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The 40 Thieves
Local band from the fictional city of Arcadia, "one of the founders of the local scene," mentioned in the 2018 novel Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel by Jeff Jackson.
The clubs were still doing business, but there wasn't much excitement now around the shows. Even longtime landmarks like Echo Echo lost some of their allure. The theater downtown rarely booked homegrown acts, and it was easy to understand why. Most local musicians had little ambition, low standards, less taste. The bands that used to stun audiences and rampage across the stage- Taconic Parkway, Jerusalem Crickets, the 40 Thieves- had all broken up. Their members branched off in dozens of musical directions, forming projects that felt increasingly detached from their origins, part of a family tree of mediocrity. Nobody in the scene played for any stakes. People still came together in the night to get drunk and share gossip and hook up, but the music mattered less and less.
"Destroy All Monsters" is the English title of a 1968 Godzilla film, and used as the name for a real band from Detroit 1973 to 1985.
The band's name is a reference to the Arabian folktale "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves."
