when we were young tour poster

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General Admission

Each General Admission ticket includes admittance to Las Vegas Festival Grounds for When We Were Young on October 20, 2024, plus the following:

• Performances all day on multiple stages at Las Vegas Festival Grounds
• Food choices for purchase from regional and local vendors
• Bars, concessions, official band merch, festival merch, free water stations, and more

All tiers are the same ticket type. Please select the lowest tier for the best available price. Prices include all fees. Any applicable taxes and shipping will be added at checkout.  Tickets are first come, first served, not guaranteed.

Each GA+ ticket includes admittance to Las Vegas Festival Grounds for When We Were Young on October 20, 2024, plus the following:

• Air-conditioned restrooms
• Dedicated entry lane at main entrance

Each VIP ticket includes admittance to Las Vegas Festival Grounds for When We Were Young on October 20, 2024, plus the following:

• Preferred viewing area by main stage
• Charging stations

All tiers are the same ticket type. Please select the lowest tier for the best available price. Prices include all fees. Any applicable taxes and shipping will be added at checkout. Tickets are first come, first served, not guaranteed.

Each VIP Cabana (must be 21+) includes up to 10 VIP tickets to Las Vegas Festival Grounds for When We Were Young on October 20, 2024, plus the following:

• Ultimate roped-off viewing area with security, shade, and VIP service
• Complimentary 2 bottles, your choice 1 premium liquor/1 champagne
• Food vouchers for all in party
• Cabana available at main stage only
• Expedited entry at the main entrance
• Private air-conditioned restrooms
• Food choices from regional and local vendors
• Bars, concessions, official band merch, free water stations, and more
• Skip the line access for general admission merch store

Hotel & Ticket Packages

Save when you bundle your hotel, festival ticket, and exclusive perks:

• 2-5 night stay at hotels near the festival
• GA, GA+, or VIP ticket
• Friday Welcome Party
• Festival merch voucher (VIP and Luxury only)
• Exclusive festival swag bag
• Nightclub access (21+)

Extra party perks:

• Friday Welcome Party Open Bar - Premium
• Sunday Premium Karaoke Open Bar

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My Chemical Romance & Paramore to Headline When We Were Young Festival

The aptly titled When We Were Young festival released its official lineup on Tuesday (Jan. 18), bringing every 2000s emo-pop band to Las Vegas, Nevada on October 22, 2022.

By Rania Aniftos

Rania Aniftos

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Time for some serious nostalgia.

The aptly titled When We Were Young festival  released its official lineup on Tuesday (Jan. 18), bringing every 2000s emo-pop band to Las Vegas, Nevada on October 22, 2022.

Paramore will be returning as a group to headline the festival alongside My Chemical Romance .

The When We Were Young Festival marks the first new Paramore show since the band went on a hiatus in 2018. Lead singer Hayley Williams released a full-length debut solo album in January 2020, titled  Petals for Armor.

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My Chemical Romance

After their own seven-year break, My Chemical Romance returned to the stage in late 2019 at the Shrine Expo Hall in Los Angeles for a highly anticipated reunion show. The group is also set to head out on a 2022 tour, after having to cancel their 2020 stint as the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Sold-Out When We Were Young Festival Adds Second Day

Other nostalgic bands set to take the stage are Bright Eyes, AFI, the Used, Bring Me The Horizon, Boys Like Girls, Avril Lavigne, Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional, We the Kings, Alkaline Trio, Manchester Orchestra, Dance Gavin Dance, the All-American Rejects, Anberlin, 3OH!3, Atreyu, the Ready Set, Jimmy Eat World, La Dispute, the Wonder Years, Hawthorne Heights, Car Seat Headrest, Wolf Alice and many more.

Fans can sign up for the ticket pre-sale, which starts on Friday (Jan 21), here .

See the full lineup and ticket information below.

