Mick Collins (born December 18, 1965) is a musician from Detroit, Michigan. (More from Wikipedia)
The producer for both of the albums by the Silencers is Mick Collins, one of the few African-American garage rock musicians. Collins grew up in Detroit and learned music from his family’s record collection as well as from Detroit-based Motown Records. As a teenager, he was in two bands called the U-Boats (in 1981) and the Floor Tasters (in 1984-1985).
In 1986, Mick Collins was a founding member of the seminal garage/punk band the Gories; the group had a female drummer, Peggy O’Neill plus a second guitarist Dan Kroha (all were from metro Detroit). In other words, the group had two guitarists but no bassist, like the Cramps and Sleater-Kinney. Of the Gories, Wikipedia notes: “They were among the first 1980’s garage rock bands to incorporate overt blues influences.” Alexandra Zorn writing for Allmusic states in the article on the band: “The emergence of the Gories heralded a new Golden Age of Detroit rock beginning in the late ’80s; a renaissance of noise and rust-belt rock that lasts through to today.”
After the Gories broke up in 1993, Mick Collins was in what Wikipedia calls a “basic garage rock band” called Blacktop from 1994 to 1996. His next band, the Dirtbombs was founded in 1995 and is still active; they started out as a more eclectic side project while he was in Blacktop. Wikipedia says that the Dirtbombs are “notable for blending diverse influences such as punk rock and soul while featuring a dual bass guitar, dual drum, and guitar lineup" – in contrast to the Gories who didn’t have any bass guitarists. The Dirtbombs have featured a variety of Detroit area musicians over the years; they include Jim Diamond, who played bass guitar for the band and appears as a guest musician on the Silencers album Cyclerific Sounds.
The second album by the Dirtbombs, Ultraglide in Black came out in 2001 when the Garage Rock Revival was on the rise, led in part by Detroit’s own the White Stripes. The Dirtbombs were the opening act for the White Stripes in this period, with bandleader Jack White acknowledging his influence by the Gories.
(December 2014)
