IT HAPPENED!
After an awful last weekend in Vegas, I was soooo cautiously optimistic because I didn’t think it would actually happen, but it did!
Ryan and I just got back from an awesome weekend at the When We Were Young music festival at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds.
IT WAS THE BEST DAY OF MY SAD LITTLE EMO LIIIIFEEEE.
The day the festival was announced and I saw the line-up, I could NOT buy tickets fast enough.
LITERAL DREAM LINEUP!*
*A lot of people were upset with Avril canceling, but I was SO excited to see UnderOath as a replacement, so I’m not mad at all.
I detailed it in my last post, but my original tickets were for last Saturday’s festival date. Ryan and I drove out to Vegas last weekend only for the festival to be canceled. We live driving distance from Vegas, though,
I was bummed about having to miss a few bands I really would have loved to have seen, like Saosin, Acceptance, AFI, The Ready Set, We the Kings, Hawthorne Heights* etc.
*Hawthorne Heights is actually playing in Flagstaff tonight? So we’re leaving to see them in a few hours.
But, I did get to see full* sets from:
- Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
- UnderOath
- Mayday Parade
- Boys Like Girls
- Anberlin
- Armor For Sleep
- Senses Fail
- The Used
- Silverstein
- Taking Back Sunday
- A Day to Remember
- All-American Rejects
- My Chemical Romance
*Some of these sets were missing the first or last song because we had to book it from one stage to another because there was a five-minute overlap.
We also caught a little bit of Paramore and Jimmy Eat World while waiting for our sets to start.
It’s honestly so hard to pick favorites because all the bands were incredible. I definitely preferred the Stripe Stage to any of the other stage set-ups. There weren’t any lines at the food courts, bars, hydration stations or bathrooms there, and there was a nice shaded area you could still see the stage from. I would have loved to have spent more time at the Stripe Stage! We were also able to get really close for both RJA and Anberlin at that stage.
Anberlin was also REALLY great because NOBODY* took their phones out for the entire first several songs of the set.
*There was ONE girl that cut in front of me two songs in and then filmed the entire set on her phone, but whatever. Otherwise, not bad!
I didn’t take too many photos throughout the day because 1. Nobody wants to watch a concert through the phone screen of the person in front of them, 2. I would MUCH rather dance than hold a phone steady trying to film a song, 3. Who actually watches concert videos after they take them? and 4. Why waste the phone battery?
I would much rather just experience the concert in the moment, and maybe snap one or two photos of a set just to keep for memories.
Aside from the scheduling conflicts, I was bummed out at how little downtime we had. I intentionally missed Paramore, Bring Me the Horizon, Thursday, Death Cab for Cutie and Alkaline Trio because Ryan and needed food. We basically went from gates at 11 a.m. to RJA at 12:15 to 5:15 p.m. straight without an actual break, minus 10 or so minutes here and there (we missed a chunk of Boys Like Girls for drink/ bathroom breaks). Then we had an hour for food, then two more hours of sets, and then we gave ourself a 2.5-hour break before MCR to go back to our hotel to grab jackets before finishing out the festival at MCR. We didn’t have a chance to check out any of the art installations or exhibits or anything because we were SO pressed for time seeing all the artists we could.
The sound bleed was also a bit of an issue. I think the festival did a great job with the Black Stage / Pink Stage setup and being able to switch from one right to the other to keep the acts filtering through, but when we saw AFS at the Neon Stage, there was SO much sound bleed. It was also really hard to hear AAR at the Checker Stage because we kept getting spillover from Death Cab.
Ryan hadn’t really heard of most of these bands, so it was also cool to see his reaction to a lot of the sets. He LOVED both The Used and MCR, and also enjoyed A Day to Remember and UnderOath.
Which, same. Bert McCracken always gives an incredible performance and all the theatrics during the MCR performance were incredible. ADTR and UO brought so much energy to their sets.
Like I said, I honestly can’t pick a favorite because the nostalgia was kicking into overdrive and I was just SO excited to be alive in 2022 screaming along to songs like “Buried a Lie” and “Afterglow.”
Another bummer part of the festival was the lack of fan energy. I’m trying not to judge anyone because I know I was EXHAUSTED by the end of the day, and I chose to hang to the back of some of the crowds later in the day so maybe some of the festival-goers were kind of unfamiliar with some of the bands and crowds closer to the stage were a bit more energetic, but it was a little bit of a buzzkill to be the only person singing and dancing along to a lot of the acts.
But, it was still SUCH an incredible experience! Like, 15/10. 100 percent worth ALLLL the money (thousands of dollars in hotel rooms, ugh) and ALLLL the time (back-to-back weekends in Vegas, I’m TIRED) and I am SO glad I went.
