As anyone who has suffered through an entire set of priveleged pretty boys playing interminable versions of "Got My Mojo Workin'" on trust-fund-purchased Stratocasters will tell you: learning three chords is not a license to play the blues.
The blues, and its true good-rockin' offshoots, requires a certain self-possessed cool; a certain authority to pull off. The Fabulous Thunderbirds have just such cool and display it with the same offhand grace that Fred Astaire used to dance into our hearts. When Kim Wilson sings "Tuff Enuff" he doesn't sound like some pampered child with pip-cleaner legs feigning toughness. He sings with the robust bravado of a man who has not only lived a life, but also lived to tell about it. It's no coincidence that a subsequent album was called WALK THAT WALK, TALK THAT TALK.
Early on, I once saw The Fabulous T-Birds play in a nightclub called Dummies (imagine the self-esteem of the woman who had to answer the club's phone.) The place was decorated with the discarded remnants of a long since closed wax museum. Through blue lit smokey haze, the insistent whomp of the rhythm section made the dilapidated life-size figures of Albert Einstein and Theda Bara vibrate. The Thunderbirds seemed like the girl from a Sonny Boy Williamson song; they brought life back to the dead.
And they play like they are trying to raise the dead night after night, year after year. So much powerful music pouring across the land that it's easy to take it for granted, like the roar of a watrefall heard too long until it's heard no more. That's why it's important sometimes to stop and listen and respect the power behind the roar. This album gives you a chance to do that. Turn it up.
-- Eddie Gorodetsky