You know when you have a conversation or read an article or taste a dish that makes you think this person gets it? That's how I feel when I listen to John Lee Hooker. His grooves are sloughed off as simple but what they are is The Grind, the wheelstone of love and lust and suffering and hunger we all push around, and Hooker is one of those guys who can shout over it and keep pushing. "House Rent Boogie" is an epic tale of haggling with the landlady, filled to capacity with loose change and getting your clothes thrown in the street "I MEAN IN THE STREET! IN THE DEAD OF THE STREET!"
As for what Thee Shams get, well...gaze across the cover and click thereupon if the edit provided by their label should obscure the deeper message of the band for you. Actually they are not quite as roadside motel sleazy as they portray - see their infinite pleading on "Love Me all the Time." They hit their mark when they offer their own Stones-meets-power pop take of The Grind, a slow burning haze of long stretches of eventless interstate, marijuana afternoons flickering past, the eon in a night of a half-filled bar.
The Detroit Cobras get it in the way they are Martha Reeves and The Vandellas, via magic tambourine, reincarnated through time into a dusty pawn shop amp that subsequently had some Mad Dog 20-20 spilled on it, and then was struck my lightning. All the yak yak about Amy Winehouse makes me say sure, sure, not bad, but The Detroit Cobras....
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