LIVE 105 FM’s BFD Festival

BFD 105 Fest by Corey Bell

San Francisco – This past weekend, throngs of Bay Area youth migrated to the South Bay to gather at this year’s installment of LIVE 105 FM’s BFD (acronym for Big Fucking Day) festival.  Celebrating its 21st edition, this festival is put on by the local alternative rock station LIVE 105, at the Shoreline Amphitheater in sunny Mountain View, CA.  In the past, the festival has acted as a beacon for up-and-coming alternative artists, and has showcased the early talents of bands like The Strokes, Green Day, and The Killers.  This year the festival was headlined by old pros Modest Mouse, but it was the newer bands that really showcased their talents.

The station’s selection of bands very obviously caters to their devoted listeners – Panic! At the Disco had perhaps the most excited crowd of the twenty-something bands that played that day – yet they also did a great job selecting artists and bands that were less known, giving them not only a new venue full of young and open ears to perform for, but also a shade of prestige to carry with them in the years to come.  On a national scale, BFD is not something of a household name, but around these parts, you can bet that anyone who has lived in the Bay for a substantial period of time has been to at least one installment of BFD.

The festival takes place at the Shoreline Amphitheater, a fairly large space located in Mountain View, a city down near the bottom of the peninsula shared by San Francisco and neighboring San Mateo county, which also happens to be the home of Google (the Amphitheater also plays host to Neil Young’s annual Bridge School Benefit concert).  Much of San Mateo county is dominated by the tech industry (as is most of the Bay Area), and so the festival grounds were full of young professionals nipping at the opportunity to blow off some steam and enjoy some good music.  There was also a large percentage hailing from the high school age group, and as they fumbled with their smuggled-in flasks and poorly rolled joints, I couldn’t help but smile out of bittersweet nostalgia.

The amphitheatre’s main stage – where the five headliners were to play – was closed off to the crowds up until about 5 PM, an hour or so before the first act was to play.  Regardless, there were three other stages available to the public up until that point: the Bud Light Festival Stage (which was actually two stages side-by-side that alternated in an effort to allow acts to play back-to-back, one setting things up while the other performed, etc.), the Subsonic Tent (which was booming throughout the entire event), and the Local Band Stage, which showcased the finest burgeoning talent from the surrounding area.  Once the main venue area opened up, the lucky few with reserved seating took their places in the sections nearest to the stage, while most of the crowd flocked to the surrounding lawn to catch the main acts.

While all of the acts were great – veterans (Death From Above 1979, Cold War Kids) and brand new bands (In the Valley Below, The Orwells) alike – the real shining stars were those who have been around the bend for a few years and have really polished their live performances surrounding the release of their sophomore/junior LPs.  These three were the ones that struck the strongest chord:

 

Best Coast

Best Coast

Playful SoCal duo Best Coast – made up of singer/songwriter Bethany Cosentino and her burly band mate Bobb Bruno – have enjoyed great success with their bouncy tunes about cats, marijuana, and California sunshine, but their third LP California Nights – released just last month – finds the band entering a more thoughtful stage in their career.  The songs are grander and exhibit exquisite production values, and their performance at BFD was much more nuanced than the other times I had seen them.  While they still played some older favorites from their first two albums (“The Only Place,” “Do You Love Me Like You Used To,” “Crazy for You,” “Boyfriend”), the real strength came behind the songs they played off California Nights.  With “So Unaware,” the energy was high and the sound was rich, as was the case with “In My Eyes,” which served up tasty, gritty guitar riffs and a healthy dose of reverb.  “When Will I Change” read like a cleaner, sleeker version of their older material, and “Feeling OK” – the album’s opening track – showcased Cosentino’s peppy vocals while delving into more emotive lyrical content.  The easy winner of the set was the title track from California Nights – perhaps the farthest leap from the band’s signature sound – featuring swooping instrumentation and outstretched vocals that matched the orchestral drama the sound aims to achieve.  California Nights is a huge step forward for Best Coast, and their performance of several tracks off the new album allowed the audience to see a bright new facet of sunny indie pop.

