Ted Thacker Was Twelve When He Played for a Room of Rowdy Punks

“Our first gig was at Gate 9 at Folsom Field in Boulder. It was just a vending-room cage set up with a stage, some ugly lights and a really shitty P.A. It held 75 people, max. We were playing with the Dancing Assholes and the Dead Weazels. The show was a year after Sid Vicious’s death: “The First Annual Sid Vicious Memorial Dance.”

“My dad dropped us off, and we shuffled our gear onto the stage among punks in leather and chains. I remember one guy with an upside-down American flag tattooed on his face, and another dude in ass-less chaps with two girls on chains that he was pulling around like dogs. There were people smoking weed, and a guy with no teeth and a huge nose ring. These were real punks.

“I’d really only started to listen to the Ramones. My twelve-year-old soul was barely prepared for this high fashion, but it was a hell of a ride. They ate us up like the little kids we were, but it was everything we had dreamed of: a sweaty, smoking, fucked-up crowd of moshing, leather-and-spike-wearing fans. In hindsight, it was likely one of the best gigs of my life.”

Ted Thacker plays the Lion’s Lair on Friday, May 4.

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the history of local music venues by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work.