Boom town

>>The Dirtbombs’ musical mélange reflects
the open ears of their hometown, Detroit

THE FILTH AND THE FURY: The Dirtbombs

By JOHNSON CUMMINS

There are many accolades you can heap on the Dirtbombs’ head honcho, singer/guitarist Mick Collins, but whatever you do, don’t call his band “garage.”

After some false starts beginning in the early ’80s, Collins initially electrified the underground with his highly influential garage stompers the Gories, whose decision to function without the use of a bass guitar was obviously noted by fellow Detroit garage dweller and affirmed Gories fanatic Jack White. Later on, Collins formed the rock ’n’ roll band Blacktop, with roots firmly in the blues and far less dependence on the trashy garage sound celebrated by the Gories.

There’s barely a speck of the ’60s in the sounds of his most recent—and most successful—band, the Dirtbombs. Collins ranges all over the map with this outfit, changing their tune with each release.

“I don’t know why we get this garage rock thing,” says Collins, “because I haven’t played garage rock since 1992. Nobody seems to listen to me, though. I have actually gone out of my way to make the Dirtbombs not sound like a garage rock band, so when we get pigeonholed as that, I kind of fly off the handle. When I stopped playing garage music, I just felt I was done saying what I wanted to say, and then just moved on to other things.”

Motor City mix ’n’ match

With the White Stripes’ ascent to superstardom in 2001, and thus the U.K. music rags’ concentrated focus on “the Detroit garage rock explosion,” the Dirtbombs were unfairly aligned with the Motor City’s beatle boots and bowlcuts set. Jack White routinely sang the praises of the Dirtbombs, and of the influence Collins’ previous bands had on Detroit, which unfortunately only threw fuel on the Dirtbombs’ garage-tag fire.

If anybody at the time gave a close enough listen to the Dirtbombs’ 2001 debut full-length, Ultraglide in Black, which consisted mainly of covers— Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, Sly and the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield (albeit through a Test Dept. filter) and others—they found raw soul-rock with hints of U.K. post-punk that had very little to do with Pebbles compilations.

If there was any unifying theme in Detroit at that juncture, it was that the rulebooks were burned and specific genres were best left in major-label marketing boardrooms.

“Detroit has always been about people getting into all kinds of music,” says Collins. “When I was recording the Gories’ House Rocking, I was also recording house music and electronica. With bands and the Detroit house scene, there was never any separation. When T-1000 was living in Detroit, he would come to Gories and Dirtbombs shows all the time, and we would always go see Jeff Mills and ‘Mad’ Mike Mills. The Detroit scene has always been good, just like it has for the past 30 years. There are still great bands coming out of Detroit, like the Terrible Twos, who we’re touring with, and this really great band Tyvek that people should definitely check out. In Detroit, music is just music—we don’t separate it the way everybody else does.”

Wax to grind

Collins is indeed well grounded in Detroit’s rich history of DJ culture, and he’s held down a weekly residency at the Brewery for over a year now, a night that finds him spinning disco, dub reggae, post-punk and other genres normally not associated with his band.

Like any true DJ, Collins is constantly found digging through the bins, looking for vinyl gold. “The last time I checked, I guess I have about 7,000 LPs, and still climbing right now. It seems my girlfriend has this uncanny ability to know when I’m in a record store. She always calls as soon as I’m about to buy a bunch more records. The whole band are record collectors, so we are always looking for stuff when we’re on tour, but I still get the best stuff in Detroit.

“I’m looking forward to getting to Montreal, though, because I just got this four-disc yéyé compilation that I really like, so I’m hoping I can find some of that stuff when I’m there. It would be cool if I could find some les Lutins 45s when I’m there because I already have about four of their records, which are really great. There were also some really great disco 12-inches that were coming out of Montreal, so I would love to get some of those too. So far, I’ve got a bunch of stuff on tour, but basically what I’m really looking for is just something I don’t already own.”

With Kelley Stoltz and Ashtray Heart at
Cabaret on Sunday, April 13, 9 p.m., $18.50