

Lester Bangs wrote about "Destroy All Monsters" affectionately in CREEM magazine.
RAMONES EXHIBIT LOS ANGELES FREE
The local media, including the Detroit Free Press, and The Detroit News attended early shows and gave prominent coverage to the "events," as the press referred to them. Next the Miller brothers were added, Ben on saxophone, and Larry on guitar, both accomplished musicians with a punk-jazz pedigree. King's drums were precise, fast and powerful, an unusual combination. Davis, recently released from prison, was available and agreed to be part of the band. To realize that potential, he recruited Michael Davis (ex-MC5 bassist), a real powerhouse crucial for rock bottom percussive bass. Ron thought the band's music had potential.

In 1977, Niagara met ex-Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton, and he became her paramour. The original line up of musicians was not around long. This proto-noise-band was the first pure noise-band according to music historian and Sonic Youth band member, Thurston Moore, who said, "I can find no earlier example of such primitive playing with the use of non-instruments." In 1994, drawing from early rehearsal and performance tapes, Moore released a three disc box set of these seminal basement recordings, "DAM 1974-1976" on his music label Ecstatic Peace. Music Destroy All Monsters ĭestroy All Monsters was a band started in 1974 by University of Michigan art students Niagara on vocals Mike Kelley on drums and vocals Jim Shaw on vocals and squeeze toys and Cary Loren on guitar and vocals. I want the women in my paintings to speak. That's probably why I have captions in my paintings. The witticisms and bon mots of Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Dorothy Parker. The best are the writers that can turn a phrase devastatingly funny. Then I discovered Decadent Art (1850s-era England), the Pre-Raphaelite movement: haunted, pale, druggy women. The first art style that I identified with was Art Nouveau. As a child, Niagara was enamored of John R. Art Nouveau imprints her work with its swirling, floral-inspired, whiplash lines and the belle époque women of Toulouse-Lautrec. She also took cues from the Decadent movement, which was in turn influenced by Gothic fiction. The "lowbrow" aesthetic epitomized by the painter Robert Williams, which evolved in Southern California in the 1970s, also influenced her.Īside from overt Pop Art stylistic tropes, Niagara also incorporates influences of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, which with some friction honored both Romanticism and Realism and depicted strong if not tragic women such as the famous Ophelia by Millais, or The Blue Bower by Rossetti. Her early 1970s work with collage, Xerox prints, and promotional materials for Destroy All Monsters influenced her later painting style the bold, figurative images are evidence of that. The cartoon and comic panel style was famously utilized by painter Roy Lichtenstein, also a touchstone for her work.

With her use of bright colors, caricature portrayal of figures, and comic strip inclusion of words spoken by the figures, Niagara's style can loosely be described as Pop Art. In 2014, Niagara was the inspiration for a project in March 2014 British Vogue, Cause Célèbre, produced by Kate Moss in which model Daria Werbowy stands in for Niagara. In 2004, Classic Rock and Rock & Folk magazines named Niagara one of the "100 Greatest Front Men." She was also one of two centrefolds for Punk Magazine along with Debbie Harry. Niagara soon after fronted the group Dark Carnival (with guitarist Ron Asheton and drummer Scott Asheton-both recruited from The Stooges). DAM remained active until 1985, with former members of The Stooges and the MC5 on board. At the University of Michigan, Niagara founded Destroy All Monsters in 1974 with fellow art students Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw and Filmmaker Cary Loren.
