You read that right. I went to the giant emo festival in Vegas last weekend!
Although I wasn’t as pumped about this year’s lineup compared to its first iteration, it was still a killer lineup! I also knew that I wanted to go to Vegas, so it just took some light needling to get my sister and friend to agree to go. Now, I went to the festival alone, but the rest of Vegas is no fun by yourself. So anyway, just before the gates officially opened, I took off to the fest and luckily was inside within five minutes. That’s a smooth operation! From there, I snagged my merch and then beelined straight to the Pink Stage to catch a criminally early set from Motion City Soundtrack. The crowd was light even though it was already half past noon, but that just meant I had a better spot to view one of my favorite bands from! They were incredible, as expected.
From that set on, I shuffled back and forth between the four stages throughout the rest of the day before calling it in early in the middle of Green Day’s set. I got to see the likes of Say Anything, LIT, Bowling for Soup, The Academy Is…, Blink-182, All Time Low, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, Yellowcard, The Veronicas, Michelle Branch, Gym Class Heroes, 5 Seconds of Summer, 30 Seconds to Mars, Pierce the Veil, Sum 41, The Offspring, and my hometown’s very own, Relient K. More sets than expected had some surprise vocalists, like Joel Madden coming on for a 5 Seconds of Summer song, Lil Wayne hopping on at the end of Good Charlotte’s set, Cassadee Pope joining Yellowcard and Simple Plan, along with Jaret and Tom Higgensen. My all time favorite surprise appearance came in the form of Gabe Saporta singing Snakes on a Plane with The Academy Is…! It really didn’t sound all that great, but it gave me all the feels!
Some stellar sets from the day for me included Motion City Soundtrack (as previously stated), Bowling for Soup, and Good Charlotte. The latter just laid down hit after hit and all the bands sounded awesome. And they were fun! They had really good crowd interaction. Actually, I can say that all the bands had really good crowd-work, and though I was ultimately pleased with the sets, The Academy Is… and Say Anything sounded a little rough. I found Blink-182’s set to be a little boring, and part of that likely had to do with how ungodly far away I was from the stage, but I’m glad I left halfway through to catch all of Bowling for Soup. I wouldn’t mind seeing those guys again someday. It was cool seeing Blink-182 live for the first time, along with 5 Seconds of Summer.
All in all, I was really happy I had the chance to go to this. I think in its second year they managed to work out any kinks. For me personally, this ran as smooth as any other well-run festival I’ve been to – not bad! I would love to go again in the future, but I want the lineup to be just right. Here’s hoping this carries on for many more years if we’re never going to get Warped Tour back.