I’d like to preface this by saying that I don’t know who Cheat Codes or CADE are. My musical tastes are currently anti-Vietnam War songs and Chinese pop on YouTube autoplay.
That said, from my understanding, Cheat Codes and CADE are sets of youngish white males who use a lot of electronic sounds (I’m not sure what the correct term for this is) in their music.
Throughout their Hoptoberfest set, they would often hop around the stage yelling things like “One, two, one, two, three, four” or “John Hopkins, hands up, get your hands up right now.”
At first I wasn’t planning on going to the concert. It was a Friday afternoon and that meant going to study in Brody, but when I saw that there was a ruckus on the Beach, I decided to stop by and check it out.
Overall the music from both groups was alright, but I probably wouldn’t have been able to distinguish them from the works of other artists in the same genre. It all just sounded like a combination of auto-tune and rhythmic noise.
The guy who sang from CADE was okay. He sounded a bit like Justin Bieber’s voice from the “Baby” era dropped an octave and a half. The guys from Cheat Codes were pretty similar, except they generously swore when addressing the audience.
I couldn’t really tell what most of the lyrics were, but I heard some phrases like “stars don’t shine” and “feel your skin.” I’m sure if you look up the lyrics on Google, they are profound.
I do know that CADE sampled some musical selections like “Hit the Road Jack” by Ray Charles and The X-Files theme song, and I’m rather proud of myself for recognizing that. Cheat Codes played a lot more music from other artists, and they had a lot more bass as my internal organs are still oscillating.
To be perfectly honest, I found these groups to be so similar that I was only able to differentiate them based on the fact that Cheat Codes had a lot more access to the strobe lights and smoke machines.
I was getting worried that passing cars on N. Charles Street would think there was a fire on the Beach.
The entertainers also had some witty banter with the audience with lines like “Make some noise if you like broccoli, you goddamn right” and “How many of you like sex? Hell yeah.”
For a Hopkins crowd on a cloudy day, the audience was surprisingly alive and vibrant.
Between 80 to 100 people jumped every time the bass dropped and yelled a little bit every time the entertainer said, “Make some noise John Hopkins.”
I appreciate how there was hired security for the event, but I think they were here mainly to make sure students didn’t cut each other’s throats to get a Hoptoberfest shirt earlier in the afternoon.
A good portion of people just came out to take a quick video to post on their Snapchat story before heading back to Brody. Shout-out to the couple of guys playing jianzi (Asian hacky sack).
There was also a drone that flew around taking a video, so that everyone’s image can be used as marketing material for this band’s next stop at another college.
Overall I had a pretty fun time. Judging from the smell of weed, I bet other people would say the same.
This was the first concert I hadn’t fallen asleep at for a while, so that’s a plus. Also, it was particularly heartening to see so many students seemingly enjoying themselves while in the depths of midterm season.
As a side note, some students may have been upset by the numerous instances in which these performers referred to our school as “John Hopkins” or “John’s Hopkins” (which is what it said on their tour’s promotional poster).
However, when does it get to the point where we are just deluding ourselves and other people might have a point in dismissing the “s”?
Honestly, the reason we have the “s” is kind of lame. It’s something about how some Quaker plutocrat was named after his mother’s maiden name. But I digress.
I suppose Cheat Codes and CADE were adequate musical guests to invite to Hopkins. I’d rank them in the top 11 of the white-guy-EDM groups that I know, which is perfect for this top 11 school.
