The rooftop at 5:40 a.m., shortly before the sun intervened.Photo: Tess Moreau / Wazel News
DJ Halcyon played one song for nine hours at the Neon Pelican rooftop on Saturday night, and when she finally stopped, at 6:10 a.m., the crowd of 600 chanted for it as an encore.
The track, an unreleased edit the DJ calls "Harbor Lights (Long Version)," is four minutes and twelve seconds long. She played it, by the venue's count, 131 times.
How it happened
Halcyon told Wazel News the plan had been a normal set. "I opened with it, and it felt right, so I played it again, and it felt more right." By the fourth play, she says, "the room had decided," and she "didn't want to be the one to break it."
A sound engineer at the venue said he had asked her at 1 a.m. whether something was wrong with the decks. She said no. He asked at 3 a.m. She said "it's still going." He went home.
"Every song is just one song if you play it long enough. I only had the one, so I was ahead."
— DJ Halcyon
Halcyon's setup. The second deck was, by her own account, 'for show.'
The crowd
Attendees interviewed on the stairs at dawn described the set as "the best night of my life," "a religious thing" and "I honestly thought it was different songs." One man said he had left at 2 a.m., gone home, slept, come back at 5 a.m., "and it was the same bit."
The Neon Pelican's management, which does not keep a guestbook, said it had "no record of anyone attending" but that the bar "did its best Saturday in years." The rooftop pool was closed at 4 a.m. "for reasons of the song."
What's next
Music critics are divided. One called the set "the purest expression of the Palmetto Bay night: one idea, held too long, in a place nobody admits to being." Another said he "left after the fortieth play and has not stopped hearing it," which he filed under both complaint and review.
Halcyon has been booked for the club's Halloween party, on the condition that she "bring two songs." She says she is "considering it" but "doesn't want to overcomplicate things."
"Harbor Lights (Long Version)" has not been released. The venue has asked her not to, "so people have to come back."