It started in a record store, and it gave way to the best of times. Theo Severson can’t remember if the shop was called Turtles or Warehouse Records at the time, but it’s where Tampa’s Mojo Books & Records currently lives these days. It’s also where he befriended — or saved — Chris Wood.
“He came in to buy an Air record, 10 000 Hz Legend or something, and I was like ‘Yo that record sucks — don’t buy it.’” Severson, 39, told CL, laughing. “I told him, ‘You come in here all the time, you usually buy good stuff. I’m gonna save you the trouble — do not buy this.’”
Wood, 41, ended up with Severson’s dubbed copy of the French pop duo’s lukewarm 2001 stab at intelligent art-pop, and the pair have been something of a partnership ever since. They became roommates in a house just north of Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa. (This was before locals called the area “NoHo” and well before all the fancy apartments, coffee shops and CrossFit studios popped up.) Wood — who is the soft-spoken foil to the more vocal Severson — says it’s now been about a decade since they worked up the nerve to DJ in public.
As a duo, Wood and the Severson — collectively known as the Crate Brothers — are veritable scene staples. They were Ybor City mainstays at Czar’s Pulp Dance Party during the mid-to-late 2000s, and they brought their tastes to a new address when Czar moved across the street to The Ritz in 2013. Many of the bartenders and DJs who made Czar happen at The Ritz were unceremoniously squeezed out last summer, just a few months after an April 2016 fire forced programming at EDM hotspot Amphitheatre to find shelter at a new club. Amphitheatre owner John Santoro now owns The Ritz and does a good business there, but a few Czar alumni have found a new place to call to their own at First Chance Last Chance.
The primped-up dive — complete with craft cocktails, a solid draft beer lineup, and neighborhood vibes — is nestled in a weensy nook barely off Seventh Avenue. The space boasts one of the coziest courtyards in Tampa Bay, and it’s where the Crate Bros. kicked off a fantastic experiment two years ago.
“They wanted me to DJ, and I said I wanted to do this party where I play all of these emo records. I told them, ‘If it sucks, then I’ll never do it again,’” Severson, a Morrissey lifer, explained. Well it didn’t, and Emo Night Tampa — which happens on the first Saturday of every month — is perennially First Chance Last Chance’s busiest shift. “The crowds get here before we do and stay after we quit at 2 a.m. It’s crazy,” Wood said.
Playlist: Listen to 25 songs which prove that emo is just pop music in disguise
“Emo,” for the uninitiated, is a thoughtless tag bestowed upon a subgenre of “emotional hardcore” music chiseled out of angsty punk born in Reagan-era America. Emo — as explained by CL contributor Brian Roesler in an ongoing essay series for Treble — has gone through waves since the mid-’80s, when bands like Jawbreaker and Cap’n Jazz were creating the mold. Its second wave (or “golden era”) happened at the end of the 20th century, and featured revered names like American Football, Sunny Day Real Estate, Promise Ring and The Get Up Kids. The third wave (2000-2010) was somewhat polarizing since it found transitional outfits like Dashboard Confessional and Brand New bringing the sound closer to the mainstream before it eventually gave way to popular bands like Paramore, Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy.
Today, emo is in its fourth wave, in which groups like You Blew It!, Foxing and even Pinegrove are helping connect the niche genre’s core musical tenets — perceptive lyrics and smart composition — to a wider audience longing for a more challenging and authentic rock-music experience. It’s a little complicated, but the cross-generational evolution of emo, coupled with its strange accessibility, is what makes Emo Night Tampa so successful.
“Fourth wave bands are really good. These are the kids who grew up on second wave, listening to Knapsack or Jazz June,” Severson said, adding that some of the attending yutes will even request songs by Crank! Records act Boy’s Life, a somewhat obscure highlight of emo’s second wave. “We look at them like, ‘How do you know that,’ and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, my brother put me on.’ So there are kids whose older siblings introduced them to bands. It’s pretty rad to have these young kids come up and ask for stuff that I really like from the old days.”
“They definitely like the good stuff, and the last hour is almost always a sing-along,” Wood said.
And that’s what’s rad about this thing the Crate Brothers have built, and it’ll be on full display on June 3 when Dikembe (a fourth-wave band that’s broken out of Gainesville on the way to global recognition) plays a live set after the Crate Bros. and special guests select tunes. Emo gets mistakenly pegged as sad music, but any fan of the genre will tell you that falling in love with emo has probably given way to more happiness than sadness.
“It totally isn’t sad music. There’s this running gag that you’re sad and depressed, but it’s really no different from any other pop song,” Severson said. “These are just songs about friendship. They’re songs about love and love lost. They’re songs about good times and bad times.”
Listen to a playlist of Theo Severson's favorite emo tunes here. Get more information on Emo Night Tampa's two-year anniversary party via local.cltampa.com.
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This article appears in Jun 1-8, 2017.