If commercial success were a measure of a band's future influence than Rush and Peaches & Herb would be the prevailing inspirations for pop music today.

Instead, lurking in the background of Beck and Bjork are a whole array of sales flops. The Velvet Underground's lyrical noise pop, Scott Walker's lush orchestrations and Neu's ponderous prog rock were spectacularly unsuccessful when first released.

Only with the benefit of hindsight have they become significant. In Rolling Stone interviews and MTV profiles, these are the names that today's critical and commercial darlings cite as influences.

At first the Pixies would seem a strange group to fall into this category. They only broke up 10 years ago, and in their heyday (the late '80s), they were poster children of the well-developed American college radio network. But this was before frat boys began blasting Nirvana and the suburbs became fertile ground for hip hop. Though critically successful, the Pixies never sold much.

Without the Pixies, however, much of the music that came in the wake of Nirvana's crashing of the rock establishment wouldn't exist. By welding the brooding, dark aesthetic that summed up much of '80s alternative rock (and it was really indie at the time) with a pop sensibility, the Pixies paved the way for Kurt Cobain, and to a lesser degree every pissed-off white male or angular hook that now litters the music charts.

In fact, Cobain cited "Gouge Away," from the Pixies' 1990 release "Doolittle," as inspiration for his breakthrough hit "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

On "Tribute to the Pixies," Feed (Top), Best Crusaders (middle), Radio Active (above) and others acknowledge rock's debt to the band.

Recognition of the Pixies' place in rock music came full circle with the release in 1996 of "Where Is My Mind?" a compilation of more recent indie rockers covering Pixie cuts. Pop Food Records has now put out a Japanese version called, straight-forwardly, "Tribute to the Pixies." Featuring an array of newish Japanese bands (and strangely, one London group, Seafood), the album is a meditation on both how much and how little the Pixies have influenced Japanese rock.

Pixies' songs are tricky to cover because they are basically schizophrenic. Hooks soar around metallic, pointy guitars and Kim Deal's drilling bass. The lyrics are straight out of William Burroughs or a surrealistic tract with singer and main songwriter Black Francis howling in the attenuated voice of an intellectual on the verge of a nervous breakdown (either that, or mass murder).

Nevertheless, "Gigantic," an ode to phallic endowment, would be at home in a karaoke box, while "Debaser" turns the name of Dadaist film "Un Chien Andalou" into a singalong chorus.

Though one or two of the cuts on the Pixies Tribute album manage to tread this boundary, most notably Mo' Some Tonebender's cover of "Planet of Sound," the album has a difficult time reconciling the Pixies' Janus-faced nature.

The two versions of "Debaser" illustrate the problem. The Beat Crusaders opt for cheeriness, making slicing up eyeballs, the song's lyric linchpin, sound like a Sunday afternoon shopping spree. Art rockers Feed, on the other hand, go straight for the dirty underbelly. Singer Maya Saito drones the lyrics over distorted samples and guitars like a woman with the razor in hand. The Pixies' trick of combining sheer hysteria with a bubbly smile is absent.

In a sense, this is an apt representation of the schism that still dogs Japan's indie rock scene. With a few exceptions like Number Girl's sardonic guitar rock, DMBQ's dirty blues or Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her's girlie punk (or even hinted at by Buffalo Daughter's new material), the Japanese rock underground still tends to divide along pop and noise lines. The fusion of the two, which made the Pixies' music so alluring and so important, is found only sparingly.

Tribute to the Pixies, with the Penpals, Naht, Cowpers, Beat Crusaders and others, Sept. 17, 2 p.m. at On Air East. Tickets 2,500 yen. For more information, call Disk Garage at (03) 5436-9600.

Though Tokyo has one of the most fertile music scenes around, musical confabs such as New York's College Music Journal Conference or Austin, Texas' South by Southwest have been strangely absent.

Unlike festivals such as Fuji Rock or Summer Sonic, music conferences focus on the business and management side of the music industry, giving indie bands and labels unable to afford first-rate management or tour support schmooze opportunities with leaders in the field.

With independent labels flourishing and new bands packing live houses, the Federation of Music Producers' "In the City" conference at the end of this month should become a regular event. The slate of panels focuses on music management, and particularly the challenges of new digital technology. The real appeal lies in the nightly showcases. Most interesting will be a slate of groups from Korea highlighting that country's growing, though still very underground, rock scene.