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Atlas Genius

Atlas Genius at Live 105 BFD

Australia’s Atlas Genius has admittedly flown under my radar for some reason, even though their name has appeared on several festival lineups since the release of their 2013 debut LP When It Was Now.  They played the first set on the main stage, which also happened to be their first show in eighteen months.  Most of their highly electric set was drawn from When It Was Now (including “Symptoms,” “If So,” “Back Seat,” and “Electric”), all of which conjured aural images of bands like Two Door Cinema Club.  They also treated the audience to a couple of new songs (though failed to mention the titles), both of which seemed to push the envelope a little farther than their previous material, mixing in colorful keyboard sequences and playful percussion.  They announced that their as-yet-untitled sophomore LP will be released later this year, just before hitting the crowd with their hit single “Trojans,” which had the entire crowd singing along joyously, celebrating the singer’s affinity for double entendres.

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Of Monsters and Men

Of Monsters And Men

Of Monsters and Men, the latest export from the small sub-Arctic country of Iceland – following in the footsteps of such powerhouses as ambient superstars Sigur Rós and the always impressive Björk – takes the most colorful elements of interesting indie music (male/female vocals, emphatic shouting, brass sections, accordion players, etc.) and smashes them all together to create a folky, fantastical mishmash that is refreshing and exciting.  Having basked in the success of their 2012 debut My Head is an Animal (released a year earlier in their native Iceland) – especially with the hit single “Little Talks” – they’re back with their sophomore LP, Beneath the Skin, out this week via Republic Records.  Given an hour to play (more than the other acts, though the same as headliners Modest Mouse), they took on the festival’s penultimate set by offering a taste of their new LP while mixing in some songs from My Head is an Animal.  They opened with the slow, dirge-like “Thousand Eyes,” – Beneath the Skin’s lead single – that lulled the audience into a gaping stupor, taken in by the alluring vocals of singer Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir.  From there the set took on an almost call-and-response nature as they bounced between old songs and new.  The newer songs are very lush on the recording, and lusher still in a live setting; most notable being album opener “Crystals” and the bold sincerity behind “We Sink.”  The crowd seemed very enthusiastic about the new material – especially when the band stopped to talk about it in their heavily accented English – yet the older tunes definitely got the attendees to their feet in a much swifter manner, even though the live version of “King and Lionheart” seemed a bit muted (probably on purpose, to be more cohesive with the newer material).  Still, with “Mountain Sound” and, of course, “Little Talks,” the energy was there and was palpable, even amongst the firm “non-fans” of the band (my festival companion included), and when they closed with thumper “Six Weeks,” you couldn’t spot a frown in the place.  Even their light show was on par, despite it being somewhat understated at times (which actually fit very well with the mood they were undoubtedly trying to capture).

BFD is a great way to spend a sunny spring afternoon in the Bay.  It’s not too expensive (the ticket, that is; the food and drinks were outrageously overpriced), the weather is nice, and the crowd was fairly tolerable.  Sure, there are a lot of young kids running around taking part in youthful debauchery, but everyone was pretty cool about it (people kept running into me and actually apologizing after doing so, which was very strange to me……wow, how sad is that?).  Some of the areas get a little crowded before the main venue opens up, but once it does, it’s gorgeous.  The mountains rise up majestically behind the tent over the seated section of the Amphitheater and the sky turns a misty shade of purple-orange, and it’s just so comfortable.  Plus, even the bands that one would never expect to see at such a place are entertaining in their own way (the best part of watching Panic! At the Disco was watching all the nineteen-year-olds singing along to so emphatically; I was impressed by their devotion).  And even though I didn’t get to stay for all of Modest Mouse, the three bands mentioned here were well worth the trip.

BFD was kind of a shit-show, but maybe that’s part of the charm.  Great music, good energy, beautiful location…what’s dealing with a bunch of unexpectedly polite (though clearly over-inebriated) young people when you’ve got all that?  The pros definitely outweighed the cons, and I look forward to see what they’ve got planned for next year’s event.

Top photo by Corey Bell

Corey Bell

Corey Bell

Corey Bell is no stranger to music.Having spent the better part of the past decade at concerts and music festivals around the globe, he finds he is most at home in the company of live music.Originally a native of New England, he has since taken residence in New York and New Orleans, and now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area.He achieved his Bachelor of Arts from Goddard College in Vermont via an undergraduate study entitled “Sonic Highways: Musical Immersion on the Roads of America," in which he explores the interactions between music, natural environment, and emotion while travelling along the scenic byways and highways of the United States.His graduate thesis, “Eighty Thousand’s Company,” features essays regarding the historical and socio-economic facets of contemporary festival culture intertwined with personal narrative stories of his experiences thereof.He is the former editor of Art Nouveau Magazine and holds a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from California College of the Arts.
Corey Bell