🖤When We Were Young Fest🥀 Register now for Presale that starts Friday, January 21st, 10 AM PT. All tickets start at $19.99 down https://t.co/KUp7CwEQEV pic.twitter.com/mG5jQPsBm8 — When We Were Young (@WWWYFest) January 18, 2022

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When We Were Young Festival Announces 2023 Lineup Featuring blink-182, Green Day, 30 Seconds To Mars, The Offspring, Good Charlotte, 5 Seconds Of Summer, All Time Low And Many More

LAS VEGAS FESTIVAL GROUNDS SATURDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2023 

Following the undeniable popularity and immediate sell out of the hit inaugural When We Were Young Festival 2022, which takes place later this month, organizers are excited to announce the lineup for  When We Were Young 2023, set to return to the Las Vegas Fairgrounds on Saturday, October 21, 2023.   With an epic pop-punk twist, next year’s bill delivers a colossal collection of the all-star bands that perfected the genre, including headliners Blink-182, featuring reunited original members Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker and one of the most influential bands of the genre, Green Day. The lineup also features fan favorites 30 Seconds To Mars, The Offspring, Good Charlotte, 5 Seconds of Summer and All Time Low, Yellowcard, Rise Against, Sum 41, Pierce the Veil, Gym Class Heroes, Michelle Branch, Thrice, Rise Against, Simple Plan, New Found Glory and many more.

Fans can sign up now for the presale that begins Friday, October 14 at 10 am PT  for fans who sign up for early access to passes online at  whenwewereyoungfestival.com . Following the presale, any remaining tickets still available will go on sale to the general public beginning  Friday, October 14 at 2 pm PT.  Layaway payment plans start $19.99 down.   GA tickets start at $249.99, GA+ tickets start at $419.99 and VIP tickets start at $519.99. VIP cabanas will also be available to purchase for guests 21 years of age and older. 

Follow When We Were Young Festival on  Instagram ,  Facebook  and  Twitter . 

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‘The Crowd Was Very Emo’

On the ground at the nostalgia-fueled pop-punk when we were young festival.

You always think you’ll never get old until it finally happens to you. My Chemical Romance, visionary as ever in their early 40s, got a jump on the inevitable.

Headlining last Sunday’s When We Were Young fest, the hyped-to-death Las Vegas spectacle featuring dozens of 21st-century emo-punk fixtures, Gerard Way and the gang looked old. Not stuck-in-2004 old, even as they took the stage in re-creations of what they wore touring that year’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge : red ties, arm bands, flak jackets, fake blood. More old as in having just spent four hours becoming geriatrics in a Hollywood-grade makeup artist’s chair. As Gerard Way howled the opening lines of “I’m Not Okay (I Promise),” pangs of Sin City light revealed about 30 years of extra wrinkles; same goes for guitarists Frank Iero and Ray Toro, the latter with a musty gray dusting in his trademark ’fro. When you’re surrounded by teen alts dressed as you and aging millennials unironically identifying as “elder emos,” why not cosplay as the retirement tour version of yourself?

In on the joke or not, 80,000 people packed Las Vegas Festival Grounds last weekend and salvaged what started as a spirit-crushing weekend. When We Were Young was supposed to premiere with the same lineup on Saturday, before high winds forced organizers to pull the plug an hour before gates opened — this despite the small village already queued outside. Fans were issued refunds, but that did little to placate those who’d just flown out cross-continental or to keep Sunday tickets from pushing well into four figures on StubHub. Some bands rallied and organized ad hoc shows: Hawthorne Heights performed inside a casino as “Ohio Is for Lovers” battled slot-machine jingles for airspace; Bayside, Thursday, Senses Fail, and Anthony Green drew a line that snaked around an entire block for a tiny club show; when the Wonder Years attracted far more fans than their last-minute bar gig could handle, front man Dan Campell grabbed an acoustic from Guitar Center and played an impromptu set for the masses outside. Even for a genre known for its chaos and absurdity, packs of dejected emo kids wandering the Vegas strip among ads for Wolfgang Puck and Michael Jackson Cirque du Soleil is an image I won’t soon forget. “Someone told me there’s a new level of emo unlocked,” Silverstein singer Shane Told joked to me Monday morning. “It’s like, ‘No, no, man, I’m not just emo today; I’m day-one-of–When We Were Young emo.’”

Emo’s resurgence in recent years has been striking, especially for those who watched its mainstream peak fade in the late aughts. My Chemical Romance’s worldwide reunion tour has surpassed all expectations , emo DJ nights thrive in most major American cities, and acclaimed 2022 albums from newer, post-boom bands like Oso Oso and Pool Kids continue to advocate for the genre in critics’ circles. “I think a lot of young people are discovering old music thanks to pop-punk finding its way back into the mainstream,” Avril Lavigne told me after her performance on Sunday. “It’s really cool and exciting to see, and I’m happy to be a part of it.” Still, the energy around this past weekend feels like an entirely new chapter in emo’s nearly 40-year history.

