Bootleg T-Shirts and Sticky Floors

Middle Age Punk Issue 006

The Colorado local punk legends The Clusterfux (great band name) have been fairly active as of late and every time I see the band pop up on the dreaded social media barf feeds I’m reminded of the first time I was witness to one of their live performances.

The year was nineteen hundred and ninety eight. Or was it ninety seven? Who knows? I have no place in my brain for storing dates pre millennia, but it had to be around that time being as nobody in our circle had a drivers license yet so we had to resort to begging for a ride to the Punk Rock show from somebody’s parents. A ride to the bowels of Denver, CO to a little performance venue called the “Bug Theater.”

The Clusterfux, and about thirty seven dozen other local punk bands were performing that night at the Bug and although none of us had heard of any of these bands, our group friend Ray had recently made chums with a slightly older, elder punk rocker, who was recently added to the Clusterfux lineup as a bass guitarist.

His name was Moose, or Horse, or Drool, or some sort of punk rock nickname. In Ray’s eyes Moose/Horse was a top-tier Punk Rocker. Moose/Horse eschewed all the 90s’ era, Epitaph, Fat Wreck Chords, “Skate Punk” were were all so taken with in favor of 80s’, obscure, vinyl-record-only, British punk bands, who were clearly “more Punk” by way of said obscurity and Britishness.

Ray ate it up, lapping at the punk well Moose/Horse had dug, mimicking him in musical taste, and clothing, reaching the point where fashion superseded the music. Ray began to dawn “bondage” style, plaid, British punk pants, festooned with zippers that led to nowhere, buckles for securing nothing, and straps strung between his legs that made him not even remotely as cool as Iori from the King of Fighters fighting video game series, but instead made him walk like a hobbled duck.

To seal the punk credentials even further, the pants were cinched skin tight to his body by sewing a seam of criss-crossed dental floss up the back of each leg. Completing the ensemble was, of course, a studded, but also, attached to the back of his pants, a large, jacket-sized, rectangular swatch of canvas screen printed with, perhaps, the British punk band The Exploited’s logo, that was meant to be affixed to the back of a jean or leather jacket, but hung as a sort of “butt flap” behind him, resembling a half-assed superhero cape.

Moose/Horse had informed Ray of the Clusterfux show, Ray had informed the rest of us, and not wanting to turn down a “True” punk rock show, off we were whisked into the night by a reluctant parent, down to the Bug Theater to participate in some punk, and arrived staggeringly early.

As we sat outside Ray paced frantically, unsure if he would be granted entrance into the Bug with his studded belt and various spiked accoutrements. Having attended numerous punk rock shows at large scale facilities it was common practice for the security person to not let any studs, chains, spikes, or metal festooned, easily detachable fashion accessories into the venue, you know, for safety reasons, or as we thought, to keep us down and oppress us. I learned by then it was better to leave any of my metal-ladened punk fashion statements at home, or in the car, lest it be confiscated by security. Ray, apparently, had not, a constant victim to fashion, and finally garnered up enough punk gall to go and ask the door person about the fate of his accessories.

While Ray made his play, down the street came walking prominent local TV news man, Ed Sardella, whose well-quaffed head of hair, and newsman-like demeanor graced our local Channel 9 news nightly. Clearly out on the town with his family, the passing of such a local celebrity, one who represented “the man,” could not go by without incident and the slowly growing line of anxious punk rockers all proceeded to mock him relentlessly for the crime of being a TV news person. He quickly crossed the street with his family and made a b-line away from the raucous punk crowd.

Ray, having found out there would be no fashion seizures, missed the whole incident.

It wasn’t long after the Ed Sardella incident that we were finally granted entrance to The Bug Theater for a paltry fee of something like five American dollars, a pittance for a night of punk rock revelry.

I don’t recall any of the other bands that played that night. Not a single one. It’s no condemnation of their musical prowess, more an affect of my middle-aged brain, but we sat there for seemingly an eternity awaiting the band we were informed by Ray was the Clusterfux, and would be well worth the wait.

You may have noticed I used the word “sat.”

“But you don’t sit at a punk rock show, especially when you’re a rowdy, care-free, teenager of sorts,” I can sense you thinking.

The Bug Theater was just that, a theater, playing host to various low-budget, local, and indie stage productions. I do believe it was one of the local establishments that staged the chaotic, cult sensation “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” events. Thusly, there was seating “installed” on the floor. Installed being gracious, more like rows of theater chairs placed down on top of sticky floors, stuck in to place by years of avid, local theater enthusiasts.

To my knowledge, in this, the year two thousand and twenty three, The Bug Theater is still operational and I’m sure since the late nineteen hundred and nineties has upped their cleanliness but on this particular night the true headlining feature was the sticky and oddly smelling condition of The Bug. Not that most venues that held punk concerts are next to godliness but The Bug gave them all a run for their money. I’m sure the dimmed lights weren’t just for atmosphere. And all this coming from a teenaged, punk-rocking, skateboarder who showered less than frequently.

While waiting for the Clusterfux to play I wandered around the venue, pulling my Doc Martin boots from the sticky floor that wanted so desperately to not let me take another step, to peruse the band merchandise tables. Again the terminology is used loosely here for tables, but something was erected that laid flat enough to display t-shirts, flyers, stickers, some music compact discs, even a few vinyl records, the perfect media choice for Ray and his “real” punk-ness.

Amongst the silk screened shirts and Kinko-ed punk “zines” (a collection of folded in half, photocopied paper featuring all sorts of wild and crazy art and writings) I saw a curious shirt: a sickly, vomit green colored shirt, with an eye-pleasing rust-red, screen printed image of a poorly half-toned patterned punk person who I’m assuming was Darby Crash because the band name “Germs” was also screen printed on it, minus their iconic germ circle logo. The shirt was a curiosity to me because the Germs were in fact not playing that night in nineteen hundred and ninety seven at The Bug Theater in Denver having just recently lost their lead singer and iconic punk front man Darby Crash to a heroine overdose in nineteen hundred and eighty. Regardless, the shirt had to be mine.

Secure with my purchase, which I procured for a steal at another five American dollars, I headed back to my seat, a spring in my step that made short work of the floor’s sticky entrapment, and took my place to await the Clusterfux, which, after all this rigmarole, I have fleeting memories of. Nothing against the band. They’re great. Local legends for good reason, but that’s just how it was then. The music bonded us and gave us something to share but often times the lead up to, and the surrounding activities were more long lastingly memorable than the band performances, the reason we were there in the first place.

After the show we needed to secure our ride home, which meant in the late nineteen hundred and nineties, finding what historians now refer to as a “pay phone,” a coin operated phone machine with numbers you pressed to dial a phone number which you had memorized, to call the lucky parent that was to drive downtown to pick up their funnily dressed teenagers. We found such a machine a few blocks away at a Burger King fast food restaurant, made the call, got some fries and sodas, and waited in the night to be whisked away from our punk rock night out on the town, Ray returning home with all of his punk accouterments intact, and Ed Sardella complete with a story he could horrify his fellow newscasters with.