MIKE KELLEY, Destroy All Monsters Magazine, 2011
together with CARY LOREN, NIAGARA and JIM SHAW
27 x 21 cm
artist’s book, SC, 270 pp.
signed
special edition 100, here numbered 2/100
includes a unique monotype-spray painted page, signed by 4 artists
black and white photograph (signed photo edition number 46/75) by Cary Loren, sealed bag with sand, original mylar envelope
mint
published by Destroy All Monsters magazine, Detroit, USA
€ 980,- plus € 24, – Track & Trace registered EU mail
inv.MKel 000-pr

‘Formed in 1973, the Detroit band Destroy All Monsters was a wild and reckless synthesis of psychedelia, proto-punk, heavy metal, noise and performance art. The collective hailed from Ann Arbor, Michigan, and consisted of Cary Loren, Mike Kelley, Niagara and Jim Shaw (with later members including Ron Asheton of the Stooges and Michael Davis of the MC5). Later emerging as extremely distinctive individual artists, collectively the group forged new terrain in art, music, performance, theater and video. Destroy All Monsters released very little recorded music until Thurston Moore issued a three-CD compilation in 1994, but they published six issues of a now legendary and much sought-after zine, also titled Destroy All Monsters. This publication collects those six zines, released between 1976 and 1979, and also includes parts of a lost seventh issue that never saw publication. The Destroy All Monsters zines comprise a vibrant array of collage, writing, photography and other miscellanea by Kelley, Loren, Niagara and Shaw, and together provide insight into the collective’s kaleidoscopic vision of the dystopian values of their time.

“The new reprint volume lacks any introductory or explanatory text; true to Destroy All Monsters’ anarchic spirit, it plunges the reader straight into a frenzied dystopic world. Détourned comic strips, images pulled from pulp magazines, film stills, and tabloid news clippings clash with saccharine greeting cards, family Polaroids, and children’s coloring-book pages, while Op-art backgrounds, scrawled doodles, stickers, and rubber stamps compound the visual pandemonium. All of this is faithfully reproduced in the new facsimile, which is hand-bound and printed on paper of different weights, colors, and finishes—from coated stock to copy paper in elementary-school pastels. Each copy also includes a unique original spray painting by Loren, giving this lavish reproduction an authentically DIY accent.” Gwen Allen, Bookforum review
Ref. https://www.thebookbeat.com/bookshop/catalog/destroy-all-monsters-magazine/

In 1974, while attending the University of Michigan, he co-founded the proto-punk, experimental noise band Destroy All Monsters (DAM). The member of the band were: Mike Kelley on drums and vocals, Jim Shaw on vocals and squeeze toys, Niagara (Lynn Rovner) on vocals, and Cary Loren on guitar and vocals. Having met each other at the university, DAM convened in the basement of Kelley’s student accommodation, also known as ‘God’s Oasis Drive-In Church’, which soon became a communal space for the band to collaborate. Image below shows dirt in a tiny bag from ‘God’s Oasis Drive-In Church’, being part to this edition.