Reverend Horton Heat And The Flaming Cellist

Amy and I got out to the Reverend Horton Heat show last night at Stubb’s. Despite being a fan for a long time this is the first live show I’ve made it to and my overwhelming impression, besides the general awesomeness, was what a great showman the Reverend is. Obviously a lot of the shtick is choreographed, from climbing onto Jimbo’s bass to the back to back posing that you can see in just about every photo on flickr. So you know, following the Reverend might not be as continually fresh as following the Dead, but for one night they do more with a guitar, bass, and drums than most bands do with a whole crop of lasers and props. And that’s coming from a guy who really likes lasers.

About half way through the Reverend seemed to lose the set list and for about five songs he just played requests, which was awesome because people seemed to be requesting all of my favorite songs. It seemed odd at the time, but after seeing how crafted the rest of the show was, he might pretend to lose the set list every night. But he did say something about how there was a small percentage of songs that he just couldn’t play anymore so he’d have to ignore requests for them, which made me super curious what the hell those were. It couldn’t have anything to do with high speed guitar work because there was plenty of that, so maybe they were simply songs stored in parts of his brain that have long since been destroyed by gin and tonic.

Amy went beyond good sport and genuinely seemed to enjoy both the show and the greaser revival atmosphere. She did mention something about Jimbo’s cello playing, but we’ll let that slide.