Summertime Sadness: Emo Nite Returns To Los Angeles
- By: Ashley Joy Parker
- August 3, 2023
“If you don’t see the grave, it ain’t our rave….”
Bust out the black eyeliner and skinny jeans, Emo Nite is back in Los Angeles.
The mega-popular party series celebrating emo music and culture, will be taking over Avalon nightclub in Hollywood on Friday, Aug 4 with live performances, DJ sets and all-out feelings-fueled singalongs.
Back in the late ’90s to mid 2000s, emo music dominated rock radio, MTV and MySpace. However, the genre soon faded from a mainstream trend to outlier subculture. Keeping the emo spirit alive, Emo Nite originated back in 2014 at an East L.A. dive bar. The brainchild of friends Morgan Freed and T.J. Petracca simply wanted to throw a bash with the music they loved.
“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,” Petracca recalled to the The New Yorker. “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 and, low and behold, double the bar’s capacity turned up.
“We decided to see how far we could take it,” Petracca continued. “‘Who would be the craziest guest?’ We invited Mark Hoppus (of blink-182), and he came! He did our first one at Echoplex, which was our third party ever.”
“There’s no disconnect between the artist and fan,” Freed added. “I think that’s brought people closer to the music. It created a really strong sense of community, at a time when emo wasn’t ‘cool.’”
Over the years, a dedicated crew of regular attendees and new fans yearning for some emo nostalgia built the popular party series into an all out phenomenon. Emo Night is now a recurring event in over 50 cities in the United States. Top-tier emo artists, old and new, regularly curate playlists and perform, with guest lists boasting members of blink-182, All Time Low, Dashboard Confessional, The Maine and Good Charlotte.
Scene-friendly celebs often participate, like past attendees Post Malone, Demi Lovato, Avril Lavigne, Machine Gun Kelly, Mod Sun, Skrillex, Landon Barker and “Vanderpump Rules” stars Ariana Madix, Katie Maloney and Scheana Shay.
Related | Inside The Boohoo x Barbie Launch Party
“What Emo Nite does better than any of their competitors is they make ‘emo culture’ feel both nostalgic and brand new,” Brian Logan Dales, lead singer of the band The Summer Set told Forbes. “You can go to an Emo Nite with your best friends and sing along to old songs you grew up with, and at the same time, discover a brand-new artist who’s making music today because they grew up on that very same music as you. They’ve taken the emo of the past and helped it forge a new path for the future.”
The Emo Night has even grown beyond its own party. In addition to running full-day festivals and coveted performance spots at Coachella, Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, and more, Freed and Petracca also launched successful clothing collaborations with brands like OBEY, Urban Outfitters, PLEASURES, The Hundreds, Rose in Good Faith, Market, and OWSLA.
With the motto, “If you don’t see the grave, it ain’t our rave,” Petracca says there is “a lot of ownership from our community of the event itself and the Emo Nite brand,”
“It’s about breaking down that barrier of ‘Look at me, it’s all about me,’” he explained. “No, it’s about us, together, in this room. It belongs to every single person that comes through the door.”
Tickets for Emo Nite in Los Angeles on Aug. 4 can be found HERE. $1 from every ticket sold will be donated to Living The Dream Foundation. Admission is 21+.
For more information, visit emonight.com and follow the event on Instagram at @emonite.
