This year’s BFD had the best vibe the venerable summer festival has had in years. Was it the absence of white-t-shirted bro-bot Sublime fans? Maybe the recent proliferation of fun pop bands on alt-radio? Who knows, but this one was a blast from start to finish.

One of my favorites, and I’ve been going since the very first one. Here are five quick takes on my favorite moments from Shoreline Saturday:

5. Grouplove vs. Kanye West: If there was any band at BFD less likely than Grouplove to take the stage to Kanye’s “Monster,” I didn’t see them. The fact that they did it anyway was hilarious, and in line with their clearly demonstrated mission not to take themselves too seriously. Keyboardist and co-lead Hannah Hooper is a superball on stage, and in general this band looks to create chaos on stage whenever they can. That they write the bounciest pop songs ever is neither here nor there. Back to “Monster,” they really ought to go full bore and just cover it. Another funny nod came near the end of the set when they turned their big hit “Tongue Tied” into Whitney’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.”

4. Jane’s Addiction vs. Mythological Themes: Still, Grouplove had only the second best entrance of the night. Top honors have to go to Perry Ferrell and company for their bizarre, Divine Comedy-sized opening, which featured girls in white dresses raised to the rafters and chased by flying demons. All this while a snazzily dressed Ferrell smiled that Joker-esque smile and sang “Underground”: “I came back to pay respect/To another fallen angel.”

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3. Dirty Ghosts vs. Trends: This San Francisco band was my favorite act on the Local Band Stage (regrettably, I got there too late to see Young Science). Noisy and loud in a way that makes a statement, they remind me of early Sonic Youth, with how they manage to be catchy and dissonant at the same time. Sleater-Kinney fans still looking for a fix (and no matter how great Portlandia is, doesn’t it kind of suck that Carrie Brownstein is going to be busy for the foreseeable future?) need to check this band out. They’re raising a big middle finger to rock that’s gotten too slick and mechanical.

2. K. Flay vs. Milpitas: The best quote of the day came from this unstoppable SF rapper: “BFD, are you ready to take a trip with me? Let’s spiritually go to Milpitas, and go to the mall!” I’m still not totally sure what she meant, but I have to admit, I kind of gave it a shot. No astral projection was forthcoming, but K. Flay’s set was probably the best I’ve heard her do. With the Subsonic Tent’s emphasis on electronica, her backbeats were way pumped up in the mix. A couple of times this messed with the vocals, but overall it blew me away.

1. Wallpaper vs. Sanity: If you’re not yet on the Wallpaper bandwagon, where have you been? Ricky Reed’s live show is, as he described one song, “so stupid it went to the liquor store to get bananas.” He’s just doing mind-bending stuff right now, especially on stage. A lot of credit goes to his partner in crime, singer Novena Carmel. At this show, she rocked pink hair, a polka dot blouse and a keytar. At the end of “Stupidfacedd,” she jumped on Ricky’s back, rode him like a horse, and beat her chest. It was nuts, and yet the only way to cap a set like this one.

With the reunited Jane’s Addiction headlining Live 105’s BFD this weekend, it’s the perfect time to remember the first club to bring Perry Ferrell’s legendary band to the South Bay. From 1985 to 1990, Santa Clara’s One Step Beyond was a hub of counterculture in the Valley, with their all-ages policy exposing a generation of indie kids, punks, goths and other mistfits to not only Jane’s Addiction, but the Ramones, Replacements, Ministry and other alt-rock legends.

After the success of the One Step Beyond reunion last year, organizers are doing it again on July 21 at Club Illusions in Palo Alto (which has its own unique history throughout its various identities as the Keystone, the Vortex and the Edge). Headlining the One Step Beyond reunion this year will be the Frail, with performances from several DJs, including Live 105’s Aaron Axelsen.

Before Axelsen was shaping musical tastes around the Bay Area as music director at Live 105 and host of the weekly new-music showcase Soundcheck, he was having his own tastes shaped at One Step Beyond.

“I used to go to One Step Beyond and see crazy bands there when I was 14,” says Axelsen, who grew up in the East Bay. “It was a big part of who I am.”

He sees this event as sort of a high-school class reunion for those who had their eyes and ears opened at 1400 Martin Avenue. He’s also a big fan of headliners the Frail, the up-and-coming San Francisco electro-pop group who are releasing a new record this summer.

The One Step Beyond reunion will be held July 21, 8pm at Club Ilusions in Palo Alto, $10 pre-sale/$15 at the door.

If it weren’t for recent alternative hitmakers The Naked and the Famous and Silversun Pickups, the main stage at BFD 2012 on June 2 at Shoreline Amphitheater would feel like a 1990s time machine. Jane’s Addiction, Garbage and Cake will headline the festival, Live 105 has announced.

Jane’s Addiction originally broke up in 1991 at the height of their popularity, They have reunited, broken up and reunited again since then, with no letup in the accompanying drama. Last year, they released just their fourth album in the over 25 years since the band was founded, The Great Escape Artist.

