Not Bubblegum : The B-52s meet the Ronettes in the Chickletts, a retro girl group that may leave you trying to adjust your watch.

The first time you see the Chickletts, you’ll be checking that free digital watch the cheapo gas station gave you, just to make sure you haven’t time warped back to those groovy ‘60s. The Chickletts, three local girls, are into the old girl-group sound right now in these nervous ‘90s.

The Chickletts only play a couple of times a month because they have other lives. All three work at the ARC School on Ventura Avenue, and two of them are in other bands. Mary Kay Fishell, with an industrial-strength voice, can do Patsy Cline and others convincingly with her veteran band, the Convertibles. Jenny Murphy sings for those country/pop rockers with the funny name, Garage-a-saurus Wrecks. Lisa Fisher is busy being pregnant.

On stage, they sing, dance and wear more hair than the B-52s.

“We spent $60 each on those wigs,” Fishell said.

“But we’re not going to tell you where we got them--it’s a secret,” Murphy said. “The first time we played, we did our own hair and it took two hours to do it, then two hours to wash all the junk out.”

And the clothes? Any self-respecting go-go girl would be proud of such a flashy wardrobe. Wear sunglasses or risk eye damage.

“I didn’t want to sing, I just wanted to wear the clothes,” Fisher said.

“We do it all cheap, too,” said Fishell. “Five-dollar tops and $8 skirts. But getting matching outfits can be hard.”

They don’t waste money, and these cheap dates don’t waste time, either. In fact, a Chickletts gig is over before anyone could ever get tired of them. They only play half a dozen songs, and they’re all three-minute classics. There are guitar solos at a Guns N’ Roses show longer than the Chickletts’ entire set.

That set includes a pair of Shangri-Las tunes, “Remember (Walking in the Sand),” and “Give Him A Great Big Kiss.” They also cover a Dusty Springfield biggie from those silly ‘60s, “Son of a Preacher Man.” The best one is an obscure song by the Raindrops from 1963, “The Kind of Boy I Can’t Forget.”

They also do a suitably steamy rendition of that ‘50s song immortalized by Peggy Lee--”Fever.” And they’re learning an Otis Redding song, but more on that later.

“We’ve learned a song for every month we’ve been together,” Murphy said.

But these girls are too young to have been there back in ‘62, and they sure as heck don’t look like AM radio types. A giant Red Hot Chili Peppers poster dominates their practice room.

“We all sat around and listened to a lot of records,” Fishell said. “All my parents had was Glen Campbell, and I never liked anything but the old stuff, and I’ve always loved those great girl groups. That was the sound that was cool.”

Despite the fact that the Chickletts, with wigs attached, dominate a stage, they don’t do their thing alone. They have four backup musicians: John Wingo plays guitar; Calvin Ammons hits those drums and Andy Rowley blows minds and his sax. Toby Emery (who also plays guitar in Raging Arb & the Redheads) is the bass player.

And there’s another Chicklad--a temporary one, Ross Keck, who, in stranger days used to wear a bird mask and jump around as if his shoes were on fire as lead singer of the Vultures of Soul. Now Keck does a convincing Otis Redding on “Look At That Girl.”

The Chickletts will be dressing up, dancing around and singing real loud this Friday night at Charlie’s in Ventura as part of a Christmas show. It’s a Garage-a-saurus Wrecks gig, but a new band named Screwtape will play, and there’s a rumor that Raging Arb & the Redheads are going to do “White Christmas,” the psycho Stiff Little Fingers version. There’s also word of a duet between Mary Kay Fishell, the best singer in Ventura County, and Marjorie Extract, the best singer in Santa Barbara County.

The Chickletts, for their part, will do the Ronettes version of “Sleigh Bells.” And after that?

“I’d like to open for some big-time act at the Ventura Theatre,” Fishell said. “And we’re going to write some original songs.”