When was the last time you heard a My Chemical Romance Song, a Fall Out Boy song or a song from a band in which a member was probably wearing eyeliner? What about an All Time Low song, back when they were just a glorified blink-182 cover band? If your answer to any of these questions is prior to Friday night, you missed out on one of Ithaca’s most unique events when Emo Night Brooklyn brought their DJ, which consists of some of the 2000’s best emo and pop-punk to The Haunt on Friday night.
The function was run by two DJs, whose setlist was a mixture of their own personal favorites and requests from the crowd. I’ve been to many emo shows in my life, but no frontman ever had the same stage presence as these DJs. You would think it might be a little awkward to scream Panic at the Disco lyrics when you’re in your twenties, but the Emo Night crew’s unapologetic dedication eased everyone else in with them. Just about every song involved a moment where they would hold the microphone out to the audience and the crowd would be scrambling over each other trying to sing into it. There was even a moment shortly after the Fortnite dances where the DJ managed to get someone’s number, which is either incredibly impressive or incredibly disturbing.
There’s a case for gatekeeping here, considering how only Jimmy Eat World is the only band from their setlist that would pass the test for what’s technically emo (according to the site isthisbandemo.com), but it would completely miss the point of the event. The whole thing felt like some sort of dystopian frat party if a Paramore fan grabbed the aux cord, all the way down to the improv mosh pits that looked like people practicing air karate and occasionally dropping the odd haymaker on each other. You could tell that from everyone that was there, “Welcome to the Black Parade” is just “Sicko Mode” for kids whose moms thought shopping at Hot Topic was mildly satanic.
The only real problem with the event is that the evening was a complete marathon, with three hours of nonstop emo and pop punk blasted at full volume. After about the second hour, the setlist started to drag when the playlist moved into more niche emo and hardcore, which didn’t help the exhaustion that had already started to set into the crowd. However, this was only evident because there were so many moments in the first two hours of pure euphoria — like everyone pulling the lyric “Tell your boyfriend that if he says he’s got beef that I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t fucking scared of him” from the depths of their memory while that 3OH!3 song was playing.
Ithaca’s first Emo Night was a resounding success. If you need a place to go and relive your middle school glory days, Emo Night Brooklyn is the place for you.
Dan Moran is a sophomore in the College of Human Ecology. He can be reached at [email protected].