Descendents
photo by Christina Chi Craig

When We Were Young Fest day 2 pics: Descendents, Taking Back Sunday, Choking Victim, more

California’s inaugural punk/indie/emo/etc festival When We Were Young kicked off on Saturday, April 8 with Morrissey, AFI, Joyce Manor, and more and wrapped up on Sunday, April 9. It was held at Santa Ana’s The Observatory, which has had some trouble with festivals before, but a review of WWWY on buzzbands.la said this one went over pretty smoothly:

Taking Back Sunday repped emo with a rousing and bombastic performance between humorous and humble banter. Concert-goers belted out several songs throughout the set and might’ve been having almost as good a time as frontman John Nolan. Reunited ’90s ska-punks Choking Victim drew a sizable crowd.

And closing it all down were the Descendents, who had fans running to catch the beginning of their set. They brought the punk rock and adolescent attitudes of the Æ80s right back in front of our eyes.

Lastly, despite past so-so reviews of Observatory festivals, this one seemed to hit the mark. The only major flub was some rearrangement of the schedule causing most fans to miss critically acclaimed group, Mount Eerie. Everything else ran with pretty efficiently.

As pointed out in that above quote, punk legends Descendents headlined the second day of the fest, which also included Taking Back Sunday, Choking Victim, Mount Eerie (fresh off releasing a great album), Pinback, Saves the Day, together PANGEA, D.I., Foxygen, Turnstile, Sheer Mag, Dr. Dog, FIDLAR, Agent Orange, and more. Pictures of most of those bands are in the gallery above.

Descendents continue on tour, including a NJ show at Starland Ballroom on December 2 (tickets).

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photos by Christina Chi Craig, Natalie Somekh, & Romari Bonner