TUNED IN

Last fall, Art Brambila’s 20-year-old son was stabbed to death during an attempted robbery on the streets of Pasadena.

For months, Brambila, director of entertainment marketing for Spanish-language radio stations KTNQ and KLVE, worked and stayed sane only with the help of counseling sessions. Then, about two months ago, he found a real reason to work. Steve Salas, an East Los Angeles singer and founding member of the group Tierra, came to Brambila with a proposal. Salas wanted to re-record the 1962 Gene Pitney hit “Town Without Pity” in Spanish with his new group, Los Rebels, and asked him to produce it.

Brambila liked the idea: His son’s death, the drive-by shootings, the beating of Rodney King made “Town Without Pity” appropriate for this city and these times. “We thought in Spanish the song would be a killer,” Salas says. “It’s real melodramatic.” Brambila wrote Spanish words that varied from the original but maintained the theme of young lovers against a cruel world. “The Spanish version is more concerned with what the family will think. In the English version, they are more concerned about the town.” He adds: “The lyrics always have to be rewritten for the Spanish market because the things that touch whites emotionally don’t necessarily touch Latinos, and vice versa.”

The popular song airs on KTNQ and KLVE and Brambila is looking for a distributor. More important, however, “Town Without Pity” helped Brambila come to terms with his loss. “I don’t think I could have written the words without the feelings inside me.”