The Reverend Horton Heat & the Mr. T Experience

Tuesday January 20, The Reverend Horton Heat and the Mr. T Experience came to Sacramento. The Reverend Horton Heat (known simply as "The Reverend" to his followers) is, of course, a rockabilly band from Texas and The Mr. T Experience (MTX) is Lookout! Records punk band hailing from Berkeley—interesting combination, yes?

The show was held at The El Dorado Saloon—there’s not too many positive things you can say about that place. Yes, it has a pretty good layout as far as viewing the stage and reasonable booking, but, in general, the place is gross. First off, it’s disgustingly filthy; it’s set up as a cheap strip-club half the nights; most of the security staff is a bunch of big-headed, self-important goons who think they are guarding the Rolling Stones; and the food is so inexpensive (platters under $2) that it’s rather quite scary to think what might be in them besides microwave radiation. OK, enough bad mouthing for now, except for the fact that the staff claimed there was not a photo pass for the Synthesis when Lookout! Records positively put one at the door. Humph!

Opening the evening was the punk threesome The Mr. T Experience, with guitar/vocalist Dr. Frank, Jym on drums, and bassist Joel. MTX played a (sadly short) half-hour set and, at the time, about a half of the crowd was there for them. Not until after their set did the majority of the leather-clad Reverend fans fill up the place. MTX played a brilliant, lively set; one thing about the band is that they are incredibly better live then on record. Don’t take this as an understatement, the recorded work is great. Their joyful energy and bouncy songs always come across great live, even though the El Dorado’s poor PA system did not do them justice. They played their usual mix of energetic "songs about girls" and seemed to have a great time doing it—Joel was constantly jumping up and down, and both he and Frank would do choreographed unison moves every so often. The Mr. T Experience are quite fun!

By the time the Reverend came out the place was packed, smelling of smoke despite California law, and full of leather, grease, and tattoos. The crowd was pretty hip, despite the few (or many!) greasy men who paid minimal attention to the Reverend and instead rolled up their sleeves showing off arms of ink to pick up the ladies!? Erm, how lovely.

The Reverend put on a mediocre set. To be frank, the first half, made up mostly of songs from an upcoming album, was dull and repetitious; by the looks of it, the album will pretty much be rubbish. Further into the two hour set, the Reverend got progressively better and better as they played songs from their first two albums, Smoke’em If You Got Em and Full Custom Gospel Sounds. Standing in the very back corner of the club, Joel of MTX concluded, "Well, you can always say their older stuff is a lot better than the new."

Perfectly said! Indeed, as the show went on, the music got faster and sounded more like Reverend Horton Heat and began to sound pretty good. Bassist Jimbo Wallace stormed his stand-up bass embellished with air-brush flames and the Reverend, Jim Heath, speckled the set with his quirky little bullshit remarks. One in particular went, "Hey Jimbo, if you were a Spice Girl, what would your name be?" Wallace paused, contemplated and replied, "Naughty Spice!" Then Heath added his Spice name as being (very originally, of course), "Old Spice." For some reason, this drove the crowd a tad wild; the reason why has not been fully understood at this moment. That and the girl who flashed her breasts at the band.

In conclusion, (besides MTX and less than half of the Reverend set) the show was rather not up to expectations due to the overkill of security, smoke in the bathrooms, hipster egos and an overall rotten venue. The question is—do they clean the place after greasy stripper night?

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