Ricky Martin Pictures

Latin heartthrob Ricky Martin performs what, for him, was a small gig at the Guvernment last night.

Ricky Martin's eyes widen in the cloistered room at the Windsor Arms, somewhere above the hotel bar with its $580 bottles of champagne and flush patrons relaxing in high-backed chairs: he wants to be a revolutionary.

The 29-year-old Latino pop-throb is reading about Castro and Franco these days and wants to see the movie script to The Assassination, which would reportedly feature him as a ``heroic revolutionary'' during Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo's reign.

Ricky Martin wears a fur-trimmed hood during the outdoor portion of an interview at Canada's music video television station "MuchMusic" in Toronto, February 25, 2001. Martin was in Toronto to promote his recent release "Sound Loaded." He kicked off the seduction with ``She Bangs,'' a sassy nod to his second English-language CD, Sound Loaded, the November release that boomeranged the same blaring horns and booty-shakin' picante that blew his Ricky Martin (1999) sky-high on the charts.

It's also the morsel that pop's vultures are picking over for signs that the 29-year-old Puerto Rican export is losing strength: Sound Loaded has sold 300,000 copies in Canada versus the million-copy mark of Ricky Martin. The new album fell from No. 48 to No. 57 on this week's SoundScan Canada chart and ``She Bangs'' dove from No. 27 to No. 59.

``The same thing happened to Michael (Jackson),'' said Martin in the earlier interview, admitting he has ``no control'' over how many albums sell. ``You have to always be pushing yourself.''

But re-``Livin' La Vida Loca'' each time you sit for an interview can't be a treat.