When We Were Young: A Festival of Nostalgia and Love
On a warm weekend in late October in Las Vegas, former scene kids from around the country descended upon the desert to dust off their vans and skinny jeans and rock there middle aged bodies off! Proving Emo wasn’t just a phase, the Las Vegas Festival grounds welcomed 60,000 punk rockers to relive their favorite songs from their childhood and sing at the top of their lungs! The festival grounds opened at 10am both days with 61 bands hitting 5 stages over the course of 14 hours. What a wild scene it was!
This was the third year of When We Were Young, and the festival has come a long way in terms of organization. I attended the opening festival in 2022, and they certainly had some issues to iron out, including line waits to get into the festival and to get 21 plus wristbands. Once in the festival, the beer, food, and bathroom lines were outrageous! Wait times ate into set times and bands were missed… Not the case in 2024, the festival organizers definitely listened to the feedback they received and cleaned up all those issues nicely. In 2024 I didn’t wait for beer, food, or bathrooms, and as a result, was able to catch 19 sets in one day!
This year’s theme was “great albums in their entirety” and the bands did not disappoint! Daisy Grenade kicked the festival off with a performance on the Pink Stage that certainly earned them a whole lot of new fans (me included). As the day progressed bands like Thursday and Saves The Day rocked under the blistering sun on the Allianz Stage, just about the time the back of my neck began to burn it was time to step into the Verizon Pavilion for an inspiring performance of “The Greatest Generation” by The Wonder Years. Taking Back Sunday reminded us that Gaslighting has been going on since before we even had a name for it with their album “Tell All Your Friends” and The Used was sure everyone knew that they’ve been together through thick and thin with “In Love and Death”. Later on the Pink Stage, Jimmy Eat World brought back the hope and innocence of youth with “Bleed American”. Later Mom Jeans let us know they were “just some dip shits from California” and Say Anything’s Max Bemis made some unique renditions to the lyrics for “…Is a Real Boy”. Right as my feet and back were about to give out, I found myself in a Chemical Romance with the “Black Parade” which is such an iconic album in the Emo Scene.
This Festival has brought back something for Millennials that really connects us all together. Hope, Love, growing pains, the future… which is now behind us… Most of us are parents now, navigating this ever-stressful world, the music of our youth is a great way to connect the past to the future, a way for us to remember what it was like to be a kid ourselves and a way to relate to what our children are going through or will go through in the near future. Life goes by fast and it’s important to slow down and rock our faces off from time to time.