Okay, so at this point, everyone and their mother has heard of the When We Were Young festival happening in October in Las Vegas. If you haven't, I can only assume you either have not been on Facebook or have actually outgrown your emo phase. In which case, I'm wondering how you found Immortal Music. I digress, I really just wanted to talk about a handful of things about this festival that are sketching me out. I, like every other 'elder emo', as the internet has taken to calling us, saw the lineup and after realizing it was actually real not an emo kids wet dream, freaked out and started planning how the hell I was going to swing a Vegas trip when I live across the country. Then I started diving in a little further, as did many others, and its given me a lot of pause. I'm just going to say it flat out, as much as everyone wants it to be this amazing, dream festival -I think its going to be a complete shit show. There is a few things that the internet is up in arms about that I am not bothered by, but there's a ton of red flags for me. First, I want to address the price, as I know a lot of people were offended over the price because, "Warped tour would never." That is true, when you compare it to Warped tour, $224 is ridiculous. However, if you consider a couple factors, one being most festivals with only 10-15 bands cost that or more, and the fact that just My Chemical Romance alone had nosebleed tickets for that price, its not that bad. I've been told that shouldn't matter, but in my head, it makes sense. There's 65 bands and 50+ of them are big, well established, iconic bands. Some coming from other countries as well, and they all come with their own crews. Its a lot of people to pay, nobody thinks of that really, but it takes between 200-400 people to run a festival, not even including the bands. Say what you will about all that, but that is one of many things on my brain. Another thing too, as controversial as this may be to say, honestly, Warped tour was a mess too. Everyone's glorifying it at this point because its over, and yes, there are tons of great memories connected to it. But it, like all festivals really, have their hiccups, downfalls, and just straight up messes. I can speak from experience of how badly Warped tour was run at some dates. This isn't about Warped tour, so I won't get into it too much, but no. Its just being glorified because its no longer a thing and especially with the world being the way its been for the past two years, its disheartening so people are clinging to the good times. And there's nothing wrong with that at all, I'm just saying it wasn't all good and certainly was not perfect. Something I'm sure everyone wondered about upon seeing such a star studded lineup was the set times. I saw something today that may be fake, but it definitely has the internet thinking and talking is the set times. A potentially fake set time list appeared on the internet today, and honestly it was total bullshit in my opinion. This had three stages, and most bands doing twenty minute sets, with all three stages active at once. This also didn't allow for any time in between sets, so you know that means everyone's sharing equipment. So that alone is going to cause problems because not everyone uses the same tuning, and if they don't have adequate time to tune their instruments and set up properly, you're already setting them up for failure. After some closer inspection, I am assuming the set times below are fan made and speculations, note the user name in the middle. I noticed that as I was editing this in order to post it, actually. If it was real though, its also going to cause so much disappointment. If there's always three bands playing, you're going to just have to pick and either stay hunkered down at one stage and hope your favorites are all on that stage, or constantly run around and still have to pick and choose. Again, this might be based off a false set list and in all reality, I really hope it is fake. But this set list had all bands playing from 11 am to 11pm, and at least for me there'd only be maybe four hours through out the entire day where I wouldn't be making a tough choice and feel slightly disappointed regardless of who I chose.
And the sheer AUDACITY of putting My Chemical Romance against anyone is just rude. Its unfair to literally everyone. This lineup had MCR, Paramore, and A Day To Remember playing all at the same time. You know damn good and well nobody is picking anyone over MCR, considering they 'returned' two years ago, played one technically small show in LA immediately after returning and then haven't been able to do anything since then. So right there, you just killed the crowds for two bands, and disappointed a ton of people because there's plenty that would watch all three bands. Hell, I was sold right off the bat when I saw My Chemical Romance, A Day To Remember, I Prevail and Pierce the Veil alone in the lineup, plus there were multiple other bonuses. So pinning two of the ones I was hyped up for against each other just was mean. It was also brought to my attention that at least All American Rejects were unaware of how many bands were playing. At first it came across like they didn't even know they were playing until it was publicly announced, so that rumor spread fast. That might still be true for some bands, that hasn't been determined yet, but it still feels just a little bit sketchy to me that any band wouldn't be informed of the sheer volume of a festival because that does affect them greatly in so many ways. I can understand not knowing every band playing, but you'd think they'd know they're part of a sixty-five band festival that's happening all in one day. That might be a management issue, but it did raise some red flags for me, and I already at this point was questioning it. It really made me wonder if there are bands in this lineup that were unaware of their performance being scheduled or the size of the festival as well. A lot of people have also said that they think this might be an attempt to make up for the Astro World situation, and pay for lawyer fees after all their lawsuits. I don't know about that, maybe so, I didn't want to delve into the legalities, I just wanted to talk about my thoughts here. I could see it though, Live Nation is under a lot of fire right now, and it would not be surprising at all if they're trying to rectify the situation. Its hard to say, for multiple reasons. Festivals take a lot of time to organize, for all we know, this could have been in the works long before Astro World occurred. My only hope is there is not a repeat situation. Festivals are meant to be fun, not deadly. In all honesty, as I said earlier, I expect it to be a shit show, sadly. I really think they'd be better off doing it as a two or three day festival. so they can spread everything out better, thus giving better balance for everyone -bands included. I knew it sounded too good to be true, and I hate to say that, I really do. What do you think? I'd love to hear all your thoughts, and excitements. If you're still down, and planning to go, by all means. Its going to be have awesome moments, and you're going to create awesome memories, but I definitely have my doubts. They're onto something, I just don't think the execution is quite there.
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January 2022
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