the increasing competition from other bands, there are enough bars and restaurants to go around.

Nearby, at a noisy restaurant called El Cielito Lindo, Calixto Ramirez and four of his friends gathered around a table, ordered dinner and a few rounds of beer and called upon Los Cardenales del Sur to play a few requests.

Ramirez, a native of Michoacan who works at Magic Mountain, said he could listen to the conjuntos for hours.

After a hearty Mexican meal and a few beers, Calixto Ramirez began to sing along with Los Cardenales. When the conjunto began to play a somber song about being poor in Mexico, he dropped his head and covered his face with his hands.

Finally, at the prodding of other customers in the restaurant, Ramirez got up from the table, requested a melancholy love song and began to belt out a warbled version that won him the enthusiastic applause of his friends.

When he finished he declined to say how much he had spent on the music that evening, only that he loved every song.