Modest Mouse, Twenty One Pilots, Panic At The Disco, Atlas Genius and many more of today’s hottest alternative and indie rock acts played BFD—Live 105’s annual summer festival at Shoreline Amphitheatre—this past weekend. The weather was warm, the beers were cold and the energy was high at the 22nd “big fucking deal.” We sent Metro photographer Jessica Perez to cover the action. Check out some of her best shots below:

View the entire gallery here.

The South Bay music scene scores again. Earlier this year, Curious Quail won an opening spot for Live 105’s BFD concert at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, and now Saratoga blues-rock trio Fritz Montana are the winners for the local band opening spot at the station’s Not So Silent Night concert this weekend at Oracle Arena.

The band earned a spot on the lineup after its bluesy alt-rock song “Say It So” won the most votes among other Bay Area bands.

“Winning the opening slot at Not So Silent Night has been a very humbling experience,” says Fritz Montana lead singer and guitarist, David Marshall. “We could not have achieved this without the support of our families, friends, and fans. Winning this contest is definitely the highlight of our band thus far.”

Fritz Montana will be performing on the first night of the two-day concert on Friday, before Kings of Leon, Vampire Weekend, Queens of the Stone Age, AFI, Arctic Monkeys and Capital Cities take the stage. Saturday night includes headliners Arcade Fire, Phoenix, ALT-J and Lorde among other bands.

The trio claims San Francisco and San Jose as their home towns, with two-thirds of the band actually residing in the South Bay.

LIVE 105 has been on the forefront of the EDM movement for years, promoting it even back when it was still a niche genre. In recent years at the BDF festival, the Subsonic Tent—an extension of Aaron Axelsen’s electronic music show—has become a bigger part of the festival, encompassing a bulk of the festival’s more interesting bookings.

In fact, even on the other stages this year, the strongest bands were the ones who stylistically could just as easily fit on the Subsonic Tent. Below are some of the highlights from this year:

Capital Cities
By far the strongest act to play the Festival Stage this year. Capital Cities, a new duo from LA, brought disco-infused synth-pop beats to BFD with a live guitarist, bassist and a trumpet player. Two vocalists, one tall with a mustache and the other short with a bushy beard, both equally shared vocal duties with a fun, somewhat goofy stage presence.

Midway through their set they taught the audience the “Capital Cities Shuffle,” which was simple enough for anyone to execute. They played a bizarre, slow-downed rendition of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” and an upbeat dance-version of Sinead O’Conner’s Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U.” They closed with their buzz single, “Safe and Sound,” a catchy dance-pop song.

PHOTOS: Check out the Metroactive photo gallery.

Wallpaper
It’s incredible the attention Wallpaper have been getting the past year considering that it’s basically an ironic pop act with elements of R&B, hip-hop, all done through a weird performance-art lens. But now it seems the ridiculous character known as Ricky Reed is becoming an actual pop star. What has been their biggest selling point is how strong of a performer Reed is and his ability to engage the audience and get them moving, but the entire band has become a theatrical spectacle.

At the Subsonic Tent, where they played this year, their three drummers pulled out some amazing synchronized moves, including the final breakdown of “Fucking Best Song Everrr” when the drummers stood up, shook the audience’s hands and returned to their kits at the same moment and jumped back in on the beat. They are one of the best live acts going right now.

Passion Pit
LIVE 105 couldn’t have booked a better main stage headliner this year. Passion Pit have really blown up this past year with the success of their brilliant sophomore release, Gossamer, which infuses synth-pop with elements of indie rock. At BFD, they played cuts from their debut, but the highlights were the tracks from Gossamer, including “Carried Away,” “It’s not my fault, I’m Happy,” “Cry Like a Ghost” and the breakout single “Take a Walk.” The evening was particularly special for Passion Pit as lead singer Michael Angelakos celebrated his 26th birthday.

DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow’s set at BFD featured obscure and often brand new tracks that he continued to assure the audience they’d probably never heard before. It was a strange, mind-melting juxtaposation of songs, mixed and blended by the iconic Bay Area producer. Every once and a while he’d lower the music and make a comment, like, “Just to let you know, there’s no laptop on stage with me” or “If you’re confused about what’s going on, look at your neighbor and do what they’re doing.” Some of the beats we danceable, others were just weird, slow trance beats, while others were loud, bass-filled outer space soundscapes. He cut songs together so fast, and with so much skill, it was hard to do anything but stare, amazed.

San Jose
This was the year for San Jose at BFD. There were more bands from the South Bay to play BFD than probably any year before with four bands on the Soundcheck Stage and the Limousines on the Subsonic Stage. Over on the Soundcheck stage, the Trims, Anya and the Getdown and Picture Atlantic all played excellent sets, but it was a particular pleasure watching Curious Quail’s set. Their music probably least resembles LIVE 105’s format of all the local bands, but they fought hard to get there with an online vote.

Their excitement of being on stage at Shoreline was palatable, understandably so. Over at Subsonic, the Limousines put on an intense, mostly serious set that, with the exception of two songs, were all tracks off their new album, Hush.

Since 1994, LIVE 105’s BFD festival has been a staple for exposing new artists to the Bay Area. The Killers, Imagine Dragons, MGMT and Foster the People all played the festival before they were well known. Even AFI performed—on the local-band stage—well before they hit the national spotlight.

In fact, the purpose of BFD, with the exception of presenting a couple of big-name headliners, has always been to treat music consumers to emerging artists at a reasonable price. Aaron Axelsen, the assistant program director/music director at LIVE 105 is heavily involved with booking BFD. He likens the station’s booking strategy to that of the Oakland A’s in Moneyball.

