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Michael Yonkers (born 1947) is an American Rock music musician from Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. He released several albums throughout the 1970s, and previously recorded unreleased material with his band Michael and the Mumbles in 1968, later released as Microminiature Love in 2002.
His early bands included a surf-rock act known as the Vectors and a psychedelic rock group known as Michael and the Mumbles, which he recorded Microminiature Love with in 1968. The album was recorded in less than an hour of studio time. The band played each song only once. Sire Records showed an interest in releasing the album, but contract negotiations broke down in part because Yonkers was still only 20 years old and not legally able to sign without his parents' permission. The Mumbles broke up shortly afterwards. Yonkers was then drafted into the army, but was discharged and did not have to serve in the Vietnam War because of a medical issue.
In 1971, Yonkers was badly injured when about 2,000 pounds of computer equipment fell on him at the warehouse where he was working, breaking his back in two places. A subsequent severe allergy to a dye used during his back surgery left him in chronic pain for decades afterward. He continued to record music and continue his electronic experiments in a home-built studio. He self-released four albums, including 1977's Lovely Gold, and collaborated with Barry Thomas Goldberg on his 1974 record Misty Flats. None of his work attracted a wide audience at the time.
In 2015, Mystra Records released a limited-edition set of Yonkers' experimental work from 2003-2007, Neverending Light Beam From Planet 00s/Deep Within Home Pianet/Plan A. Shindig! writer Jeanette Leech called the music "great: scratchy and uncompromising, but by no means untuneful or unstructured."
Cole Alexander of garage rock band Black Lips has said that Yonkers “kind of invented Noise rock and Drone music guitar techniques," stating further that "when you think of how the Who, Jimi Hendrix and the Velvet Underground were pushing feedback at the time, he was more extreme than all three combined in terms of what he was doing.”
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