A concert at Music House on Thursday night was disrupted when two Middletown residents entered the house and one of them proceeded to remove his clothing. The event, titled “Take Off Your Pants! The Return of Dink 583,” ended when students fled the house, and Middletown Police and Public Safety (PSafe) officers came and reprimanded the two trespassers.
Dink 583, a Blink-182 cover band comprised of Adrien DeFontaine ’13, Jason Katzenstein ’13, and Kevin Reis ’13, started playing at around 10:45 p.m. According to DeFontaine, the two middle-aged Middletown residents showed up a few songs into their set.
“We had finished our fourth song, which was ‘Man Overboard,’ and afterwards, Jason and Kevin took their shirts off because it was really hot in there,” DeFontaine said. “Establishing precedent, perhaps.”
After Katzenstein implored the crowd to start moshing, the band began playing “The Party Song.”
“We started playing, and about half a verse in, one of the guys started taking his pants off, which was weird, but not foreign to one of our shows, [since] we’ve played in our underwear before,” DeFontaine said. “Then he kept taking clothes off. He took off socks, he took off his shirt, and finally took off his underwear and he was naked in the middle of Music House, in a crowd of 25 or 30 students.”
Once the man was naked, DeFontaine said the crowd parted around him as he began jumping and swinging his genitals around.
“[He was swinging it] like a pendulum,” Katzenstein said. “It was kind of impressive.”
DeFontaine also noted that the other man from Middletown was bleeding from his head, which the man later claimed was because he fell off his bicycle. As the naked man continued jumping around, he fell into the band.
“He stumbled, tripped and fell into me as I’m singing,” DeFontaine said. “He graced my leg with the presence of his ass, which was awesome; I really enjoyed that.”
The band decided to finish playing the song before calling for an intermission. According to DeFontaine, everyone ran out of the house except for Reis, who was trapped behind a drum set in the corner of the room. A student at the show saw the Middletown Police investigating a traffic violation on Washington Street and ran to tell them about the situation. Once the police arrived they initially thought Reis was one of the men causing the disturbance.
“I was shirtless because Jason and I had taken our shirts off and I approached one of the cops and he looks at me, shines the flashlight at my face and goes, ‘Why do you look like a whore out of the whore house?’” Reis said. “I was like, ‘Officer, I’m the drummer. It’s pretty hot in here but I can tell you what happened.’”
DeFontaine noted that there were about five Middletown Police cars and two PSafe cars at the scene. He said that the Middletown Police could not arrest the men because it was their first time on campus, but that they warned them not to come back.
According to Director of Public Safety Dave Meyer, the men were immediately identified and escorted from the premises.
“They were not affiliated with the University and they both had clothes on when [PSafe] and the cops got there,” he said. “The individuals were probably intoxicated.”
Will Feinstein ’13, who came into Music House after the incident had occurred, said Middletown Police questioned the two men about why they came to the party.
“[The men] said they heard loud music and a party and they decided to come in,” Feinstein said. “It’s very unclear why clothes were taken off.”
Katzenstein noted that the police told the band to “rock on” as they left. The band plans to reschedule the show for sometime this week, tentatively on Thursday. DeFontaine said they did learn a valuable lesson from the incident.
“I think we agreed that the moral is to make sure there’s someone watching the door,” he said.
Reis also maintained an optimistic view of the disrupted concert.
“In terms of ways that I would like a concert to have prematurely ended, that probably tops the list,” he said.