The legend of When We Were Young was born back on January 18. An ad promising MCR, Paramore, Avril Lavigne, Bright Eyes, and more than 60 other artists on the same day in Vegas ascended to Main Character On The Internet status like no other festival announcement in recent memory. But the excitement was tempered with suspicion. “Like a lot of people, I thought it was fake,” Used front man Bert McCracken admitted to me. Sure, the words “Live Nation Presents” appeared atop the poster, but this was a lot of bands to be playing in one day, and it certainly didn’t help when a few performers claimed they didn’t know they were performing until the flyer went live. Even last week, Alkaline Trio front man Matt Skiba mused that the poster had gone up before any band confirmed; thus the whole lineup eventually agreed to play on a sort of follow-the-leader groupthink. We’re all obsessed with scams and scammers, and When We Were Young may never shake “ Emo Fyre Festival” from its Google footprint , as non-scandalous as its origin story actually is.

“Early 2021, when things were looking up post-lockdown and events were starting to happen, they called me to ask about My Chemical Romance,” said Matt Galle, the then freshly reunited band’s booking agent since 2002. “My Chemical Romance’s tour was going to have just ended and they were gonna be on the West Coast with all their crew and production. I said, ‘We’re down,’ and shortly after they started asking me about other talent I work with.” At CAA, Galle and his longtime business partner Mike Marquis represent numerous other artists who wound up playing the fest, including Taking Back Sunday, PVRIS, Jxdn, and the Maine. The lineup coalesced over the course of 2021; for example, Jimmy Eat World told me that they were approached during the latter half of the year about performing. “There was this festival in Vegas they were looking to book us on; that’s when we first heard rumblings,” remembered drummer Zach Lind. Gazing at the busy scene in the press tent, front man Jim Adkins continued, “There’s people here we’ve toured with over the years, like Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional, AFI.”

The festival was helmed by producers Andy Serrao and Jeffrey Shuman. “When people were like, ‘This is Fyre Fest,’ I was like, ‘Dude, the people behind this are the most legitimate punk and hardcore promoters,” said Buddy Nielsen, singer of post-hardcore vets Senses Fail, who performed Sunday afternoon. “Andy Serrao is the curator, I’ve known him for 20 years and he books Chain Reaction. It’s a legendary all-ages club in Anaheim. The reason everybody said yes is because so many of them played there.” Added Galle, “Shuman is a creative mastermind. He had some great ideas, thinks big, and pulled it off.”

On Sunday, 65 artists performed under friendly blue skies across five stages over the course of 12 hours. Two adjacent main stages and two mid-size stages alternated their performances in lockstep, making use of almost every second. The whole thing went off with hardly a delay or discrepancy, save for fans’ overcrammed, logistically impossible itineraries. Paramore or Thursday? The Story So Far or A Day to Remember? Wide-eyed attendees shuffled schedules within the festival app like MySpace top eights. The festival grounds were well-manicured and clean — mostly artificial grass over blacktop — evoking an idealized version of what a 16-year-old might imagine Warped Tour was like, or just about any present-day festival minus the mudpit that’s somehow always around even if it hasn’t been raining. After 11 a.m. doors, the crowd packed in around 1 p.m. and converged around central points of interest, with merch lines rivaling the draw of most early-lineup artists. Band-merch demand was predictably torrid (MCR sold fest-exclusive shirts referencing their aged alter egos), but the appetite for official festival merch blew away anything I’d ever seen at Coachella, Bonnaroo, or even old Warped Tours (Galle informed me the fest wound up selling out of its Sunday stock). Yes, we’re going to be seeing that lineup poster for a long time.

“It was one of the best festivals ever, especially for the artists,” Edith Victoria, singer of Gen-Z pop-punkers Meet Me @ the Altar, told me Monday morning. “Everyone was super-accommodating; the crowd was very emo and loving.” Indeed, the evaporation of shame and pretension around the big e-word was on full display: When Hawthorne Heights front man J.T. Woodruff proclaimed “We’re playing all old-school emo classics!,” he was met with screams and devil horns from clusters of teens. For younger emo kids — at least those devoted to the genre’s more mainstream iterations — it’s abundantly clear the tag has been removed from any strict sonic definitions and reapplied to music’s emotive textures. You’d know it from the amount of people wearing nu metal shirts, from the lingering influence of rappers like Juice WRLD and Post Malone over younger performers like Jxdn, from the Used slipping the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” riff into their set’s finale.

