No matter how much older you get, nostalgia keeps getting younger.
Nostalgia generally works on a 20 year trajectory, as people grow up, get jobs and mortgages and start families, and as the realities of adult life settle in, they often find they don’t have the time to keep up on music or see friends like they once did. It happens.
But the upshot is that those adults have the disposable income to occasionally splurge, hire a babysitter and have a fun night, or weekend, reliving their youth. And people with the financial resources to afford a weekend adventure, and who also have a nostalgic impulse to scratch (and who want to blow off some steam, free from the pressures of adult life) have long been the bread and butter of Las Vegas promoters.
For a while, Las Vegas has long had a reputation as a place where people can relive their youth, and for a long time that meant it was a place where people could catch Tony Bennett at a residency. And those sorts of classic pop icons still have a place there, as Santana has an ongoing residency at the House of Blues. (Unfortunately, Jimmy Buffet recently had to cancel his shows for health reasons.)
But promoters long ago realized there’s always a new crop of people with disposable income to burn, and they have their own nostalgic taste. There’s also college kids who want an epic Spring Break, or twentysomethings with the cash to party and not much in the way of responsibilities.
For these crowds, Vegas has begun offering residencies from EDM DJs such as Steve Aoki, millennium pop stars Katy Perry and Lady Gaga, as well as the recently concluded Life Is Beautiful Festival, which brought present day icons such as Lorde, Beach House and Arctic Monkeys to downtown Las Vegas.
At the end of October, the concert promotion company Live Nation (LYV) will bring another new festival to Las Vegas, and it’s already set to return next year.
When We Were Young Set For Las Vegas Festival Grounds
On October 22nd, 23rd and 29th, Live Nation will bring the When We Were Young festival to the Las Vegas Festival Grounds.
The festival is aimed at a very specific, and quite lucrative, demographic, which is people who grew up listening to pop-punk, emo and alternative rock in the early ‘00s, spent all afternoon on MySpace, read Alternative Press, shopped for hair dye and t-shirts at Hot Topic, watched a lot of MTV2 and maybe had emo bangs. The main bands for this year’s edition are the recently reunited My Chemical Romance, as well as Paramore, Thursday, Jimmy Eat World, Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional, Bright Eyes and Avril Lavigne.
Two interesting things here. If you were alive and into alt-rock in the ‘00s, the idea that one festival would feature My Chemical Romance (basically a goth-glam group), Avril Lavigne (derided at her peak as mall pop, but now fondly remembered) and Bright Eyes (an indie rock group whose lead singer Conor Oberst was called the Bob Dylan of his generation), well, that would have seemed silly. But time tends to collapse these differences.
The second is that the festival is named after The Killers’ immortal ‘00s standard “When You Were Young,” though they are not playing the festival and weren’t really part of that scene.
The line-up will be the same for all three days, give or take a few acts, and will also include younger indie acts such as Wolf Alice and Alex. Tickets are sold out for this year’s edition, but there’s always ways for the resourceful.
Live Nation has also announced that the festival will return next year, as noted by Stereogum, and will be headlined by Green Day, who were already seen as classic rock legends by the ‘00s, as well as the recently reunited Blink-182, and will also feature Rise Against, The Offspring, Motion City Soundtrack, Say Anything, Sum 41, and, somehow, Michelle Branch, who isn’t really part of this scene but was on MTV2 in the early ‘00s, so nostalgia has grandfathered her in.
The 2023 edition will happen on October 21st, but if that show sells out, and it will, look for more to be added. General admission tickets are $249.99 and VIP is $519.99.
The reaction to these line-up have ranged from people psyched to see Blink-182 again, to people lamenting that they are now so old the entertainment industry is selling their nostalgia back to them to people who weren’t at the right age for this stuff, or just didn’t like it back then, wondering why people continue to treat Blink-182 as though they are generationally important band. (Look, the people have spoken on that one, haters.)
RAFA RIVAS/AFP via Getty Images
Has Live Nation Learned Its Lessons?
We’re not trying to be a buzzkill. If this festival scratches an itch for you, great. If you think it’s filled with whiny bands, then spend your weekend doing something else.
But it needs to be pointed out that last year, the Live Nation-produced Astroworld Festival, which was built around the rapper Travis Scott, was a disaster that earned comparisons to the infamous Altamont music festival.
During Scott’s headline set, there was a fatal crowd rush that left ten people dead, while twenty-five people were hospitalized, and more than 300 people were treated for injuries at the festival's field hospital. Live Nation, Scott and Apple have been sued by hundreds of people, seeking damages of more than $2 billion.
Live Nation has been accused of negligence, and of cutting corners by not having enough security, and of selling too many tickets, among other charges.
It might not be fair to compare the two festivals, but it is very fair to wonder if Live Nation has taken the steps to make certain another Astroworld never happens again. So while some people look at the When We Were Young poster and get excited and nostalgic, many others can’t help but feel anxious about the whole thing.
