The Reverend Horton Heat singes House of Blues crowd

Geoff Carter

Friday, April 14, 2000 | 9:19 a.m.

A million mugs and skirts can't be wrong, and they continue to choose Dallas psychobilly outfit The Reverend Horton Heat. Although lead singer/guitarist Jim Heath speaks dismissively of the band's place in this hot-rod culture thing, there's no denying that his band has got pole position.

Opening its House of Blues gig Wednesday with the spaghetti country/western smoker "Big Sky/Baddest of the Bad," the Reverend obviously aimed to please, and hit the eager crowd directly in their tattooed solar plexus. The band's aggressive rockabilly isn't just a hit-and-run; it's a hit-you, back-up, and run-over-you-again kind of sound.

And the band knows it, the insufferable bums. "I wanna buy everyone in the house a Jagermeister," Heath said, just after the band's jump-swing hit "It's Martini Time." No sooner had the crowd roared approval did he lay down the groaner of a punchline: "Bartender, bring me one shot of Jagermeister, and give it to everybody."

Whatever the Reverend lacks in comedic invention, it compensates for with high-speed thrills and spills. "One Time For Me," "The Jimbo" and "I Can't Surf" are amped-up, top-down, flat-out killer jams, capable of making even the most straight-arrow family man feel his inner hoodlum as long as they play. You don't want to know what these songs could do to moms.

Truthfully that's the audience they should be trying to hit right about now. Although their fans are loyal, they're also in danger of growing a little bored with what the All-Music Guide calls the band's "jacked-up rockabilly roar."

"I'm pretty much getting over these guys," one longtime fan said. "At this point I think they'd be twice as good at half the length."

You can only hear these songs so many times before they melt together, and while the band took a welcome, countrified breather on its strong new record "Spend a Night in the Box," the band seems primarily interested in playing faster and louder than it did a year ago. Heath, bassist Jimbo Wallace and drummer Scott Churilla aren't musicians anymore; they're particle accelerators.

The Reverend can slow down to walking speed and sound just fine when they do so. "The Bedroom Again," a classic country divorce ballad that George Jones would be proud to claim, was a highlight of the show. For a moment the audience could have been in a Texas roadhouse circa 1955, drinking off the heartache that put them on the road in the first place.

It was a short, sweet interlude -- too short, and ultimately, not sweet enough. The band promptly launched back into hyperdrive, and stayed there. I like racing as much as anybody -- but periodically I slow down, if only to see where I am.

But these caveats are barely speedbumps to the band and its hardcore fans; both will keep looping the track for as long as they choose. They are twin blurs now, their features indiscernible as they inch closer and closer to light speed -- and vanishing completely.

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