Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her at the Knitting Factory

Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her Knitting Factory (July 16) I did what most of my pals did?I stocked up on groceries, rented a few movies and waited for the booze-and-coke-fueled haze to part. But when I saw the flier for this band in the paper, well, I was had. The name was intriguing enough?but when I discovered that they were a punk band, girls, and Japanese to boot, I went to the club?only to be turned away since it was filled to the rafters with industry types.

Three years later I walked into the Knitting Factory. I didn't know what to expect. Though SSKHKH cut their first album in 1993, I still hadn't heard their music. I did know that they were comprised of two girls and a guy who all looked hip and eminently photogenic (qualities, I believe, that are hardwired in the Japanese genetic code). Shortly after I arrived, two whippet-thin women in microdresses took the stage. The bassist, Nao Koyama, was utterly dwarfed by her blue Gibson Thunderbird, and Aiha Higurashi, the lead singer/guitarist, was sporting cherry-red spike heels with a guitar to match. Almost instantaneously, the capacity crowd got quiet. There is something very powerful, yet curious, about the response elicited by an attractive woman onstage with a guitar dangling between her legs.

I (like most people) fall into one of two camps. I half-expected the band to fail miserably because people (George Tabb) have tried to convince me that chicks can't rock; but I desperately wanted them to be brilliant, their music so tight and down to the bone that I felt like ripping my face off. I'm pleased to say that SSKHKH's performance leaned toward the latter (though that's not to say I didn't worry for a minute or two). As soon as they got down to business, I knew I was before musicians in full charge of their craft. These weren't your typical meek, underfed, DIY, play-by-the-numbers kind of girls. Nao's kickassedly assured basslines proved the perfect complement to Aiha's intoxicating, driving power chords. They pumped out an hour-long set of great, quirky punk rock/pop songs. Clearly in her element, Aiha occasionally strutted across the stage like Mick Jagger and took the guesswork out of things for the drooling boys at her feet: "I'm a rock and roll mom/I need a boyfriend." The crowd was spellbound, although, strangely enough, the only people who were moshing?correction, moving?were a handful of Japanese fans. Could it be that everyone else was shellshocked by the fact that girls who look so fine and play so well could still be cool, calm and epithet-free, holding a crowd in their grip without having to hurl tampons at the audience Donita Sparks-style? I don't know. Maybe I should ask Tabb.