By EILEEN CECONI
A few weeks ago, I looked through my planner and decided I was going to have one of the busiest weekends of my life. It was a perfect storm of lab reports, papers and prelims, and I was going to have to spend ~24 hours in the library to finish everything. On Friday night, when I really should have been organizing notes and prepping my work, I boarded a bus and headed home. No, sadly I did not go home to increase my productivity; instead, I went home to go to a concert. It was a really poor decision, but it was also a total #difts moment, and just like many of my peers, I have #noregrets (or, as Caity Weaver from Gawker may say, “#noEgrets F*** ALL BIRDS”).
To be fair, this was not a rash decision. I knew I wanted to go to this concert the minute it was announced. I called the venue several times before tickets even went on sale, and I got one in the first hour they were available. I saw Ryan Hemsworth (my quasi-friend, as you may remember) over the summer at MoMA PS1, and it was life-changing. I also really like Cyril Hahn; his remix of “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child is ingenious. So there I was, on a night I really should have spent studying for an exam, in a dive bar in the depths of Chinatown.
The night started off on a positive note. I managed to forget about the stress of school for a few hours, and saw some friends I hadn’t seen in a while. We sat around at said dive bar talking about Lorde’s new album, reminiscing and having a grand ole time. Then I checked Twitter. The twittermachine told me Cyril Hahn was going on at 2am, Ryan Hemsworth at 3am. Now, in case you don’t know me, there’s one thing I value above anything else: sleep. I regularly sleep 9+ hours, and it’s not unusual for me to go to sleep before 10:30. In fact, I turn off notifications on my phone at 10:30 so I can sleep. Basically, there was no way I was staying up until 3am two nights before a huge exam.
Despite this, we meandered over to some really sketchy section of Chinatown and found Palace 88 (a dim sum restaurant under an overpass in a forgotten corner of Manhattan and near the site of this concert). When we walked in, some teenager checked my ID and we took this weird escalator up to the restaurant. Side note: The concert was advertised as part of the Dark Disco series. I completely ignored that, assuming that this concert would be similar to the chill daytime PS1 show. I don’t know why. But anyway, this was pretty much the epitome of Dark Disco. It was pitch black, hotter and more humid than a frat basement during O-week and packed with people who I would have liked to observe for my class “Drugs and the Brain.” It was the only time I’ve ever gone to a concert and felt concerned for my safety. After tolerating 45 minutes of Henry Krinkle smoking something on stage and playing the same beat over and over, I bounced. So I left Cornell on the busiest weekend of the year to go see Ryan Hemsworth and Cyril Hahn, but left before they even started their sets. It was awful.
Perhaps I have #noregrets because I was functional the next day and ended up studying quite a bit. But I really would have loved to see those two goofballs perform. In response to my disappointment, I’m featuring Cyril Hahn’s most recent remix. While his trademark is slowing down tracks and deepening the vocals (see the Destiny’s Child remix or Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body” for examples), he doesn’t do that here. Instead, this tinny, up-beat remix is catchy and just so weird. It comes along with a YouTube video of animated little shapes. It’s fun, chill and strangely childish, and I would have loved to see the effed-up crowd at Palace 88 try to dance to this. They might have been looking for a strong trap beat, but this is exactly what I would have wanted (just before 11pm).