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 There was Patti Smith. There was Deborah Harry. And then there was NIAGARA. The queen of underground punk rock herself tells TESS CURRAN how they don’t make music like they used to.
For almost 20 years she was the queen of the Detroit punk scene. She sported tight leather dresses, black fishnets, bleeding lashes and rock’s fiercest beehive while Winehouse was still in nappies. She screamed, she growled, she writhed about the stage, full of grunt and feline angst. Leading bands like Destroy All Monsters and the Dark Carnival, she played alongside Iggy Pop & The Stooges and The Ramones. She is pure punk rock pedigree – and age, it would seem, hasn’t softened her.
For the past decade the paintbrush has replaced the microphone for Niagara, who has attracted increasing renown with her Warholian-like catalogue of hard-edged, take-no-prisoners femme fatale paintings: characters much like the woman herself. They tote guns, bare flesh and stare you in the eyes: threatening to tear you down, beat you up and stomp fiercely on your feelings. To be honest, I was more than a little frightened.
“Oh no,” laughs Niagara in a gruff, deep-Midwest accent – one that suggests decades of late nights, strong liquor and cigarette-smoke back rooms. “I’m just a powder-puff really.” Hmm, powder puff maybe not, but she’s certainly not quite the force to be reckoned with I was expecting. “With me, what’s on stage is pretty much what’s off stage – it’s not like a whole different persona or anything. But usually, since I’m doing art and I’m doing music, it’s like two vast ends of the spectrum. When I’m doing art, I’m alone a lot – and I like that – but with music, it’s really nice to have the camaraderie.”
She tells me about the snow in Detroit. About staying up all night painting with a blizzard outside, playing her “winter time music” and feeling like she’s in another world. I listen enviously against the soft fan buzz of Queensland humidity. “The snow comes down and it’s just like a fantasy every year. It’s just magical.” I wonder how such hardness can come out of something so ethereal, but maybe I’m just reading her wrong.
Luring her back to the topic of music, she tells me about the first show she did with Australian rockers The Hitmen back in 2008. “We only had like one practice – they just learned the songs and then we just went on stage. But it was great. You really you capture that sense of energy.”
An energy that she feels is lacking in today’s ‘rock’ world. “It seems like before there was an underground and people were interested, press was interested. But now there’s like twice as many people on the planet, twice as many people in bands, and there’s no underground – the press covers people according to how much money they have ... A lot of music today is just super over-produced in studios, and labels just pick people and formulate them: it’s like they’re just made out of nothing, completely lowest common denominator ... If you want something more unusual you have to find it for yourself.”
Perhaps you’ll find it when you see NIAGARA & The Hitmen play a two-hour set at The Step Inn on Friday Apr 9, the Great Northern on Saturday Apr 10 and The Surfers Paradise Beer Garden on Sunday Apr 11. Hazel Eyes The Devil and The Jim Rockfords support at all shows. The ST VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE live album is out now on Savage Beat/Shock. www.hitmendtk.com / www.niagaradetroit.com
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