Last weekend was Live 105’s BFD 2015 festival at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountainview, California. Representing the 21st time that this annual event has been held, it sold out in advance of the concert date on June 6th. Live 105, “The Bay Area’s Alternative”, had a well curated line-up of known and emerging acts, covering a wide range of musical genres that all fall under the “alternative” banner, including 15 local acts. With a vast line-up, they managed to squeeze it all into one day, with two “Festival Stages” that alternated back and forth throughout the day (to mitigate any downtime – it was literally non-stop music) as well as a “Subsonic Tent” and “Soundcheck Local Band Stage”, which ran concurrently. It all lead up to the “Main Stage” acts within the Shoreline Amphitheatre itself, which ran back to back through the night. A fantastic show that seemed to come off without a hitch, playing to over 20,000 fans. This article features my PART ONE coverage, which focuses on the daytime “Festival Stage” artists and performances.
The Airborne Toxic Event at Ace of Spades | Sacramento, California | 10/28/2014 (Concert Review + Photos)
“We had a new song come out today… We got a lot of comments on the site. You know, people asking us, are we a rock band? Or are we a folk band? Are we an electronic band? The answer is: fuck off!” Comments from The Airborne Toxic Event’s frontman Mikel Jollett, before kicking into that new song, “Wrong”, toward the end of the initial set at Ace of Spades in Sacramento. The comment might read as negative, but their music and connection with the crowd was anything but, with that same signer and guitarist jumping off stage and interacting with the crowd several times throughout their one and a half or so set. At one point, he even held a young boy in the air, asking (somewhat rhetorically) if he had the coolest mom there, but virtue of his presence. The band, and supporting act In The Valley Below before them, put on a fantastic show with great music. They are both certainly worth checking out. Even Mikel said, at the end, “Every now and then you get to have a night like tonight – I think this is the best show I’ve ever played in Sacramento!”, and I suspect the fans agree.