One dark cloud that did hang over the festival was concertgoer safety. It’s been almost a year since the Astroworld tragedy took 10 lives in November 2021, as anyone holding a microphone Sunday seemed to be well aware. Bring Me the Horizon singer Oli Sykes halted his band’s space-age post-hardcore for several minutes when a distant fan appeared to be in distress; Paramore’s Hayley Williams did the same soon after. My Chemical Romance opened their set with a giant, onscreen memo about looking out for the people around you.

If someone falls in the pit, pick them up — that was common rhetoric at mid-2000s emo and punk shows, and the most enduring bands truly practiced what they preached. While MCR exploded into MTV stars across 2005 Warped Tour, they’d frequently stop, mid-song, in the face of crowd avalanches and resume only once everyone was safe. Gerard Way was one of the most vocal supporters of young women, queer kids, and anyone who was different, really, in a scene where they were frequently ignored or exploited. Williams was Warped’s biggest (and often, only) female superstar. She’s grown into a bastion of emotional strength and, by most accounts, earned a more diverse following than any of her contemporaries. Midway through Paramore’s set, in a heartfelt address on the evolution of emo, she promised, “We’re gonna keep doing whatever we can alongside our friends and peers in this scene, to make it feel safe for every single one of you.” Is it any wonder these are the two bands headlining a festival that’s taken on such mythic proportions?

While the bank accounts of millennial Hot Topic veterans may have funded the majority of When We Were Young, the fest couldn’t have taken off without its multigenerational appeal. A significant portion of the crowd was clearly too young to have caught MCR or Paramore on the Warped Tour in 2005 or even Bring Me the Horizon and Pierce the Veil in 2010. Avril Lavigne somehow never spent a summer on Warped, so teens and a self-identifying “EMO MOM” or “EMO DAD” (both T-shirts available at the festival merch stand) could scream along to “Girlfriend” and “Sk8er Boi” together, perhaps for the first time. “There was so much buzz being up there, especially since Saturday didn’t happen,” Lavigne told me Monday. “The crowd was alive.”

A final 2022 showing, nearly identical to Sunday’s lineup, is slated for this Saturday. The festival’s more Cali-pop-punk-inclined 2023 edition has already sold out its first date. When We Were Young is indeed very real, and, weather issues aside, its premiere went surprisingly smoothly. So is emo now older and wiser? In the hands of My Chemical Romance, Paramore, and their disciples, it’s getting there. The business of misery is already here to stay.

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Blink-182, Green Day to Bring Even More Pop-Punk Nostalgia to When We Were Young Fest 2023

• By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

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The inaugural When We Were Young festival hasn’t even happened yet, but the emo/pop-punk nostalgia blowout is already looking ahead to next year, announcing the newly-reunited Blink-182 and Green Day will headline in 2023. 

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What’s our age again? When We Were Young, 2023. LFG 🖤 Register now for the presale that starts Friday, October 14th at 10 AM PT. $19.99 down payment plans available. #WWWY https://t.co/KUp7CwEQEV pic.twitter.com/wQCPKBdkjg — When We Were Young (@WWWYFest) October 11, 2022

The When We Were Young 2023 lineup announcement fittingly coincided with the news that headliners Blink-182 were reuniting with co-founding guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge, who’d left in 2015. When We Were Young will be one of many stops Blink will make on a worldwide reunion tour which is expected to run between March 2023 and February 2024 (they’re also set to headline Lollapalooza 2023). The reunited group will also release a new single, “Edging,” this Friday, Oct. 14, and an album is coming soon, too.

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Green Day to headline When We Were Young 2023 in Vegas

Green Day were announced today as the headliners of next year’s stacked When We Were Young festival lineup in Las Vegas, NV on October 21, 2023.

The festival features a who’s who of pop-punk bands that were huge in the 90s and 00s including the co-headliner Blink 182 who announced their return today with Tom Delonge back in the fold after 7 years away from the band. Also on the bill are The Offspring, Rise Against, Sum 41, Yellowcard, Good Charlotte, New Found Glory, Goldfinger and many more.

The pre-sale for the concert begins this Friday, full details on payment plans are available at whenwewereyoungfestival.com .

What’s our age again? When We Were Young, 2023. LFG 🖤 Register now for the presale that starts Friday, October 14th at 10 AM PT. $19.99 down payment plans available. #WWWY https://t.co/KUp7CwEQEV pic.twitter.com/wQCPKBdkjg — When We Were Young (@WWWYFest) October 11, 2022

In other news, Green Day also took to their socials this afternoon to tease a merch drop for the 25th anniversary of Nimrod on Friday. No details have been released so far but if it’s anything like the Insomniac anniversary drop , you can expect a vinyl re-issue along with classic t-shirts from 1997. We’ll have more information on that as it’s released.

