When We Were Young Festival (Las Vegas) Tour • Page 117

Honestly this thread got me to listen to the finch album being discussed cause I've always heard of them but never listened. It didn't rly stand out on a cursory listen but the convo has kept me fascinated

 

There's a 15+ page Finch thread on this very website

 

Over the course of how many years tho? This is like, 3 pages of Finch talk in a day, haha.

 

Since the site started haha

 

Oh yeah, such a weird spot too but loved going there. In-N-Out burger right down the street was always my go to spot after the shows.

 

lets not forget the literal police station attached to the building hahaha

 

I think a few of us here (including myself) are kind of overselling their popularity. They did have a pretty successful co-headliner with the Used in winter 2003 (the Movielife and MCR opened!) and had a song that was on rock radio for like, 2-3 weeks around that same time... But it all happened quickly from fall 2002 to about spring 2003. They were really popular, and arguably at the top of the pile at that point. But then it kinda dipped off. I saw them a bunch during that time frame and you could feel the build-up and the crash at the different shows.

TBH, I think a lot of it had to do with "image." You couldn't really slot them in anywhere. They were too heavy for the pop-punk bands, too "soft" for a lot of the heavier stuff, etc. They weren't particularly pretty, they didn't have a gimmick, etc. And at that point in time, whether we want to admit it or not, that "genre" of music was incredibly superficial on the whole. Not the bands, but most of the people being drawn to it... It was all super fashion-based. And they weren't a very fashionable band.

And they made some odd choices too. Like, I remember seeing them at one point on a B-market tour where they had Dälek opening for them (because they were on Mike Patton's label at the time, I'm sure). Cool move artistically, but certainly not what most kids were coming to a Finch show for at the time. And they kinda Deftones-ed it too, during interviews, deliberately trying to push themselves away from the other bands at the time.

 

Pretty sure they mucked it up and that's supposed to just be a Steph Carpenter solo set.

 

I didn’t have a place to really post this but I just needed to let it out. I’ve been heavy into nostalgia of that 2010-2015 wave of pop punk music and dang Fireworks was really one of the best. Every release they had was a bop and a half.

 

Well in a years time, we can collectively and objecticely compare finchs draw to their respetictive competitor bands at wwwy. Ill be amazed if its not one of the busier early sets. Theyll probably get a 2 or so slot like the starting line this year.

 

I was not very into "The scene" at the time, but what I remember about Finch is a lot of my friends that were into that music were talking about them/wearing their band Ts...and I have vague memories of seeing the video for the title track, and Re: the image talk, they just looked exactly like all of the local bands in Delaware's little "scene" that I was seeing at shows at the time haha. Like dressed and hairstyle exactly the same. Whereas the bands that got bigger like TBS and Brand New and whoever else looked a bit different (though TAYF Adam had a very Finch-ian look to him as well)

 

It's been posted in other threads, but it looks like a Nu-Metal version of WWWY is coming to Vegas in May.

https://www.theprp.com/2022/11/06/n...o-play-2023-nu-metal-festival-sick-new-world/

 

I know I'm just gonna sound like a whiner but they realllllllly need to put together an East Coast version of this. Traveling to Vegas during the school year just aint gonna happen.

 

always felt like a weird move to put the entertainment city in the middle of nowhere

 

To me it just felt weird doing this festival there in the first place considering how so many of "scenes" that sprung these acts to stardom were on the east coast and mid-west haha. Obviously the fans are spread out throughout the country, but, idk...just feels weird with all the Chicago/NY/Jersey/Florida bands that really helped bring the pop punk and emo scene mainstream that it would be in Vegas. Obviously I know that's a big oversimplification with of course plenty of other bands on the bill coming from Cali or random western places (I.e. JEW in Arizona, The Used from Utah), but I always felt like "The scene" was associated heavily with the mid west and east coast haha.

Of course, next year the two biggest pop punk bands ever, both from Cali, are headlining, so

 

(side note: it made me curious as I was typing that to see just how many bands on the bill were from the east coast and as I googled it reminded me how many of these bands emerged from New Jersey lol)

 

There's the Adjacent Festival in Atlantic City but most likely acts are fine sacrificing a Vegas date of their own to play a festival. Most big acts don't want to sacrifice, say, their own NYC date due to a radius clause.

 

Speaking of scene/imaging, Three Days Grace was obviously never part of the scene, but I remember seeing them in 2003 and the lead singer was wearing a Thursday shirt and it has unreasonably stuck with me to this day.

 

The thing about why all of these are happening in Vegas is because the casinos do put up a good amount of funding to get all of these events there. Used to be that you had to go to Vegas for any sports betting but now you can do it in the majority of states. The casinos had to pivot their marketing to being more of a tourist draw with these events (music festivals, F1, etc) to get you to go there and spend money.

 

I was more into hard rock like 3DG before I discovered the scene but I felt like our worlds merged a bit with One X lol wasn’t too weird to see a 3DG, breaking Benjamin, or linkin park shirt at a scene show, or emo kids at a 3DG show. Plenty of crossover!

 

Can anyone who went to this give me some insight on what it was like getting around, how long it took to get from stage to stage, how many bands you were able to see, etc? I’m planning on flying out for Sick New World, and I’m just trying to envision how easy/difficult it will be maneuvering to catch most of the bands I wanna see.

A good chunk of the bands I wanna see will be main stage acts (SOAD, Korn, Deftones, Incubus, Papa Roach) but after that there’s a bunch further down the poster (P.O.D, Alien Ant Farm, Hoobastank, Body Count, etc) that will likely end up on the smaller stages. Hope there aren’t too many conflicts on my 13–15 band list.

 

If you’re hustling, Pink Stage (main stage with VIP in front) was 2 mins to the Neon tent, 5-6 mins to the checker stage, and about 6-7 to the stripe stage (furthest away). The real issue isn’t distance but rather going through the crowd. I ended up seeing 10 mainstage bands and 6 smaller stage bands.

 

Getting from the main stages to the side stages about half way through the day actually got kind of rough.

 

Thanks for the info. There’s only 12-13 bands I really care about seeing, so barring any potential unlucky conflicts it seems like I should be able to catch most of them.

 

There was also shit set up in the middle between the main stages and other stages so you had to go around that and through the crowd. If you were in the pit for black and needed to get all the way to whatever the far stage was, good luck.

Definitely plan your escape routes and position yourself appropriately so you can take the path of least resistance.