The news fell over social media like a dark cloud. Less than an hour before gates were scheduled to open for the inaugural When We Were Young festival at the Las Vegas Festival Grounds on the Strip, organizers announced that Day 1 had been canceled due to high wind warnings (which had been forecasted days earlier). Day 2 would go on as planned, with the third day still scheduled to proceed on October 29.

Holders of Day 1 tickets for the hyped emo and pop-punk festival were promised refunds, but that didn’t change the fact that they would miss their favorite bands, some of which had reunited specifically for the festival.

On Twitter, fans vocalized their disappointment. “You’re killing me guys, I came from Germany for this,” one ticket holder posted. Travelers from New Zealand and the U.K. shared similar stories. One fan pointed out one piece of irony: “This is really sad. The people who bought tickets for the first day are the ones who made this a success and paved the way for additional dates.”

“My heart is f*cking broken [right now],” a man from Reno tweeted.

On the upside, Las Vegas promoters, venue operators and others involved in the local scene quickly stepped up to do what they could to salvage the day for some. Word began to spread about a free All-American Rejects show at SoulBelly BBQ on Main Street that night. Patrick "Pulsar" Trout, the promoter behind Pulsar Presents, began posting about additional pop-up gigs on social media as they were announced.

Pretty soon, we had more than a dozen festival-size acts set to play some of Las Vegas’ most intimate venues: Armor for Sleep, Hawthorne Heights and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus at the Strat; Horrorpops at Double Down Saloon. The Wonder Years, La Dispute, Mom Jeans and Sweet Pill at Rockstar Bar; Bring Me the Horizon with Knocked Loose and Landon Barker at the Pearl Theater inside the Palms; Senses Fail, Anthony Green, Thursday and Bayside at Sand Dollar Downtown, and Kittie at the Sand Dollar Lounge.

Megan, 28, traveled from Palm Beach, Florida, with her partner and friends for Day 1 of the festival. The cancellation came as a gut punch. “Boys Like Girls, that was my heartbreaker,” she says regarding the band she’d most wanted to catch. Standing outside SoulBelly, her chances of catching The All-American Rejects looked slim (the line stretched around the block and into alleys), but the potential of it kept her spirits lifted. “It’s just the bands and the nostalgia. It’s that joy of when you were back in high school and middle school and chasing that.”

Another Megan, 29, from Mobile, Alabama, bought festival tickets for the whole weekend but hoped to see an intimate set anyway. “This kind of music has been in my life since I was very young, probably in elementary school,” she says. “This has always been my mental health soothing thing.”

Meanwhile, the Sand Dollar Lounge on Spring Mountain was packed to the point of one-out/one-in. Marji, 60, from California, stood with her daughter near the back, bouncing up on tiptoes in an attempt to glimpse the performance through the dogpile that had formed near the bar.

Not every fan got in to the night’s pop-up shows, but it wasn’t for lack of effort by folks mostly unaffiliated with the festival who did their best to try to help out disappointed fans.

“The next time you feel like saying the Vegas music scene sucks or that no one cares about shows here, remember today,” Pulsar posted on social media later that night. “This city and the people who run its venues, run its tech and book its shows showed you exactly what they are capable of when the chips are down.”

Festival Scenes

When the grounds finally did open on Day 2, around 60,000 people filed through the gates. Some rocked typical festival getups—sheer fabrics, fishnets and multicolor, crimped hair extensions. While others leaned into the emo looks of yesteryear: T-shirts from band shows they’d seen in their youth, black hoodies, skinny jeans, and apparel that proclaimed “Emo’s Not Dead.” Compared to other Vegas fests like Life Is Beautiful and Electric Daisy Carnival, Gen Z attendance was sparse at WWWY, where the crowd alternated between swaying to the music and moshing in the pit.

The Las Vegas Festival Grounds also seemed significantly improved since Live Nation’s last throwback festival, Lovers & Friends, debuted earlier this year. This time, the footprint featured ample water stations and shade, with soft pink grass and picnic benches to sit on.

There were activations all around the grounds such as a halfpipe for skateboarding, a neon-lit dive bar area in which festivalgoers could drink and a larger-than-life art sculpture of a robot rising from the ground.

One art piece spewing real fire got especially popular later, when temperatures dipped below 55 degrees. Trust us when we say, as cool as those My Chemical Romance marching band uniforms look, they’re not well insulated.

