Detroit Cobras – Ain’t It A Shame

CB sent this band to me and they are raw and powerful with a unique singer. I really love garage type bands. Bands like this were big in the sixties and turned toward punk in the 70s. They made a comeback in the 80s against the synth based mainstream at the time. The alternative rock scene was born which I liked more than the then top 40 with The Replacements, REM, The Dead Kennedys, and more.

The hardest part about this post was picking out which song to highlight. The album I’ve listened to is The Detroit Cobras: The Original Recordings which rocks. All of their covers are loud raw and catchy like garage rock is. I loved how they picked the songs they covered. Songs that went under the radar when they were originally released.

This song…not to be confused with Ain’t That A Shame was originally recorded by Question Mark and The Mysterians. The song was written by their drummer Robert Martinez and released in 1969.

The Detroit Cobras were known for their reinterpretations of classic R&B, rock, and soul songs. Guess where they are from? They emerged in the mid-1990s and added to the garage rock revival movement of that era. They came out of the same Detroit scene as the White Stripes did.

The band was formed in 1994 by guitarist Steve Shaw and drummer Jeff Meier but lead vocalist Rachel Nagy and guitarist Mary Ramirez would become the core of the band. The Cobras set themselves apart by reimagining lesser-known songs from the 1950s and 1960s rather than writing their own original material.