EMO NITE FORT COLLINS
PLEASE NOTE THIS SHOW IS 21+ ONLY
$1 from every ticket sold will be donated to Living The Dream Foundation.
“Did Emo Nite single-handedly bring back pop-punk, or did it just so happen to ride one of the first waves of late-‘90s nostalgia before it became TikTok-ified? (We’re going to side with the former.)” – Time Out
As Rolling Stone observed a few years ago, “Emo Night Vindicated the Scene.” Since they threw their first party at an East L.A. dive bar, Morgan Freed and T.J. Petracca, and a dedicated crew of regular attendees, built Emo Nite into a phenomenon. Top-tier emo artists, old and new, curate playlists and perform, with guest lists boasting members of blink-182, All Time Low, Dashboard Confessional, The Maine, and Good Charlotte. Scene-friendly pop culture mavericks often participate, like past attendees Post Malone, Demi Lovato, Machine Gun Kelly, and Skrillex.
It’s all too easy to forget that before the first Emo Nite in December 2014, “emo” was a joke.
Somehow on its journey from a melodic post-hardcore subgenre, built on earnest emotional expression, to a mainstream moniker assigned to anything remotely angsty, “emo” became a dirty word. Despite the positive impact ushered in by waves of bands, from the crucial “Revolution Summer” and Sunny Day Real Estate through Taking Back Sunday and My Chemical Romance, accepting “emo” as a dismissive designation or identity invited polite embarrassment and even scorn. But Freed and Petracca grew up loving the music associated with emo and the people like them who similarly embraced outsider art and subculture, regardless of changing fashions or pretentious snobbery. Petracca told The New Yorker the idea behind the first Emo Nite celebration was to center a happy, communal experience on the music they once listened to when they were upset and alone.
“I sang Dashboard Confessional at karaoke at a friend’s birthday party and thought it was super fun to go out with friends and listen to music we actually liked,” recalls Petracca, who met Freed when the pair worked at a creative agency together. “Every other club in LA played EDM, Top 40, or hip-hop. We always found ourselves pre-gaming with emo and pop-punk music before we went out.”
Freed knew a bartender at the Short Stop in Echo Park and convinced him to let them throw a party on a random, rainy Tuesday. They invited friends via Facebook; double the bar’s capacity turned up. “We decided to see how far we could take it,” Petracca says. “‘Who would be the craziest guest?’ We invited Mark Hoppus, and he came! He did our first one at Echoplex, which was our third party ever.”
There may be a surprise acoustic set or even a full-band performance, but ultimately, it’s about the experience. Emo Nite turned a party into a community, reclaiming the spirit of how the scene began.