“We’re trying to find acts at a reasonable cost that we’re anticipating are going to pop, like a Robert DeLong, or a C2C or a Diplo, or even Capital Cities, Neighbourhood, Atlas Genius. These are bands that are going to blow up. It’s using our instincts to find them, and not charging $200 a ticket,” Axelsen explains.

As the festival has matured, the Subsonic Tent, which focuses on electronic and hip-hop, and the Soundcheck Stage, with Bay Area bands, have become an increasingly important part of the festival. For Subsonic, a lot of it has to do with the growing popularity of electronic dance music.

“It was more of an underground niche back in the day, but EDM culture has really caught on,” Axelsen says. “It’s not pigeonholed. The 23-year-old music consumer—you look at their iPod, they have everything in there; they have Of Monsters and Men, but they also have Diplo.”

This year’s Subsonic Tent includes an eclectic blend of bands: Wallpaper (hip-hop, electro-pop), C2C (French turntable artists), K Theory (hip-hop), as well as electronic-music legends Chemical Brothers and Bay Area-based turntable game changer DJ Shadow.

As the Soundcheck Stage has grown, local bands are seeing a boost long before BFD arrives. “It seems like the stage has intensified because of all those other components that go into it,” Axelsen says. “These bands are getting support on Soundcheck every week and on the website. They’re getting a lot of exposure. The bands can use it when talking to booking agents or labels—oh, look, we played BFD.”

This year, San Jose is the most represented city at BFD, with four out of the 10 acts, including Curious Quail, the winner of the local band contest, Anya and the Get Down, Picture Atlantic and the Trims.

BFD
Sunday, May 19; 11am; $39.50-$59.50
Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View

It’s official. South Bay locals Curious Quail have won the last remaining spot on Live 105’s Soundcheck local band stage at BFD 2013. They will share the stage with nine other bay area bands, three of which are also from the South Bay—Picture Atlantic, Anya and the Getdown, and the Trims. Not only did Curious Quail win, but they did so by a sizable margin, earning a whopping 39% of the vote, with twenty bands total in the running.

“We’ve been working really hard as a band to get our name out there; the community support we got was tremendous. Being in a local band working your way up, you have this series of milestones of people taking you seriously. For a while it was the iTunes factor, then it was Spotify, or Pandora. Well, you namedrop Shoreline Amphitheatre as someplace you played and then that person you’ve known for ten years that knows you’re in a band might actually go and listen to your music and enjoy what you’re doing,” says Mike Shirley-Donnelly, lead singer and guitarist for Curious Quail.

Even though every member of Curious Quail worked hard to encourage people to vote for them, their friends and fans it seemed, were excited to help out. Even Dogcatcher, who were also in the running, told their fans to vote for Curious Quail.

“We threw up a few posts on twitter, Facebook and instagram and like everyone shared them. Everyone! It just kept going. One of the pictures had over 60 shares on Facebook and the Facebook “insights” said “11,000 people saw this post”. That’s insanity,” Says Shirley-Donnelly.

The fact that nearly half of the bands playing BFD’s local band stage this year are from the South Bay reflects well on the scene here, especially considering the degree that the rest of the bay area has long since written off any band that hails from San Jose.

“The South Bay has always felt like the bastard child of the bay area when it comes to the music scene, and rightfully so: our 2000’s era metal/hardcore scene that thrived was not something to be proud of. I should know, I was a part of it. Having so many south bay bands not only on the bill already for the local stage, but also in the contest was encouraging. It’s showing that we as a community down here are actually doing something of note,” says Shirley Donnelly

Another South Bay band could be joining locals, Picture Atlantic, Anya and the Getdown and the Trims on the Soundcheck Local Band Stage at BFD this May.

Live 105 has opened up one additional slot, and the San Francisco radio station is letting its listeners vote on who it should fill it. There are 19 bands in the running and six are from the South Bay: 1989 (from Gilroy), Dogcatcher (from Mountain View) and San Jose bands All City Elite, Conversions, Curious Quail and Sweet HayaH.

Voting continues until 3pm on May 3. The winning band will be announced on air at 7pm on May 5th. Visit the voting page for more info.

More info on BFD 2013.

PHOTOS: Images from BFD 2012

More than half of the 20 Bay Area bands competing for an opening slot at Live 105’s Not So Silent Night, featuring Jack Whit, the Shins, the Killers,  M83, Tegan & Sara, Passion Pit and more on December 7 and December 8 at the Oracle Arena, are from the South Bay.

As of this this posting, Curious Quail and Light the Rocket are the two South Bay bands with the most votes. They are neck and neck for 3rd and 4th place. The first place position belongs to Livermore group Hear The Sirens. To win, some of the bands are finding creative ways to motivate their fans to vote. Dogcatcher, for instance, is offering all their albums for free online until the voting ends. Curious Quail uploaded a video explaining to their fans all the reasons why they should vote for them.

Other South bay bands in the running include Drop Dead Sixty, Fossil Tree, INFM, Pounders, Touch My Rash, The Mess, The Oarsmen and UP&GO.

More than half of the 20 Bay Area bands competing for an opening slot at Live 105’s Not So Silent Night, featuring Jack Whit, the Shins, the Killers,  M83, Tegan & Sara, Passion Pit and more on December 7 and December 8 at the Oracle Arena, are from the South Bay.

Voting is still open, HERE.

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.”

PHOTOS: View the MetroActive photo gallery.

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.