by JOHNSON CUMMINS

The Dirtbombs' frontman Mick Collins has been heralded as the patriarch of the Detroit garage-rock revival, but if you try and peg him with that one he'll go into an uncontrollable laughing fit. History lesson #256: In the early '90s, while most people were enthralled with Kurt and co., Collins and his band the Gories were plugging in cheap guitars and screaming out hits like "He's Doin' It," "Outta Here" and "Rat's Nest."

It's safe to say the White Stripes, the Detroit Cobras and the Soledad Brothers were learning at his feet. But ask Collins about his influence on the garage rock scene and he'll bust a gut. After composing himself for a moment, he manages to blow some holes in my theory. "As far as a scene goes, there isn't really much of one in Detroit. A lot of those bands have been around forever and suddenly everybody from other places is looking, but we all know that people will stop looking and we'll all still be around. It's amusing that some people are getting famous because we all know each other. It's like, ‘Wow, Meg and Jack are famous now, isn't that cool,' but most of us have been doing this for two decades now and it's still the same. It's really just some NME reporter's brainchild."

Alright already. All the hype that the music press has recently tried heaping on Collins just triggers his laughter, and Collins is almost beside himself over the hilarity of the fact that a lot of mainstream rags are now deeming his current band the Dirtbombs "hip."

"We used to play to a lot of record-collecting garage-rock Nazis and hipsters and now we are getting frat boys with Cleveland Cavaliers baseball caps. I can't figure that one out at all. Once you become a hip band, you have to keep doing the same things over and over again. That brings this kind of expectation as far as the audience goes, and with us, we're like, ‘Hey, let's play all Banana Splits covers tonight,' so I don't think we'll be hip for very long."

With the Sights and l'Attack at Foufounes Électriques on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 8:30pm, $15

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