Someone's got a VERY big birthday on Friday… any guesses who??! 🤔 pic.twitter.com/BqJ1mGTZuX — Green Day (@GreenDay) October 11, 2022

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When We Were Young Festival 2023 Lineup

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When We Were Young Festival

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Still Into You

As festival season returns in full for the first time since the pandemic started, promoters and artists see that the way forward may be to look backward

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Following a two-year, pandemic-induced hiatus, the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival will return this weekend for its 21st edition, with headliners Harry Styles, Billie Eilish, the Weeknd, and Swedish House Mafia. In anticipation, we’re looking at the event’s history and the festival-industry landscape on Thursday and Friday. And be sure to check back next week for our coverage of Coachella 2022.

Last fall, the long-running Canadian band Silverstein got an email from a promoter they trusted. It contained an offer to play a show in Las Vegas with My Chemical Romance in October 2022. With little more information beyond that, the group agreed. Then in January, Silverstein’s drummer and manager Paul Koehler received the advertising material for the concert and shared it with his bandmates, just half an hour before the rest of the world would see it. It turned out they were one of 65 names playing something called the When We Were Young festival.

My Chemical Romance were billed as the coheadliners alongside Paramore. The rest of the lineup included Silverstein’s post–hardcore emo brethren (Thursday, Senses Fail), crossover emo artists (Dashboard Confessional, Jimmy Eat World), emo-adjacent pop acts (Avril Lavigne, 3OH!3), and even outfits that have explicitly rejected the emo descriptor yet still get labeled that way (Bright Eyes, AFI). The vibe was as mid-2000s as MySpace and arguing about what emo actually is.

“I just kept looking at it,” says Shane Told, Silverstein’s lead vocalist. “I kept discovering [bands] like, ‘Oh shit, they’re playing. Oh shit! Oh shit !’ Then it was like, ‘People are gonna really, really freak out about this.’ And they did.”

Nick Wheeler, cofounder and guitarist of the All-American Rejects, admits his group had a similar experience of signing on for the show knowing only that one or two other bands would be playing and then learning the full extent of the lineup shortly before it was announced. “My phone fucking exploded that day,” he says. “Everybody came out of the woodwork.”

News about When We Were Young quickly spread across social media. Some thought it was a joke or a hoax. Millennials and members of Gen Z who are hyper-attuned to potential cons posited that When We Were Young was a Fyre Festival –level scam, even though the poster indicated that it was organized by Live Nation, the world’s biggest concert promotions company.

When tickets for the Saturday event went on sale, it quickly sold out. Live Nation added a second date on Sunday with the same lineup, and that sold out too. When a third date on the following weekend was added, that also sold out.

“Everybody that I’ve worked with or spoken to about music in general has been really stoked on it and wanted to talk about it,” Wheeler says. “If they pull this off, it’s gonna be a really special moment.”

But what does it take to create a special moment at a music festival these days? Besides, maybe, macro-dosing.

It’s been more than two decades since the first Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. After a rough entry , Coachella eventually showed new generations of American concert promoters and audiences that these events were not only financially lucrative and amazing backdrops for selfies, but also the locus of culture-defining moments . Coachella inspired plenty of like-minded, goofily-named imitators around the country. Some have persisted, others have perished. (A quick RIP to All Points West, Sasquatch!, Treasure Island, Intonation …)

Yet as the number of festivals has multiplied, a sameness has developed in their lineups. Individual identities have been lost, even among the ones with the longest histories. Coachella started in 1999 with an eye toward underground sounds and Bonnaroo launched in 2002 with a foundation in the jam band scene, but by 2022, much of their rosters can feel oddly interchangeable. And ever since Lollapalooza transitioned to a non-touring event in 2005, it has struggled to develop an ethos beyond “We heard you like music, here’s a lot of it.”

As the live music industry hopefully enters its first full festival season since the beginning of the pandemic, some of the country’s largest promoters have unveiled or resurrected more niche festivals as alternative options. These offerings focus on a particular era or sound and are usually limited to a single day of programming, rather than the current industry standard of spreading an event out from Friday to Sunday (or longer). Entrants in this category beyond When We Were Young include the 1980s gloom fantasy Cruel World , the soul showcase Smokin Grooves , the outlaw–roots country roundup Palomino Festival , and the throwback hip-hop showcase Rock the Bells .