Garbage peaked in the mid-’90s with hits like “Stupid Girl” and “Only Happy When It Rains”; they never officially broke up, but have gone on “hiatus” several times. They are set to release their fifth album, Not Your Kind of People, next month.

Of the returning ’90s alt-rock soldiers, only Cake has been active continuously since they formed in 1991. Best known for their 1996 hit “The Distance,” their sixth record Showroom of Compassion debuted at #1 on the Billboard charts in 2011.

New Zealand’s the Naked and the Famous formed in 2008, the same year Jane’s Addiction reunited for the second time. Sounding eerily like Passion Pit’s long-lost twin band, they made the alt-radio Top 10 in 2010 with “Young Blood.” Fellow indie rockers Silversun Pickups, best known for “Lazy Eye” and “Well Thought Out Twinkies,” will release their new album, Neck of the Woods, next month.

Some of the festival’s coolest offerings are in the Subsonic Tent, which has become a magnet for up-and-coming, electro-friendly acts. This year Oakland’s Wallpaper, who are suddenly all over the late-night-television circuit and even have a song in the Top 40 despite an expletive in its title, will play there, as well as San Francisco’s budding girlrap star K. Flay, who killed last year on the local stage. Subsonic Tent mainstays the Limousines will do something slightly different this summer, spinning a DJ set. Other tent acts include Knife Party, Dragonette, and AmpLive of the Oakland duo Zion I performing with Eligh.

On the Soundcheck Local Band Stage this year are two South Bay bands, The Holdup and Young Science. The Stone Foxes, A B & The Sea, New Diplomat, Dirty Ghosts and more will also perform on the local band stage.

Maceo Parker has played with some of the most iconic and eccentric personalities in music history. As James Brown’s sax man, he helped write the rules of modern R&B. As the musical director of George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic, he led a sonic revolution in the ’70s. As part of Prince’s band, he’s helped him become one of the most in-demand live acts of this century. He’s worked on projects with everyone from Keith Richards to Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction.

The question is: how does he do it? How does he collaborate with pop’s oversized personalities without setting off a war of egos?

Duh, he’s Maceo.

“I’m easygoing,” said Parker by phone after winding up his extended New Year’s Eve duties. “I’ve got a real long, long, long, long chain before you get me out of my thing. I’m just one of those guys, I’ll open the door for you, you can go in the elevator first. If there’s a long line of cars, I’ll stop and let you in. I just do that.”

If Parker’s cool runs deep, it has also spread wide. “One of the things I never envisioned really is so many parents naming their kids Maceo,” he says. “Man, all over the world, I’m telling you. It’s crazy, really crazy. There was one time I had three little Maceos on stage. One of the left side of the stage, one in the center, one on the right. None of them knew each other, but they were all Maceo because of me.”

Parker has been recording with his own various bands off and on since the early 70s, winning a “Jammie” for Best Jazz Album in 2009 for his most recent album, the Ray Charles tribute Roots & Grooves.

When he comes to Montalvo in Saratoga on Wednesday, he brings a reputation for transcendent live shows that can stretch on for hours. He’s so known for epic partying he had to do four straight nights through New Year’s Eve last month, at Yoshi’s in San Francisco.

“People know what we’re going to bring, they know what we do. You’re going to get your party on, your dance on. That’s what we’re about,” says Parker. “I’m there for the people. They made a choice to come where I am, and I want to make it really worth their while. I’m there trying to give one hundred percent.”

It’s a work ethic that was certainly impressed upon him at a young age; he was only 21 when he started playing with Brown in the ’60s. Though the soul and funk icon was a careful arranger, he also relied on his legendary sidemen like Parker and trombonist Fred Wesley to keep his sound cutting-edge.

“When it came to ‘Maceo, time for you to blow,’ then I had to play what I hear, which is what is inside of me,” he remembers. “It was exciting, it was a little challenging. But then again, it wasn’t that much, because I was just playing me. Fred used to say ‘Man, I never seen anybody wake up out of a deep sleep and play as funky as Maceo.’ It’s all natural.”

It was a bit of a culture shock when he hooked up with Clinton’s spaced-out, psychedelic P-Funk crew, but he quickly made his mark.

“I really cherish the time I was with him. It was like a cult kind of thing, the following. It was cool, but coming from James Brown it was like ‘Whoa! Whoa! No, you can’t say that! No, you can’t do that! You can’t dress like that! You have to wear some kind of shoes. C’mon!’ I’m telling you, man, I was really thrown. Like, ‘what in the world is going on?’”

Parker has drawn from all of those experiences, but when he got the chance to set his own musical agenda, he discovered as a bandleader that the sound he really wanted to channel wasn’t so different from the one he had started out with in the first place.

“I’ve always had my concept of how I want to do it. It sort of resembles James Brown a little bit, because let’s face it, that turned out to be me, too,” he says. “It was James Brown, but it was also me.”

Rather than end up what he calls a “jack of all trades, master of none, “ he pushed his funk-based sound as hard and far as he could.

“That’s what I set out to do, and that’s what I did,” he said. “I guess it shows.”

Maceo Parker plays Wednesday, Jan. 11, at Montalvo Arts Center at 7:30pm; $44/$49.