November 9th, 1998: Jimmy Eat World, Coalesce, Jejune, Situation at 1200, Compression, Meatjack @ the Chop Shop, Baltimore, MD

This was a great show in hindsight but was so annoying the night of. Jamie had booked Jimmy Eat World and Jejune for this night, and he had a local opener on it as well but I can't remember who it was, and then Greg from Compression had gotten in touch with me about booking a show for Coalesce, Compression, and Meatjack. I didn't care for Meatjack at the time (they got much better years later), and I always thought Compression sucked, but I didn't wanna pass up on bringing Coalesce to town, even though I was never super into them, so we decided to combine the shows. We decided to order the show as was appropriate for that time, with Jimmy Eat World headlining, Coalesce, playing under them, Jejune in the fourth slot, the indie/rock local, who's name I'll have to dig up playing third, Compression in the second slot, and then Meatjack opening. Compression and Meatjack had been playing for a while, but they didn't have much of a following. Nevertheless, Greg threw a fit because he thought Coalesce should headline with his band and Meatjack playing directly underneath them, kinda like a split show. Jamie and I thought that was ridiculous and told him so. He continued to huff and puff for the rest of the night. Meatjack were/are cool guys and just wanted to play. I remember them having a film projector shining on them during their set with all kinds of fucked up images. Compression were terrible. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure that Situation at 1200 from NJ was the other indie rock band. I remember them calling me begging to play with Jimmy Eat World. They were a decent band. Not sure if any of them went on to play in anything else. Jejune had a sweet sound but I just couldn't get into them. Coalesce were loud and intense and it was a cool counterpoint to Jimmy Eat World's pop/rock. This would have been a bit before "Clarity" came out but I remember them playing a bunch of stuff that wasn't on "Static Prevails" so it must have been a bunch of "Clarity" stuff. "Lucky Denver Mint" was definitely played and that's pretty much the one song I really wanted to hear. I still have a silk-screened tour poster from this JEW/Jejune tour. One of the Meatjack guys made the flyer.

Funny side note about Compression: It was mid-1994 and I was getting ready to move from New Jersey to Baltimore for college. AOL was pretty much the only internet service provider at the time. The internet was a much different beast than it is now. Search engines were a crap shoot. I did an AOL search for "baltimore hardcore" so I could see what the local bands were like (I was aware of Next Step Up because of some comp I had that they were on but that just wasn't my style, and Torn Apart was not on my radar at the time) and Compression was the only band that showed up. I listened to one song and thought I was gonna be in for a long four years in Baltimore if this was what they had to offer for local hardcore. For those of you unfamiliar with Compression, they were nu-metal before nu-metal had a name, and they were far from a hardcore band. Thankfully once I got here some local friends introduced me to the actual hardcore/punk scene.