While there have been plenty of independent music festivals dedicated to genres like reggae, metal, rockabilly, and various iterations of dance music, it’s notable that many from this new wave of events are put together by two ultra-powerful corporations: Goldenvoice (which is owned by live entertainment giant AEG) and Live Nation.

Though ticket sales for major festivals far exceed the specialty ones, there is more of a sense of excitement around these recent entries. When every festival this year seems to be headlined by Metallica, Halsey, Green Day, and/or J. Cole, it makes sense why Cruel World would get forever goths pumped about the idea of moping out to Morrissey, Bauhaus, and the Psychedelic Furs on the same day. “For the most part, the thinking is that there’s not going to be another round of new Coachellas, Lollapaloozas, and Bonnaroos,” says Dave Brooks, Billboard ’s senior director of live music and touring. “It’s a pretty mature market. To develop festival fans, [major promoters have] settled into this second stage of the festival experience. They’ve got to find what draws people.”

Recent experiments have focused on destinations or providing a more VIP experience , but now the biggest draw may be to refocus on the actual music. Also, when a festival’s promoters don’t need to keep up with the changing fluctuations of trends or crunch data on streaming numbers to predict fan turnout, the continuous need to top previous lineups is no longer there. “What’s really beneficial about this type of event for festival promoters like Goldenvoice and Live Nation is that they don’t have to happen every year at the same time of year, or at the same place even,” Brooks says. “While the value isn’t as much in terms of a brand as a Coachella, there’s less risk as well, so they can be more flexible.”

In the early phases of Coachella, the festival often attracted crowds with reunions of influential bands that younger fans probably hadn’t been able to see play live in their prime—most notably Pixies, the Stooges, and Rage Against the Machine. It was said that the organizers’ dream booking was the Smiths. With all due respect to Swedish House Mafia, reunion acts no longer appear to be a core part of Coachella’s mission. But many of the other recently announced events feel like reunions for entire bygone tours and festivals. Looking at the When We Were Young lineup, it’s hard not to see it as a retread of New Jersey’s The Bamboozle , or an idealized version of a certain multistage, summer punk showcase that once traveled our country’s fairgrounds and stadium parking lots. As Told says, “The elephant in the room is the Warped Tour.”

This May, Goldenvoice, the company behind Coachella, will bring the Just Like Heaven festival to Pasadena. (The first iteration was held in Long Beach in 2019.) It will feature performances from Interpol, M.I.A., Franz Ferdinand, Santigold, and other acts that got their start in the early 2000s by playing Coachella’s Mojave Tent and Outdoor Theatre. With a location that’s easily accessible from L.A. neighborhoods like Echo Park and Eagle Rock, it’s hard not to see it as a humane appeal to former Southern California festival goers who maybe have settled down, had a few kids, and no longer feel up to sweating it out in the desert with 125,000 other people for three days, but still want tingles of that memory.

For some of the acts that are playing Just Like Heaven, it will be the first time they’ve been packaged under an aura of recapturing yesteryear. The dance punk band !!! played Coachella three times between 2004 and 2011. The group has been consistently putting out music for more than two decades and still tours clubs regularly. “We’ve never played the hits,” says Nic Offer, !!!’s frontperson. “Also we didn’t really have hits that were big enough that people are always going to be screaming for them, so we’ve been lucky in that.”

When Goldenvoice approached !!! last year about Just Like Heaven, they were reluctant, not wanting to get shunted into the old band category. “There’s that transition from dated to classic,” Offer says. “I think every musician is kind of counting on that moment when it’ll happen to them. And, you know, it looks like this is going to be the moment where it starts to happen for bands like us.”

Offer maintains that !!! won’t switch up their set list for Just Like Heaven to focus on their earlier material. He’s excited about the show, but still harbors worries about what it potentially portends for his band’s future. “Do I wanna do a tour like this? No,” he says. “Do I wanna do a festival like this? Absolutely, this seems fun. Do I know what kind of work is going to be available to us? I don’t really know. It may be that the only offers that come are gonna be with these other old bands. Would that honestly disappoint me? Yes.”

The electro provocateur Peaches has a far more sympathetic relationship toward her past. She’s maintained an extensive archive that includes every instrument she’s used to record her music, thousands of hours of video footage, boxes of what fans have thrown on stage, all her stage outfits, and even the stage outfits of her backup dancers. “I could start an American Apparel vintage shop,” she jokes.

