Bored: The Motor City Is Still Burning
By Thomas Fraki.
Despite being tied to a couple of the biggest names in the Michigan rock/punk scene, it is likely that Destroy All Monsters is a band you’ve not encountered before. Their approach to music varied from bizarre avant-garde noise to raunchy, driving rock that hits like a speeding Cadillac. It is unfortunate that their tracks were relegated to gathering dust on archive shelves, although not entirely surprising given some of the band’s commercial choices. Nevertheless, Destroy All Monsters remain as some truly cathartic rock music and their story a fascinating chapter of the punk chronicle.
To start with, there is nothing particularly interesting about Bored as an album. It was released as a compilation of singles years after the group broke up. The reason for it being the focus of this piece is that even though Destroy All Monsters had a 12-year span creating music, they never actually produced an official studio album. The tracks on Bored are as polished a sound as the band ever released. So while it is probably the best example of their later work, it also serves as a vehicle to explore one of the more esoteric gems of the underground sphere.
Science Fiction in the Time of Rock and Roll
The narrative behind Destroy All Monsters is really the story of two very spiritually different bands, one an art-oriented project with little care for convention and the other a hard-rocking debauchery machine trying to keep a legacy alive. Formed in 1973, a year topped by the likes of Jim Croce and Marvin Gaye, Destroy All Monsters was designed to take a sharp turn off the established musical path. It began as an art collective at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor consisting of Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, and singer/painter, Niagara. As a group, they delved into a wide array of creative media, including paintings, magazines, and music on cassettes.
The band drew on influences like Velvet Underground, Sun Ra, free jazz, and science fiction. Getting their name from a 1968 Godzilla movie, Destroy All Monsters was in direct opposition to the rock and roll establishment. According to Loren, their “menagerie of words, images and sounds were an attempt to thumb [their] noses at the pretentious circus of rock-star bullshit and musical emptiness that filled the airwaves.” The group’s first show was on New Years’ Eve 1973 at a comic book convention in Ann Arbor. The Performance featured a deranged cover of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man,” and the band was asked to leave shortly after.
Up through 1976, the only release by Destroy All Monsters available to the public was an hour-long cassette of their recordings. In 1994, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth would put out an archival compilation of the band’s early work titled 1974 1976. Moore is reported saying that Destroy All Monsters were a major influence on the Sonic Youth sound, even using Mike Kelley’s art for the cover of their album, Dirty. During the summer of 1976, both Kelley and Shaw left the group to further their studies in Los Angeles. They would both go on to have successful art careers.
Now I’m Putting It to You Straight From Hell
The following year, in need of a new lineup, Loren and Niagara brought on brothers Larry and Ben Miller to play guitar and saxophone. Ron Asheton, formerly guitarist for The Stooges, joined the group around the same time as well. He went on to recruit bassist Michael Davis of the MC5 to also be a part of the new Destroy All Monsters ensemble. The newly formed ties to these two big names in Michigan rock/proto-punk brought a lot of fresh attention to the group. Niagara, who had been in a relationship with Loren, left him to instead be with Asheton. Loren was subsequently fired from the band due to the split. He would continue to use the Destroy All Monsters name with the group’s non-musical projects.
With an entirely new set of musicians backing Niagara on vocals, the band took a drastically different direction from its anti-rock roots. The overhauled sound took on many of the garage rock qualities that drove the Stooges and MC5. Between 1978 and 1979, Destroy All Monsters released three singles, including a couple of tracks that were originally written by Loren before his departure. He regarded the unauthorized reworking of his songs as “lyrical robbery and butchery” that stylistically contradicted what the band was supposed to be about. These singles would go on to make up almost all of the recordings used on the Bored compilation.
Destroy All Monsters was able to ride the minor success of their singles by going on tour overseas. Larry and Ben Miller ended up exiting the group during this time leaving Niagara, Asheton, Davis, and Rob King on drums. While touring in 1982 and ‘83, the band befriended a pair of similar acts, the Ramones and Dead Boys. The three went on to open for each other at shows in Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. Destroy All Monsters finally broke up in 1985, only to reunite once more for a short time in the 1990s.
’Cause It Gets in Your Brain, It Drives You Insane With the Frenzy
It’s not exactly accurate to say that Destroy All Monsters worked with a sound uniquely their own with Bored. In fact, the music they put forward was more a composite of each of their past stylistic experience, particularly Asheton’s guitarwork from the Stooges. However, what they do, they do very well. The tracks on Bored are electrified and distilled Detroit rock and roll. The raw, overdriven guitar chords juxtaposed against Niagara’s Betty Boop tone of vocals and Ben Miller’s saxophone make for an infectious mix. The lyrics, specifically Loren’s, are dark and irreverent falling perfectly in line with the music.
While the band may have gone a different direction from what it originally set out to accomplish, they brought much-needed energy at a time when artists seemed to be turning away from conventional rock. It’s unfortunate that Destroy All Monsters went forgotten in the back pages of music history. Their sound wasn’t anything that would reinvent rock and roll, but their intensity and urgency leave you in a dizzying state half-expecting to smell exhaust and rubber.
- Disc One
- “Bored”
- “You’re Gonna Die”
- “November 22nd 1963”
- “Meet the Creeper”
- “Nobody Knows”
- “What Do I Get”
- “Goin’ to Lose”
Thomas Fraki is a Minneapolis-based journalism grad, music aficionado, book nerd, hiker, amateur photographer, and beer drinker with an overgrown wall of records.