BY JUD COST

Weary of being one of rock 'n' roll's best-kept secrets for 21 years, Laika & the Cosmonauts announced recently they were hanging it up after they completed their current American tour on November 1. That made their gig at San Francisco's Rickshaw Stop, the first U.S. date of the swan song by these Finnish legends, an absolute must-see. Anyone with a passion for the deep-space collision of minor-key Cold War movie scores, instrumental surf-rock and the Space Age hum of U.K. producer Joe Meek's chart-toppers, the Tornadoes ("Telstar" hit 1 in the U.S. in 1962) has finally found the music to be played at his own funeral.

Covering just about every major milestone from their recent career-spanning retrospective Cosmopolis (Yep Roc), the Finnish quartet-Matti Pitsinki (organ and guitar), Mikko Lankinen (guitar), Tom Nyman (bass) and Janne Haavisto (drums)-enchanted a packed house on a Thursday night, only a drive and a 9-iron away from City Hall where disgruntled supervisor Dan White blew away mayor George Moscone and fellow supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. Jetlagged and a little cranky after arriving from their homeland only the day before, the Cosmonauts weren't about to put up with any sarcastic horse manure from the guy in the crowd who kept yelling out, "Tell us about Finland!" "Sure, I'll tell you about Finland," finally answered Pitsinki. "Buy some CDs and we'll take the fucking money back to Finland with us!"

With a dramatically executed set-list played by a band that, after two decades on the road, is tighter than a well-digger's sphincter, the two hours flew by in a gorgeous Mercury 7 exhaust plume, as the Finns bid "Adios" with rousing versions of "Floating," "Global Village," "Rikki On The Loose," and a neck-snapping medley of the Bernard Herrmann-penned themes from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Vertigo before saying goodbye for good with "Telstar," the tune that once ignited the flame about to be extinguished.

Pollo Del Mar, a reverb-drenched San Fran surf outfit that's as polished as former local heroes the Mermen, preceded the flying Finns, as did the Go Going Gone Girls, an S.F.-based trio of women whose vocal chops aren't quite up to a terrific set list that includes a pair of girl-group classics: the Ikettes' "I'm Blue (The Gong-Gong Song)" and Reparata & the Delrons' "I Sold My Heart to the Junkman."

It was a bittersweet last appearance by Laika & the Cosmonauts, a musical juggernaut who deserved to be playing S.F.'s Palace of Fine Arts or the Masonic Auditorium, but, instead, were last seen locally in 2001 at a Palo Alto in-store put on by Stretch Riedle's tiny CD Land. The only tune the Cosmonauts skipped from a goosebump-raising arsenal of covers and originals was their haunting version of John Barry's eerie theme from the Michael Caine 1965 spy classic The Ipcress File. Maybe I'll hear that one again at somebody's funeral, hopefully not too soon.