At Just Like Heaven, she will perform her debut album The Teaches of Peaches in full. (Wolf Parade will also be playing the entirety of Apologies to the Queen Mary .) The festival is one stop on a tour that Peaches built around the 20th anniversary of her debut album. “It’s very interesting, this trajectory that started with just a pair of pink hot pants and what it’s grown into,” she says.

Being part of a more specialized event presents a different drawback for her. Though she doesn’t love playing festivals in general, she feels like she’s benefited from them over the years because they can get her in front of crowds who wouldn’t usually seek out her shows or who come to her set out of curiosity. “It’s positioning yourself in places where you wouldn’t normally be,” she says. “So maybe, in that sense, it’s not really great for me to be part of the curatorial [festivals]. I love the random stuff.”

Just because someone wants to bring back a certain sound doesn’t always mean it will hit right for audiences. From 2012 to 2021 (with breaks in 2017, 2019, and 2020), Art Alexakis of Everclear put together the Summerland Tour, in which his band was joined on the road with other guitar-based alternative rock bands who got their start in the ’90s. “To be honest with you, even though we’ve had success and really great critical reviews, I think we might have jumped the gun by a few years,” Alexakis says. “People were still hung up on the ’80s thing [when the tours started]. Since 2015, 2016, everything is ’90s. My 14-year-old and her friends are wearing flannel and Nirvana T-shirts.”

Summerland isn’t officially happening this year, but Everclear will be doing a national tour in support of the band’s 30th anniversary. They’re bringing Fastball and the Nixons, two bands that would fit right into a Summerland lineup, with them. Everclear is also set to play the Dog Days of Summer event at L.A.’s Greek Theatre and the new Flannel Nation festival in San Pedro, two concerts that lean heavily into the ’90s vibes.

Alexakis says that when Summerland started, some of the bands he approached turned him down, believing that they weren’t ’90s bands, or at least didn’t want to be identified that way. He’s come to peace with his history and what it can enable him to do now. “We were getting played on the radio really hard from 1995 through 2001,” Alexakis says. “That was about 25 years ago. If I went back 25 years from 1996, the bands that were around from 1971, it was like, ‘Yeah, they’re dinosaurs.’ I’m not saying I don’t like dinosaurs. I’m a guy, dinosaurs are cool. But it’s jarring when you realize you’re not the pretty pony anymore, you’re a fucking dinosaur. But dinosaurs roam the Earth, especially in amphitheaters during the summertime, apparently.”

The last time the All-American Rejects did a full-on tour was 2017. Now it’s mainly fly-in dates, or “weekend warrior stuff” as Wheeler puts it. The group was supposed to appear at Chicago’s Riot Fest in the summer of 2020 and play all of their album Move Along to celebrate its 15th anniversary. It’s a slot that the punk-leaning festival usually reserves for so-called legacy bands. “I don’t know if we’re there quite yet, I just know that we’ve been around long enough that people may look at us that way,” Wheeler says.

The 2020 festival was canceled and the anniversary of that particular album came and went, but the band has another album’s 15th anniversary coming up soon. If the festival wants them to do it, then they’ll play it. “I listen to a lot of new music and I work with a lot of younger artists, but the music that I’m super passionate about is the music I grew up on, and those bands are considered legacy bands,” Wheeler says. “Our fans grew up with us. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there’s nothing wrong with nostalgia. I’m a nostalgic motherfucker.”

Eric Ducker is a writer and editor in Los Angeles.

Mailbag With Rob Harvilla

The so-called vinyl wars and other pop music news and notes, 24 question party people: clairo.

4 hostages rescued from Gaza; Hamas says more than 200 dead in rescue region: Live updates

Details about Israel Defense Forces' complex military plan in Gaza that rescued four Israeli hostages were still emerging Saturday afternoon as world leaders and family members celebrated. An Israeli official acknowledged "under 100" Palestinian casualties during the operation, while Hamas officials reported twice as many deaths.

The four hostages, three men and one woman, were  kidnapped by Hamas-led militants from the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year. They were identified by Israel's Defense Forces as  Noa Argamani , 26; Almog Meir Jan, 22; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 41.

The military said they appeared to be in good health and were being taken to a hospital for further health checks.

"They are back home in Israel. They are alive. They are well," Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in a briefing. The hostages were freed from two separate houses in the residential neighborhood of al-Nuseirat, in central Gaza.

Gaza's Hamas-run government media office said 210 Palestinians died from Israeli bombardment the region. Israel's military spokesperson said Israel's military came under fire during the rescue, and forces fired back "from the air and from the street."

