There is so much going on at Punk Rock Bowling with two stages at the festival, pool parties, club shows and hangovers, there’s a limit to what one person can capture. So here’s your correspondent’s first day at the 24th Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival in downtown Las Vegas.
We started our day at the Downtown Grand’s Cyprus Pool Deck for the Punk Rock Bowling pool party and caught performances by LA glam punk Bonavega and Mexican art punks Descartes a Kant.
On to the main festival for a great performance by longtime DS favorites Bad Cop Bad Cop.
On the second stage we caught Washington D.C. two-piece Teen Mortgage…
…followed by venerable British punks 999 who gave one of the best performances we saw at the entire festival.
After that, it was back to the main stage for California classic ’90s punks Lagwagon.
Another personal highlight was seeing Billy Bragg in person for the first time since a show in London in 1987.
Headlining the first day were legendary Descendents.
On to the evening’s club show. Punk Rock Bowling puts on a plethora of intimate shows after the main festival, many of which sell out in advance We had planned to see Guitar Wolf but failed to make it through. We did catch Las Vegas garage rockers The Shakewells …
… San Diego’s incredible The Schizophonics …
… and Jake Bombora’s project The Lords of Altamont from LA. At that point, we collapsed for a couple of hours sleep before doing it all again the next day.
See below for Instagram galleries of all the bands from Day One, 5/25/24
Now on to Day Two …