The “saddest party in The Swamp” creates a new generation of headbanging partygoers
Emo Night host “SaddyDaddy” sings into the microphone. The stage lights focus on them as they glide across the stage with an electrifying energy. The crowd huddles around them, screaming along to the words as they dance along with the music.
June 28, 2024 | story and photos by Delia Sauer
The line around the club stretches half a block. There’s enough glitter and eyeshadow on each face to fill a lake — enough to make the night sky jealous.
It’s shoulder-to-shoulder inside. The heat thickens the air. No one seems to notice. People pile in, ready to bang their heads to the beat of a drum. A woman at the entrance frantically accepts the cash being thrown at her. Some patrons are lucky: They receive a band that says they are older than 21, whether it’s true or not. Others are stuck with a striped one, an obvious sign that they are too young to stand at the bar.
Once the herding is over, people spread out as far as they can on the dance floor. It’s early enough in the night when the floor isn’t sticky with vodka or slippery with water. The music is already blaring, but nothing is louder than the heavy breathing of whoever is dancing beside you.
The stage stands at the end of the music hall. Partygoers flock to it like an altar. Dancing inflatable skeletons encourage people to fling their arms into the air. Purple lights follow the singer. Their hair is in a bun; their white shirt is drenched in sweat. Their voice is hoarse from screaming for hours. But the more strained it becomes, the better their melodies sound. Everyone adores them as they scream along.
It’s Emo Night at Gainesville’s Vivid Music Hall, and partygoers are ready to go down swinging.
As the night carries on, an impromptu chicken fight emerges from a mosh pit. Three warriors balancing on the shoulders of their friends go toe to toe, laughing as they try to jump to the beat while staying in the air.
Emo culture, originally popular in the 1980s, was an underground counterculture movement against mainstream cultural norms that embraced the hardcore and the wild. It peaked in the 2000s when popular emo bands like Fall Out Boy and Paramore went mainstream. Known for heavy eyeliner, heavy fringe and a style consisting mainly of jet-black clothes, the emo way of life is creative and expressive. And it’s made a comeback in Gainesville.
Events like Emo Night not only reflect the popularity of emo culture but of the 2000s era itself. Other venues like Gainesville’s How Bazar and Simons have also hosted Y2K and 2000s Nights that transport partygoers to a simpler time where low rise jeans and flip phones were all the rage.
Many people credit quarantine during 2020 and TikTok as being responsible for bringing it back into the limelight; however, emo culture never disappeared. As old bands like My Chemical Romance go on tour again, those who grew up with emo music get to experience it anew.
Vijaya Seixas, a 37-year-old DJ by trade, noticed the resurgence of emo music and decided to capitalize on it. He had heard of dedicated events to emo music and tested his idea after throwing a trial run party. He had no branding; it was just him and the music. After the first success, he organized another party and more people showed up. More classics were added into his crafted soundtrack, and a set was slowly formed. He even found a host, a local musician with the stage name “Saddydaddy,” and a drummer to accompany them on the stage.
By 2018, he had organized the first official Emo Night, known as Gainesville’s “saddest party in The Swamp.”
“This is what I grew up with,” Seixas said. “It’s been a while since I got to hear it in a public setting, so it just felt like the timing was right.”
Seixas settled on Vivid Music Hall for the party’s venue because it was the only building that could even handle the event. Now scheduled once every month, hundreds of people attend the party, and it has even reached Vivid Music Hall’s capacity multiple times.
Seixas spends his time holed up in the back of the venue hunched over his turntable. He doesn’t get to talk to the people who attend. But he hears their screams and how they laugh as people get tossed around the dance floor. He knows people have a good time.
“It’s kind of cool in the sense of everything’s getting rediscovered,” he said.
Daniela Gray, a 20-year-old dual languages and international studies major student at the University of Florida, has black eyeliner smeared across her eyelids. Her red lipstick stains a cup of water so cold her fingertips match the color. It’s cathartic to jump so much that her feet ache. She’s reminded of her middle school self, but instead of listening to this kind of music in the depths of her depression, she’s smiling.
She first heard of Emo Night during her friend’s birthday party last year. Now, she’s spending her 20th birthday howling to the highest notes in Green Day and Panic! At the Disco songs.
Gray wears a lace choker around her neck, and her nails match her dark makeup. She blends in with the crowd of teased, side-parted hair.
“Going to a normal club, you have to be hot and sexy,” she said. “For this, you could be kind of grungy — nasty-looking.”
Crushed plastic cups and aluminum cans litter the dance floor. A group of partygoers make a game out of stacking up as many cups and cans as possible. Other attendees bring their own offerings to the tower, and the people dancing close by begin to bang their heads cautiously.
Gray first discovered emo music while she was in middle school. Lyrics from Pierce the Veil and Fall Out Boy were comforting at a time where she felt like she didn’t fit in anywhere. Now, she celebrates her happiness when she sports pleather gloves and heavy chains.
“Having the privilege to actually listen to it again and make better memories of it is really heartwarming,” she said.
The aftermath can mean remnants of eyeliner and mascara stuck under your eyes or your ears ringing to hell and back. Gray loves it. To her and many in the Gainesville community, Emo Night at the Vivid Music Hall is a night of nostalgia and the perfect amount of chaos.
