DESTROY ALL BANDS

Destroy All Bands was the master plan of Swinger McRafter, also known as Glen Bruden. The Bruden family is one of the more interesting New Brunswick-area stories, and at some point I wish one of them would properly document it. Spotswood, NJ locals Bryan, Stacy, and Glen were all postal carriers, a superb enough detail (Bryan recently celebrated 25 years of service). But more relevant to this story, all were eyeball-deep in the NB music scene in the 1980s and beyond. Bryan "Braineater" was essentially connected to everybody and had the best radio show on WRSU — and I say this as someone who had no use for metal and its derivatives, which was all he played. Stacy, or rather, "Vodka" Lee Kingsnake, played guitar for the Plague Dogs and Leather Studded Diaphragm. Glen was the purist and purest of the the three, unhinged and unapologetically hardcore punk. His backdrop was provided by guitarist James "Spider" Webb, who wrote "No Time Left," which appeared on the NB comp Mental Floss. "No Time Left" is DAB's typical and decent mash of punk and metal, but isn't the point. The point was seeing them live; whenever I did I spent most of the time grinning like a fool.

While I have no Destroy All Bands flyers proper, this Court Tavern festival-of-sorts kind of makes up for that. Its roster is a nice snapshot of the zillions of Jersey-area bands disturbing small clubs state-wide at the time. This is a classic '80s promotion, with its indifferent typesetting, questionable spelling ("Outdoor Minor" correct, "Nobodys Heros" not likely, "Undesireables" and "Dolphen Room" definitely not), big, bold presstype, and carelessly applied border tape. Incidentally, you can see it on the Court Tavern stage wall in this video on Ivy Silence's site.

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