Remembering Glen Thrasher: Architect of Atlanta’s underground spirit

If you ever caught an earful of “Destroy All Music” on WREK-FM in the 1980s, flipped through the dog-eared pages of LowLife Magazine, or caught Glen Thrasher behind the counter at A Cappella Books, you already know: Glen didn’t just participate in Atlanta’s underground—he defined a large part of it, for a long time.

Thrasher passed away Saturday morning, May 3, leaving behind a secret legacy that pulses through every DIY show, noise set, and scribbled flyer that still dares to push Atlanta’s arts scene off the rails and into uncharted territory.

He was 66 years old.

In the early 1980s, Glen and co-host Ellen McGrail transformed “Destroy All Music” into a beacon of chaos and possibility over Georgia Tech’s 91.1 FM airwaves. No wave, free jazz, tape hiss, post-punk, and basement weirdness—nothing was too far out. The show carved space for unclassifiable sounds and stood as a lifeline for seekers and soundheads. McGrail and her partner Tony Gordon still co-host the show every Wednesday from 9-10 p.m., proliferating a testament to Thrasher’s curatorial nerve.

The Destroy All Music festivals that Glen and Ellen created gave a stage to the likes of Dirt, Lisa Suckdog, Freedom Puff, Col. Bruce Hampton, Tom Smith’s Peach of Immortality, Cake (Tracy Terrill), and Chattanooga’s Shaking Ray Levis—local and regional acts who existed outside the realm of mainstream music and culture.

From 1984 to 1992, Thrasher published LowLife, a Xeroxed, cut-and-paste document of Atlanta’s disreputable brilliance. It was more than a zine—it was a transmission from the city’s cultural underbelly. Fiction, comics, mail art, anti-authoritarian rants, interviews with skronk warriors and tape-traders—LowLife captured the friction and fire of a city in flux. Issue # 17 featured Magic Bone’s Debbey Richardson’s quiet smile on the cover, which is forever etched into the collective memory of anyone who ever scoured a punk distro table at any record show or zine fest.

Thrasher also played a role in the creation of Cat Power, playing drums behind Chan Marshall in the earliest iterations of the project. Glen once relayed that while playing music with Chan, they booked their first show, but did not yet have a name for the band. He called Chan who was working the cash register at Felini’s Pizza in Little 5 Points. Glen said, “We need to have a name, tell me something now or I’ll just make it up.” The customer waiting in line to order a slice of pizza was wearing a Cat Power Diesel trucker cap. She said to Glen, “Cat Power,” and the name stuck.

Thrasher later drifted north to New York in the ’90s before returning to Atlanta where he continued writing and working at A Cappella Books. Through it all, his compass never strayed from the outside path, and his critical wit never waivered.

I worked at A Cappella Books with Glen for years, where we spent long hours behind the counter, talking about politics, books, the music of Pere Ubu, Sonic Youth, the Dog Faced Hermans, Cecil Taylor, Mary Timony, and too many others to recall. He had an encyclopedic knowledge. He could be an intellectual antagonist in one moment, and a warm and engaging companion in the next. It was all in the interest of honest debate and raging against a cultural slide into right-wing politics and modern technology dulling our collective senses. “Why be any other way,” he once laughed, and it made him a true friend and mentor.

At A Cappella—where he worked for decades—Glen curated shelves with the same sensibility he brought to “Destroy All Music,” equal parts reverence and refusal. His personal stash of rare, underground books became a quietly legendary part of the store’s DNA. It wasn’t uncommon for customers to stumble across something they never knew they needed until Glen put it in their hands.

He didn’t just know where to find the good stuff—he was the good stuff. His year-end lists were impenetrably comprehensive: a treasure map for the eternally curious. I can’t count how many records, zines, or strange new ideas I encountered because Glen had the foresight—or the infectious enthusiasm—to share them.

Glen Thrasher was a beacon, a connector, a beautiful noise in a world that too often chooses silence. Atlanta’s underground has lost one of its true architects, but his work, his spirit, and his sonic fingerprints remain etched in the grooves of every misfit creation that follows.

Rest in power, Glen. The signal carries on.

Details regarding funeral arrangements are forthcoming.

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