Before Big Head Todd and the Monsters became Colorado Music Hall of Fame inductees with a platinum album, a Guinness World Record and more than three decades of near-annual sold-out shows at Red Rocks, the band played fraternity basements, campus rooms and weekly gigs at JJ McCabe’s, a once-popular Boulder bar formerly located at 945 Walnut St.
Frontman Todd Park Mohr said Boulder in the late 1980s was a “sleepy town” with only a small handful of original groups navigating a local scene dominated by cover bands and heavy metal acts.
“The magic of playing back then, for me, was just having a really eye-to-eye, face-to-face connection with people, which was so fun,” Mohr said. “We practically seemed like we knew everybody in the audience.”…