[2] Shake Some Action was the first album by the newly reconstituted version of the Flamin' Groovies, who had returned from a five-year hiatus during which lead singer Roy Loney departed the band, leaving guitarist Cyril Jordan as its de facto leader.

"[5] In a contemporary review of Shake Some Action, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice felt that the Flamin' Groovies, without Roy Loney and having remodelled themselves as "an English pop-revival band", now "get their kicks playing dumb", and that while the album contained good songs, "only cultists will ever hear them.

[11][12] Newly based in England, the reformed Flamin' Groovies found itself aligned with the burgeoning punk scene, along with the likes of bands such as the Ramones and the Sex Pistols.

[2] Retrospectively, Ian S. Port of San Francisco Weekly states that Shake Some Action "influenced the rise of power pop and punk in America, and remains a vital document of that era.

"[3] Joe Tangari of Pitchfork wrote that Shake Some Action "is in every sense both a comeback and a re-invention, and it's been rightly championed by collectors and critics extolling its effortless pop perfection.