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Rating: A couple bumps and one grind

The skinny: We don’t spend much time shaking our booty on the dance floor of life, but Jerome Gray and Mick Collins, the No. 1 brothers behind the Voltaire Brothers apparently do. Although it’s released in 2003, I Sing the Booty Electric sounds like an attempt to rewrite the soundtrack to Car Wash. We, on the other hand, tried to rewrite the soundtrack to Star Wars, but then realized playing with the action figures was fulfilling enough.

If you liked this album, you’d like: Asses—big ol’ round, shakin’ asses!

Who else likes this album? Anyone who adds “licious” to every other word, the funky fresh, Bubblicious.

What does the Man think of this? What the heck does “honky” mean? I looked it up and the dictionary and it wasn’t there. I asked my children and they just laughed at me. So, I called the first Jackson I found in the phone book, asked the person who answered, and they told me it had something to do with my rhythm. Now I’m going to honky up the dance floor!

No one in this band seems to have Voltaire for a first or last name. That’s odd, wouldn’t you say? We wouldn’t say it’s odd, but we would say it’s oddlicious.

Did we listen to this? Of course we did, you jive-talkin’ turkey.

Tantalizing tidbits: As instructed from the professor of fresh, Shaq O’Neal: “Don’t fake the funk on a nasty dunk.” (We’ve always wanted to say that in a review.)

BUY IT NOW!

All avid MICK COLLINS followers will surely shit their drawers over what I’m about to say: THE VOLTAIRE BROTHERS’ I Sing The Booty Electric is finally fucking out! This release has been rumored for years (the website alone has been around seemingly forever), but Mick’s no-holds-barred funk project has finally been unleashed. And make no mistake…this is some funky ass motherfucking funk! It’s like the evil, outer space cousin of Ultraglide In Black! Mick’s tapped some of the folks from SPEEDBALL BABY and current or former DIRTBOMBS members to round out the intergalactic groove-a-thon. Why didn’t he try to get Bootsy? “Collins & Collins”…it’s almost too perfect! Is there anything he can’t do?

Real Detroit

July 23 - 29, 2003 by Shannon McCarthy

Mick Collins has worn many different hats throughout his career, and from his scatter-brained garage-rock gusts in The Gories to his gritty rock 'n' soul slide with The Dirtbombs, Collins has shown off that classic voice that every white boy wishes he could have. He now emerges with yet another project, this time a soul-satisfying studio effort called Voltaire Brothers, who debut with the album I Sing The Booty Electric on the Detroit-friendly lable Fall Of Rome (The Witches, The Sights). Collins and his lontime friend Jerome Gray may not look like the rest of the popular Detroit Rock City crowd -- looking at their press shot, they're the farthest thing from it -- but the six songs on their album are funkier, tighter and have more soul than anything these other white-boys-feelin'-the-blues bands could ever come up with. Stirring up a Sly & The Family Stone boogie, the record is pure '70s slippery groove, without any fancy studio effects to muck it up.

Recorded at the shabby-chic Ghetto Recorders (as well as a NYC studio), producer Jim Diamond lent his fly keyboard skills (along with whatever else he could get a hand in), and brought a score of friends to help record this booty-shakin' album.

All the young turks who've been led like horses to water to the Detroit garage scene by the White Stripes should note: None of this would be possible without Mick Collins, truly a brother from another planet, the Prince of the lo-fi shit-rock jet-set. For the past decade, Collins has been putting out gloriously primitive super-blammo garage-punk shake bamalama under a variety of guises--the Gories, Blacktop, the Dirtbombs and the King Sound Quartet--for boutique labels operating on a shoestring just under the radar. His latest project in a career spent defining the get-down imperative is the Voltaire Brothers, which specializes in money-shot wah-wah jungle boogie, dirty bongwater soul and bubble-butt funkadelica. I Sing the Booty Electric is a bawdy black party record like the kind the Beasties used to sample. You know, the one where the guy says: "If it's gonna be that kind of a party, I'll put my dick in the mashed potatoes." Bring beer.

by Brian McCollum

We knew Mick Collins could do garage. We knew he could do blues. And now we know -- if we ever wondered -- that he can do funk.

The album's opening measures make it immediately clear that "I Sing the Booty Electric" is a different sort of record for Collins, the mastermind behind such bands as the Gories and the Dirtbombs and the godfather of Detroit's modern garage rock. With a fat bass and greasy groove provided by collaborator Jerome Gray, "The Mother Ones" quickly pushes the action to the dance floor.

Instead of the quick-and-crunchy volleys familiarized by Collins' minimalist rock bands, the Voltaire Brothers (there's no family or "Voltaire" in the lineup) create a wide-open sonic party that nods to Clinton-Zappa, glued together with the kind of thick bottom end you'll find on obscure funk LPs from the '70s. Produced by Collins at Detroit's Ghetto Recorders, garage rock's studio mecca, the record is all movement -- the most laid-back parts on the album are Collins' vocals, bawdy spoken-word bits that make him sound like an updated Andre Williams.

There's nothing fancy here -- just classic booty-shake stuff, Detroit style, punctuated with horns and laced with slinky guitar. A buoyant rendition of Roy Ayres' "Funky Motion" is the only cover among a slate of originals that include the smoky "Which One" and slicing title track.

If nothing else, "Booty Electric" proves what we always knew: Detroit rockers can cut a groove left, right and upside down.