The crowd poured in to Off Broadway just as Bloodshot Bill -- fresh out of Montreal following a five-year travel ban to the U.S. -- took the stage with little more than his striped pajamas, cigar box guitar and kick drum. As he growled and snorted and hiccuped through a set heavy on the trash and heavier on the hillbilly, the audience began sweating and Bill's impeccably greased pompadour melted into strings around his eyes.

After a couple of his own and a few Ding-Dongs numbers, he appraised the writhing bodies in front of him and decided St. Louis was ready for a call-and-response experiment. "Tattle Tale" followed, with Bloodshot Bill picking and stomping and the rest of us shouting back, "TATTLE TALE!" at the chorus.

It's hard to believe so many sounds can come from just one guy. I don't know how to describe his vocals other than barnyard with a dusting of the late and great Charlie Feathers. Rhythm guitar with that bright rockabilly twang and punches of high hat reached into every last dusty corner of the room, loosening shirt collars and coaxing in the smokers from outside. I read somewhere that Bloodshot Bill could be related to Elvis -- had Elvis been born in Trinidad with Tabasco sauce running through his veins. I doubt Bloodshot Bill is well-behaved enough to warrant that comparison -- even the King's gyrating looked kind of demure next to Bill's unholy howling and increasingly unintelligible between-song banter with the crowd. The house was sufficiently brought down with a cover of the Hank Williams cover of "I Saw The Light," demanded by a guy in a cowboy hat. Whew! Hail Hail rock 'n' roll.

Sparkling of turban and glittering of vestment, King Khan affected a royal entrance with the similarly bedazzled Bloodshot Bill, plus a drummer and sunglasses-sporting gentleman on the upright bass, who immediately shouted for more sound. The four Knights began thundering through "Roam the Land" while monitors buzzed and the crowd, good and liquored, swayed and snapped.

With a bass you could feel in your throat, Bloodshot Bill squealed through most of the tracks on the Tandoori Knights' album, "Curry Up" (Norton Records). "Books and Ribs" -- "because sometimes you're readin' and you decide you need some ribs" -- is an ode to the erudite and the finger-lickin' good. "Bucketful" came ripping through Bill's lungs as King Khan's familiar tenor dropped low to back. Guitars were proffered to crowd members who obligingly licked. The upright bass was held aloft and then swung onto the floor as kids with flailing sneakers and dripping PBRs encircled the bassist, sunglasses and cool perfectly intact, never missing a beat.

The set roared past and we weren't ready to quit. One encore, then two, as people in the front began chanting, "KING KHAN IS THE BEST" and someone in the back punctuated each chant with "TANDOOOOOOOORIIIII!!!" We weren't kept waiting for long. The hungry masses were force-fed some "Brown Trash" and treated to impromptu belly dancing from a blonde girl who jumped onstage, a foursome of soaking teenagers who provided shouting back vocals on a song no one apparently knew -- "Alley Oop," a 1960 hit for the Hollywood Argyles -- and some more of Bloodshot Bill's farm animal/'57 Cadillac noises. ("Why does he snort so much?" asked my friend.) A live mic was swung from the stage to the floor and passed around to various members of the crowd who could do little more than scream at that point.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over and the Knights disappeared behind the red curtain. Everyone stumbled outside in a daze to smoke, hair loose and eardrums still ringing with sweat-drenched, pomade-waxed rock 'n' roll.