Shonen Knife . . . Cutting It With Jelly Beans, Cherry Drops

Of this band, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain once said, “When I finally got to see them live, I was transformed into a hysterical 9-year-old girl at a Beatles concert.”

This band’s show at L.A.’s Second Coming nightclub was one of the crucial hip events of the 1989 summer season.

On an album that same year, this band’s songs were interpreted by a host of underground-rock heroes, including Sonic Youth, Redd Kross, Das Damen and Frightwig.

This band, you figure, must be some seminal punk juggernaut or a formative grunge-rock god. But, in fact, Shonen Knife is three Japanese women who design their own pop-art costumes and sing such lyrics as:

I’m gonna eat jelly jelly jelly jelly jelly jelly jelly jelly beans

You’re gonna eat cherry cherry cherry cherry cherry cherry cherry cherry drops.

“The music seemed very honest, and they were doing it because they loved doing it,” says Steve McDonald, co-leader of L.A.’s pop culture-conscious rock band Redd Kross (which had a song called “Shonen Knife” on its last album). “Great pop music crosses cultural lines. It moves me, that’s all I know.”

McDonald and his brother, Jeff, championed Shonen Knife on that first U.S. visit, helping instigate “Every Band Has a Shonen Knife Who Loves Them,” the tribute album featuring that all-star lineup of alternative-rock bands.

Observes McDonald: “I think Shonen Knife put everyone in touch with why they first started (playing music) in their garage.”

The surprise now is that rather than fading away like some transitory cult object, Shonen Knife appears to be making a Go-Go’s-like move, transcending its endearing all-effort appeal to display real major-league potential.

It’s had a successful tour of England with Nirvana, and its new album, “Let’s Knife,” is on Virgin Records, marking its graduation from independent distribution.

The album has shot into the Top 10 of the college radio airplay charts, and the trio will play the Roxy on Monday as part of a brief West Coast promotional swing. While in town, the trio is booked for photo sessions with magazines ranging from Entertainment Weekly to Rolling Stone to Vanity Fair to Us.

Things are suddenly different for a band that always regarded its music as “a hobby.”

“Last August, we released our latest album, so the Japanese major record label did much promotion for Shonen Knife,” said singer, guitarist and chief songwriter Naoko Yamano, speaking in precise, limited English this week from her home in Osaka.

“We were on TV, radio and magazines, so we became, I don’t know, we became famous in Japan. We became very busy. . . . All of us quit our daytime jobs last spring, so we could spend all time to Shonen Knife. So we are very happy now.”

Yamano, her drummer sister Atsuko and bassist Michie Nakatani formed the group in 1982, inspired by the Beatles and an array of punk-era bans: XTC, Buzzcocks, the Ramones, the Jam. . . .

“I think there is no band like Shonen Knife in Japan,” Yamano said, “because we are very special. Members of most of all Japanese bands listen only to Japanese bands or listen only to major American or British bands. But we also like many cult bands. So other Japanese bands write very Japanese-style songs, but I think we write (a) little bit (of) Western-style music.”

The chiming, buoyantly blaring music combines girl-group innocence, pop dynamics and punk drive, and the songs often have a surreal effect, like the fractured English sometimes emblazoned on imported household products and clothing.

But Yamano cautions that there’s more to it than just bubble gum fun.

“I write music very seriously, and I don’t think we are novelty band. I think it is because we write about chocolate ice cream or cute animals. But if people listen very carefully, people might notice (that) inside of our songs it is very serious. For example, ‘Bear Up Bison’ is singing about extinction of animals, and a song called ‘Black Bass’ is about (the) change of biological distribution at a lake.

“But (a) very serious thing is inside the core of the song, and usually covered by many very sweet things, so our songs look like almond chocolate or peanut chocolate, like M&Ms.; Inside part, the almond part, is very serious, and (the) outside (is) covered by very sweet chocolate.”

STUNG: In an unusual pairing of major but very different rock acts, Sting will open some stadium concerts for the Grateful Dead this spring. The singer-songwriter, whose album “Ten Summoner’s Tales” is due March 9, will join the Dead between dates on his own tour. The joint appearances begin May 14 at the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl in Las Vegas. There is no Southern California date scheduled yet for the Dead or the Dead and Sting.