Our Most Memorable Sets

Armor for Sleep (Neon Tent) Hearing the emotionally charged lyrics of “The Truth About Heaven” and “Remember to Feel Real” took us back in the best way. Frontman Ben Jorgensen appeared youthful, rocking a modern edition of the precious emo bangs of the early aughts. At one point, he asked who in the crowd had attended the band’s pop-up show at the Strat the night before and scores of hands shot up, to his clear surprise. The Neon Tent itself served as an excellent option for Armor’s misty emo-pop. The music bounced in and around the structure, wrapping us in a state of throwback bliss.

The Used (Black Stage) “Open up the circle pit!” urged Bert McCracken, frontman for The Used. The crowd—including one mosher wearing a full panda suit and head — gladly complied during “The Taste of Ink” and “Take It Away.” “Is everyone smiling? The only requirement for a Used concert is that everyone’s f*cking smiling!” The singer teased. “We like to let everyone get their anger and depression and anxiety out. So, on the count of 3, I want you to boo!” Those who joined in kept their middle fingers raised through “Buried Myself Alive” and “All That I’ve Got.”

Jimmy Eat World (Pink Stage) The title track of Jimmy Eat World’s 2004 album Futures gave the feeling of being in the same place, before, as the crowd emphasized the lyric “I hope for better in November” with frontman Jim Adkins. From the same album, “Pain” and “Work” followed. Headbanger “Bleed American” had everyone singing along, “Salt, sweat, sugar on the asphalt/Our hearts littering the top soil.”

Pulling out just one of the band’s new singles, Adkins drew a line between their work then, and now. “We’ve spent all of our adult lives making music. We find people all over the world. And it’s a part of who we are. … This is a song about finding yourself in rock ’n’ roll,” he said, before breaking into “Something Loud.” Ending on a high note, “The Middle” took us back to the soundtrack of our early-2000s adolescence—and several PG-13 movies from that era.

Taking Back Sunday (Black Stage) Vocalist Adam Lazzara wooed the crowd with a Southern twang and energy that rivaled a Texas preacher. “Raise your hands, if you’d be so kind. Let’s put ’em together like this,” he said, conducting the audience’s movements before launching into “Liar.” The dancing never truly stopped, and neither did Lazzara, who stayed light and fancy on his feet. The biggest surprise of all came shortly before “Make Damn Sure,” when the singer brought EDM star Steve Aioki onstage. Welcome to the fandom, sir.

Avril Lavigne (Black Stage) The Canadian singer walked out to a recording of her version of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” and opened with “Girlfriend” before cycling through the hits—“Complicated,” “My Happy Ending” and “I’m With You.” Lavigne then welcomed All Time Low to the stage for a cover of Blink-182’s “All the Small Things,” which nearly broke the crowd. The “Sk8er Boi” capper provided one of those moments the audience had been waiting for—to scream at the top of its lungs, “He was a skater boy/I said see ya later boy!” and feel validated for how much they liked that song.

Paramore (Pink Stage) Hayley Williams performed Brand New Eyes’ hit “All I Wanted,” for the first time ever. Up until then, we’d never heard it outside of the studio album, and fans went ballistic. The singer bounced around the stage like she’d written her thesis on stage presence, dropping to her knees and living every moment up to the absolute fullest—even in only a just a T-shirt in cold temperatures. Paramore showered us with nostalgic cuts like “Here We Go Again,” “That’s What You Get” and “Still Into You.” Williams also didn’t hesitate to stop the show when she noticed a fan needing help. She also took time to remind us of how far we’ve all come.

“In the early 2000s, when Paramore came onto the scene … [it] was not always a safe place to be if you were different. We’ve been around for almost 20 years, and I’ve had my fill of letting people—especially older men—tell me what punk rock is,” she said. “They said punk was supposed to be anti-establishment. I can think of nothing more anti-establishment than young women, than people of color and the queer community. So what I want to say to you is, if you are one of those people, there is space for you here now.”

My Chemical Romance (Black Stage) MCR didn’t waste any time, knowing what we all wanted to hear for an opener. “I’m not okaaaaayy!” the crowd howled at the chorus of, arguably, the most quintessential emo song of all time. After 2012’s “Boy Division,” more from 2004’s Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge followed—“Give ‘Em Hell, Kid,” “Helena” and “The Ghost of You”—with most of the band donning their classic black suits.

Frontman Gerard Way and guitarist Frank Iero had their faces and necks aged with makeup, a play on the When We Were Young concept. And, joking that he’d forgotten where he was, Way addressed the Las Vegas crowd as “Utah” before “The Ghost of You.”

The Black Parade aesthetic was strong, with crumbling buildings and post-war rubble onstage, seen when the world-touring band played days ago at T-Mobile Arena. “The Black Parade,” “Teenagers” and “Famous Last Words” carried us through to the end. “Vampires Will Never Hurt You” and “Vampire Money” cut deep for the encore.