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| Flame
on: Reverend Horton Heat at Saratoga Winners.
Photo by Leif Zurmuhlen. |
Psychobilly,
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
By Kirsten Ferguson
Reverend
Horton Heat,
The Legendary Shack Shakers
Saratoga
Winners, May 9
Reverend Horton Heat may not have invented “psychobilly,”
the campy marriage of retro rockabilly, garage-punk and irreverent
kitsch that was best personified by the Cramps. But the Heat
provided the subgenre with its theme song when Sub Pop released
the Texas trio’s “Psychobilly Freakout” single in 1990. Living
up to the promise of its tantalizing title, the song featured
the crazed guitar riffs of Jim Heath (aka the Reverend) and
his manic, the-devil-has-possessed-my-soul vocals: “I’ll tell
you what it is! It’s some kinda Texas psychobilly freakout,
that’s what it is!”
In the decade (plus change) since, Reverend Horton Heat have
veered occasionally from their psychobilly roots to dabble
in less raucous musical styles, from the cocktail lounge of
1996’s It’s Martini Time to the swing boogie of 2000’s
Spend a Night in the Box. Many would argue that Reverend
Horton Heat have been on a steady downward slide, recording-wise,
since releasing three great albums in the early ’90s (Smoke
’Em If You Got ’Em, The Full Custom Gospel Sounds and
Liquor in Front). Live, however, the band still have considerable
firepower, given the combustible energy between Heath’s fierce
guitar playing and bassist Jimbo Wallace’s burly thwacking.
At Saratoga Winners last Friday night, the Heat played virtually
nonstop for nearly two hours, delving into their extensive
back catalog of songs about booze, cars and mean women. Dressed
in a red tuxedo jacket with blue flames shooting up the arms,
his graying hair slicked back into a sharp widow’s peak, Heath
was still cultivating that demonic preacher look (hey, if
your style works, stick with it). Wallace is the workingman
of the group: A gas-station greaser in a sleeveless shirt,
he dangled a cigarette from his lips as he walloped his upright
bass. In the background, drummer Scott Churilla endlessly
twirled his sticks like a gunslinger while keeping time.
After opening with a couple of hot-rod songs from their latest
release, Lucky 7, the Heat reached back to Liquor
in Front for a series of revved-up classics: “Baddest
of the Bad,” “Five-O Ford” and “I Can’t Surf,” the latter
of which set off a minor mosh pit. (Soon thereafter, club
bouncers tossed a couple of moshers out the front door in
a by-the-seat-of-their-pants way that I thought only happened
in movies.) A string of oldies followed, including “Marijuana,”
a mainly instrumental tune that Heath punctuated by making
inhaling sounds into the microphone, and “400 Bucks,” one
of several Heat songs that equates romantic breakup solely
with the loss of possessions (“I want my 400 dollars and I
want it right now!”). Although the show lost some momentum
as the band flitted through genres at the end of the set (a
country song, then a swing song, then a Latin song, etc.),
the closing numbers—“Bales of Cocaine,” “The Devil’s Chasing
Me” and “Where in the World Did You Go With My Toothbrush”—were
quintessential Heat.
“Ladies
and gentlemen, whores and whoremongers, we’re here to rock
your asses off,” announced Col. J.D. Wilkes, singer for the
Legendary Shack Shakers, a Nashville four-piece who have firmly
planted the “psycho” back in psychobilly. The redheaded, shirtless
Wilkes—part greaser, part redneck skeeter—may have looked
crazy in a Happy Days-meets-Appalachia sort of way.
But he wasn’t lying. With demonic-sounding harmonica and distorted
CB-radio vocal effects, the band’s set of backwoods “murder
boogie”—a little bit George Jones, a little bit ZZ Top—did
rock our asses off. All the while, the volatile Wilkes practiced
the art of crowd baiting. Unzipping his pants and sprinkling
his pubic hair onto the crowd was relatively harmless (and
original), but when the cagey singer climbed a rafter above
the stage and unfurled a pair of nunchucks, I thought we had
a riot on our hands.
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