Las Vegas Strip is Welcoming a New, Nostalgic Music Festival

No matter how old you get, nostalgia never gets old.

Nostalgia usually follows a 20-year cycle, as people get older, get jobs, mortgages, and start families, and as the realities of adult life set in, they often find they don’t have time to listen to music or see friends. as they once did Happens.

As a result, those adults now have enough disposable income to splurge, hire a babysitter, and spend a fun night out or weekend reliving their youth. People with the financial means to have a weekend fling and a nostalgic urge to scratch have long been the bread and butter. from promoters in Las Vegas.

For a long time, Las Vegas was known as a place where people could relive their youth, and for a long time, that meant they could see Tony Bennett in residence. And classic pop icons like Santana still have a place there, as he has an ongoing residency at the House of Blues. (Unfortunately, Jimmy Buffett had to cancel his shows recently due to health issues.)

However, promoters realized a long time ago that there is always a new crop of people with disposable income and nostalgic tastes. There are also college students looking for an epic spring break, as well as 20-somethings with party money and few responsibilities.

For these crowds, Las Vegas has begun to offer residencies by EDM DJs such as Steve Aoki, millennial pop stars such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, as well as the recently concluded Life Is Beautiful Festival, which brought together current icons such as Lorde, Beach House, and Arctic Monkeys.

The concert promotion company Live Nation will bring another new festival to Las Vegas at the end of October, and it is already scheduled to return next year.

When we were young ready for the Vegas festival grounds

When We Were Young will be held at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on October 22, 23, and 29.

The festival caters to a very specific and lucrative demographic: people who grew up in the early 2000s listening to pop-punk, emo, and alternative rock, spent all afternoons on MySpace, read Alternative Press, bought dyed hair and T-shirts at Hot Topic, watched a lot of MTV2, and possibly had emo bangs. The newly reunited My Chemical Romance, as well as Paramore, Thursday, Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional, Bright Eyes, and Avril Lavigne, will headline this year’s edition.

There are two interesting things here. If you were alive in the 2000s and into alternative rock, the idea of a festival featuring My Chemical Romance, Avril Lavigne (mocked in her heyday as mall pop, but now remembered with honey), and Bright Eyes (an indie rock group whose singer Conor Oberst was dubbed the Bob Dylan of his generation) would have seemed ridiculous. However, time tends to blur these distinctions.

The second is that the festival is named after The Killers’ immortal 2000s hit “When You Were Young,” even though they aren’t playing the festival and weren’t a part of that scene.

The lineup will be the same for all three days, except for a few acts, and will include newer indie acts such as Wolf Alice and Alex. Tickets for this year’s edition are sold out, but the creative can always find a way.

According to Stereogumand, Live Nation has also announced that the festival will return next year, and will be headlined by Green Day, who were already considered classic rock legends in the 2000s.

Along with the recently reunited Blink-182, the show will also feature Rise Against, The Offspring, Motion City Soundtrack, Say Anything, Sum 41, and Michelle Branch, who isn’t part of this scene but was on MTV2 in the early 2000s, so nostalgia has shielded her.

The 2023 edition will be held on October 21, but if that show sells out – and it will – expect more to be added. General admission tickets are $249.99, while VIP tickets are $519.99.

People are excited to see Blink-182 again, while others are disappointed that they are so old that the entertainment industry is selling their nostalgia to people who aren’t the right age for it. things, or simply didn’t like it back then and are perplexed as to why Blink-182 is still regarded as an important band for their generation.

Has Live Nation learned from its mistakes?

We’re not trying to be a downer. If this festival piques your interest, that’s fantastic. Spend the weekend doing something else if you think it’s full of whining bands.

However, it should be noted that last year’s Live Nation-produced Astroworld Festival, centered on rapper Travis Scott, was a flop, drawing comparisons to the infamous Altamont music festival.

During Scott’s headline set, there was a fatal crowd that killed ten people, hospitalized twenty-five people, and treated over 300 people at the festival’s field hospital. Hundreds of people have sued Live Nation, Scott, and Apple, seeking more than $2 billion in damages.

Live Nation has been accused of negligence and cutting corners, among other things, by not having enough security and selling too many tickets.

It may not be fair to compare the two festivals, but it is reasonable to wonder if Live Nation has taken the necessary precautions to ensure that another Astroworld does not occur in the future. While some people react emotionally and nostalgically to the When We Were Young poster, many others are concerned about the entire situation.