"We know about under 100 (Palestinian) casualties. I don't know how many from them are terrorists," Hagari said in a briefing with journalists. An Israeli special forces commander was also killed during the operation, a police statement said.

The hostages were rescued from two separate locations in the central Gaza area of al-Nuseirat in a daytime operation Saturday that took weeks to plan, but was only authorized in the last few days, according to Israel’s chief military spokesperson.

U.S. President Joe Biden celebrated the rescue Saturday and said the U.S. will continue working toward a cease-fire deal and the freeing of all hostages.

All four hostages were taken captive by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, when about 1,200 Israeli civilians were killed and an estimated over 250 were taken hostage. Israeli authorities estimate about 116 of the hostages are left in Gaza, 40 of whom are believed dead.

'Miraculous triumph': What we know about Israel's operation to rescue four hostages

In the devastating siege by Israel's military on Gaza that followed, over 36,800 Palestinians have been killed and 83,680 have been injured, the health ministry in Gaza said Saturday, including dozens who were killed and injured in the last day.

Latest developments:

∎ Paramedics and residents in Gaza said the fighting surrounding the rescue mission killed scores of people and left mangled bodies of men, women and children strewn around a marketplace and a mosque.

∎ Families of the eight American hostages still captive in Gaza praised the IDF for its rescue operation Saturday, and said in a statement: "Until every individual is safely returned home, our commitment and efforts must not waver. We urge President Biden, world leaders, and the international community to continue their relentless pursuit to return each hostage to their loved ones where they belong.”

∎ Colombia President Gustavo Petro said it will stop exporting coal to Israel, "until the genocide is stopped," in a social media post Saturday.

What we know about Israel's rescue operation

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari in a news conference described the raid as a "complex" daylight special operation involving hundreds of troops in coordination with police and members of the Shin Bet internal security agency.

Hagari said the mission was based on "precise" intelligence that was "very complex to obtain." He said that Israeli troops came under fire from Hamas while the operation was taking place and that one Israeli special forces soldier was badly wounded. He later succumbed to his injuries.

Israel has now rescued a total of seven hostages since Oct. 7. Saturday's rescue was Israel's third such operation since that date. Three Israeli hostages were mistakenly killed by Israel's military in Gaza in December.

Who is Noa Argamani?

Argamani was one of several hostages kidnapped from the Nova music festival in southern Israel when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7. 

Argamani, a Chinese-born Israeli citizen, became one of the most prominent faces of the many hostages in Hamas captivity after the video of her abduction went viral across social media, showing her being driven away on the back of a motorcycle while reaching out to her boyfriend, Avinatan Or. Or is also believed to be among the hostages held in Gaza.

"Don't kill me!" she can be heard screaming to her kidnappers.

READ MORE: Who is Noa Argamani? The face of the hostages held in Gaza after Oct. 7

Biden, Macron praise rescue of hostages in Gaza

PARIS – Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday welcomed the news of the hostages' rescue Saturday.

“We won’t stop working until all of the hostages come home and a cease-fire is reached. It’s essential,” Biden said at a joint appearance with the French leader from Paris.

Macron also lauded the hostage rescue and called for a permanent political solution to the war in Gaza, which he said is the only way to achieve a lasting peace and security.

Biden is in the fourth day of a five-day trip to France, where he attended ceremonies commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

– Michael Collins

Where does the proposed cease-fire deal stand?

U.S. President Joe Biden announced a three-phase cease-fire deal last week that he said was proposed by Israel.

The first phase would see Israel’s military withdraw from densely populated civilian areas in Gaza. Hamas would release an unspecified number of hostages along with the remains of killed hostages, and Israel would release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Biden said American hostages would also be included in this phase.

Hamas would then release all the remaining hostages in the second phase of the deal and Israel would withdraw from Gaza. The third phase would start reconstruction of Gaza.

After Biden’s announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered mixed signals regarding the proposal and Hamas said the deal that was relayed to them by mediators did not exactly match what Biden announced. Since then, the White House has heavily pushed for both parties to accept the deal.

On Saturday, Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh said the group will accept no deal that does not achieve security for Palestinians.

Who are the rescued hostages?

The Israeli Defense force rescued four hostages alive in a rescue operation conducted in a central area of Gaza, according to the IDF. The IDF identified the hostages as:

• Noa Argamani, 26
• Almog Meir Jan, 22
• Andrey Kozlov, 27
• Shlomi Ziv, 41

Contributing: Reuters