Four men on stage, stripped to the waist, dripping with sweat, belting out demented rock 'n' roll that sounds like The Stooges jamming with The Doors, and fronted by the craziest, most charismatic singer you will ever lay eyes on. God, if only it was always like this.

Baba Takashi: Japan's next Iggy Pop?

The band is Kubikarizoku (Headhunters), and the man with the mike is Baba Takashi. Witnessing his performance, you can draw but one conclusion: In 1976, a mad doctor -- or an eccentric alien -- snatched DNA from Mick Jagger, Johnny Rotten and Iggy Pop, spliced it together and inseminated the lethal rock 'n' roll cocktail into the best X-rated Japanese dancer Kabukicho had to offer. Twenty-five years later, we get the resultant mutant strutting his manic stuff at a live house -- appropriately called Eggsite -- in the heart of Shibuya.

Baba is a throwback to the deranged rock 'n' roll geniuses of the '60s and '70s who lived, and often died, for the music -- Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Johnny Rotten and Iggy Pop to name a few. The difference between them and what we've got now -- Slipknot, Marilyn Manson, etc. -- is that they weren't trying to be mad. They just were.

Baba is on stage and the dude must have sold his soul to the devil and got a good deal, but what the heck. He sports a Spock hairdo with a Mephistophelean beard. Duct tape holds up his hippie bell-bottoms just above his pubes. When he's not muttering incantations like a wicked witch, or screaming like a banshee in heat, his mouth makes exaggerated chewing motions, as if an angry homunculus is trying to punch its way out, while every inch of his emaciated body gyrates wildly. He struts around stage like a cockerel (Jagger), hurls himself into the mosh pit and jumps on the drum set (Pop), and chews and snarls wolfishly (Rotten), while the rest of Kubikarizoku -- bassist Yukio Obata, drummer Yoshinori Ishibashi and guitarist Yoshitaka Ikebe -- furiously rustle up the coolest and freshest tribal punk grooves imaginable.

The after-show party is at the venue. I corner Baba, who's from Kyoto, and we start devouring a bottle of gin.

"When I take the stage my true spirit comes out and possesses me," he says. "People might think I'm tripping on drugs or something, but I'm tripping through the music I make."

Why was the whole band stripped to the waist?

"Because we're about music, not fashion, so we don't want a style to get in the way of that. We don't want to be stereotyped by the type of clothes we wear. I want the fans to see us in the flesh and understand us through the music."

And then Baba drags me off to flirt with The Go-Devils, the cool-as-hell all-girl garage-pop trio from Osaka, who played first tonight. They were nervous, and their show might have been a little loose and raw, but they spat potential, were total fun and, as sex appeal goes, on a par with Baba. At the after-show party, though, the words loose and raw still apply to The Go-Devils, but in an entirely positive way. These girls want to party, and Baba does, too.

But hey, man, a few more questions before the sex. I lure Baba outside with a gin and tonic that makes rocket fuel taste like Evian. You are the Iggy Pop of the Japanese underground, I state shamelessly, drunkenly, honestly.

"If you mean that I have the same explosive energy as him, then yes," he says, chugging back the booze. "But I'm just being honest from my own soul. I am me and not a version of somebody else."

Have you seen Iggy Pop?

"Yes, but I had been in Chelsea for three years doing my own thing. I was already what I am. But I loved the Iggy Pop show."

Chelsea was Baba's last band, hailed in Fuzzy Logic a few years back as the best live band in Japan. And then Baba left. But he still has total respect for the Chelsea boys, who went it alone. I thought I'd never see a band as good as Chelsea, but now there's this. Baba is the man.

The only distraction during tonight's show was the lack of cheering from the audience. "This band is mind-blowing, why aren't you all going mad?" I was thinking. Fifteen seconds after Baba and his Headhunters leave the stage it all makes sense. The place is a deafening roar of howls and screams for encores. The kids were awestruck, they didn't know what had hit them, they'd never seen anything like it and were too flabbergasted to respond. Tonight Baba claimed quite a few more heads.

"My live performance is 100 percent," Baba says. "I give it everything and more. The whole reason that I'm in a band is to do live shows. As for on CD, it depends on the listener. If they hate it, then it's OK by me."

There's no CD yet, just the voodoo ritual of the Kubikarizoku live show. These guys mean it. These guys can't help it. There's no pretense. This is full-on primal rock 'n' roll like you've never seen before.