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What smoking music are you listening to? (2024)

Green Day
8x10 Club Baltimore
1/19/93

Few people realize that Green Day has been around for 37 years, 34 with the current line-up. If you track their early history of course you'll find hundreds of shows in California alone but a surprising amount in the upper mid-west. Michigan,Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Montana were toured many times before they crossed into the eastern seaboard. In fact, in their first 10 years they played in Wisconsin more times than New York. The 1993 tour was their first on the east coast and it was a club tour. The arenas would come in about 2.5 more years.

This 8x10 show was a birthday present from the wife and at 37 I'm pretty sure I was the oldest customer that night. I had liked Kerplunk although I didn't think it was real punk but you could see the similarities.

The 8x10 club is in the Federal Hill section of Baltimore parts of which are seedier than others even today. It was only 6 miles from our apartment so getting there is pretty easy. It was named because the stage really was 8x10 at the time (now 10x12) and you might be able to cram 250 people in it if you ignore the fire code. Because it was so small and the majority of the touring bands weren't terribly well known chances are you could meet most of the band members at the bar while they were waiting to go on. I'm sure we had some minor chit-chat but honestly don't remember it.

What I do remember is the first band of the night. They were so um-Godly bad as to make themselves memorable. A standard with which to compare all future bad bands against - Liquor Bike. If anybody was a punk it was them. Playing in the spirit of not really knowing how to play their instruments I had doubts they knew what a chord was let alone something in tune. On the bright side everything was better after that.

Two more forgettable bands played before Green Day hit the stage at midnight orv so. Looking it up, they had already played 17 gigs before this one in January alone so the set was tight and had the crowd on their feet. More Pogo than Mosh they probably played 25+ songs during a 75 minute set. It was hard to tell since I didn't know them well enough to say where each song ended and another began.

I had a good time. the wife had a good time and the next time I would see Green Day would be in the 12,000 seat Baltimore Arena in '96.

 
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