Live 105’s BFD Festival - Mountain View, California
June 11th, 2007So, you want a review of the BFD festival? Fine, I’ll give it to you. Let me first disclose my prejudices. I’m a Metal-head, and have always been one. Hate Top-40 with a passion. Despise it. The last thing I want to listen to is some overused melody singing songs that the “artist” didn’t even write about their boyfriend/girlfriend. Jeez, speaking of putting one’s brain on cruise control.
Anyways, the Badman’s date called in and couldn’t get the day off work, so he called me last week and asked if I wanted to go to an all-day alternative music festival. Being the stud he is, I assume she’s probably hot, so bummer for him having to take me instead.
When we got there, a young lady with a bone in her nose tried to get me to buy a magazine about having a revolution. I’m sorry, but as bad as the current regime is, it’s probably better than something led by a lady with a bone in her nose.
The festival had the usual malcontents for an alternative musical festival - Emos, Punks, LUGs, Goths, Grunge and Post-Grunge folks, etc. Badman brought smokes, which was cool. I enjoyed two that day, the first time I had one since Vegas, but didn’t drink even a single beer. Just out of general principle, I’m not spending $7 for a beer, especially something like Rocky Mountain Piss-water. Real beer was $12.
Live 105 is the big Modern Rock radio station in the San Francisco area, and they sponsored the event. They bill it as Live 105’s BFD - Northern California’s Biggest Alternative Music Festival. Profits go to the Lymphoma Research Foundation, a great cause, especially considering we know a wonderful young woman who’s currently going through Chemo with Lymphoma.
With my prejudices previously disclosed, I’ll rate the bands I saw. With 25 bands and three stages, keep in mind we only saw the following…
Sum 41 - I hate Scooby Doo punk. Kind of like Blink 182, I should have brought some tomatoes. They spent too much time trying to work the crowd and not enough time actually playing decent music. Yuck. 
Cold War Kids - We only caught one song of them because we were busy stuffing our faces at the restaurant while they played. From what I remember, it wasn’t too bad, but nothing I’d go out and buy. 
The Bravery - Very “New Wavish,” with guitars, a synthesizer, and pop melodies. Reminded me of The Killers. They played their heart out, and it reflected in the music. 
Silversun Pickups - Badman really looked forward to seeing them, comparing them to Sonic Youth, his 2nd fave band. They have the same heavily distorted music and a chick bass player, but other than that, the comparisons die out. Silversun Pickups use more layering with the delay effects. Their drummer really gets into it too, and the bass player smiled a lot and waved to the crowd constantly. They put on a really good show, and looked like they were enjoying themselves up there in the hot sun. I was pleasantly surprised, and they stole the show of all the bands on the 2nd stage. 
Scissors for Lefty - They came up on the stage preceded by cardboard cutout black 1940s cars. When the approached the stage, they were donning 1940s prison garbs, then later dressed into red outfits. They relied heavily on their highly gay (gay as in happy cheese, not Boy George) stage show, and their New Wavish music and pop melodies also worked. If I wasn’t busy this weekend, I’d go to their CD release party in San Francisco, I liked them that much.
Kaiser Chiefs - Bad Brit pop. The crowd loved them. The Zombieslayer couldn’t wait for them to get off the stage. 
Interpol - I didn’t expect to like this band, but they weren’t bad. The singer had almost a boring, monotone voice, but it worked. He never moved (like Robert Smith of The Cure), and rarely looked up. Musically - early 80s Goth. I wouldn’t rush out and buy their CDs, but live, they were moderately enjoyable.
Queens of the Stone Age - This is the only band I wanted to see in the whole set. I wondered what they were doing here in an “alternative” music festival. Queens is more a metal band. I expected them to put on a decent show, and they definitely spent the most money on their stage props, with weird, futuristic lighting. But they sucked, big time. Their bass was way too loud, with the whump whumping glaring over everything else. They simply had horrible sound, and their sound engineer should have been taken out and shot. Both Badman and Yours Truly couldn’t wait for them to get off the stage.
Social Distortion - Straight up Blue Collar music. No frills, no fluff. Mike and the band stole the show for the main stage. Mike Ness may not have a beautiful voice, but he’s got charisma, something a lot of today’s musicians lack. No, their music wasn’t great, it simply did what you expected it to do - it moved you. Hats off to Social D, for although I’ll never buy one of their albums (not my cup of tea), I’d definitely see them again. Classified as punk, I saw it more as white folk playing black music. Unlike some other white bands I won’t mention, Mike Ness admits it.
Sounds kindaa gross. I could’ve tolerated The Bravery, probably, but otherwise I’d be bored. There’s nothing particularly modern nor rock about modern rock, y’know?
Hmm, the only bands of those I really know are the Bravery and the Silversun Pickups, neither of which I am a huge fan of.
I can relate to your bone-nosed girl story though. The last time I went to one of those summer festivals I was assaulted by the people from PETA and the Young Communists for Communism.
Sounds like a good lineup really. Any music festival is going to have bands that appeal to a variety of tastes. You take the good, ignore the bad and have a good time.
The chick was probably from the Zendik commune. I’ve seen them around here too.
Sounds like you had an interesting time. Hope it wasnt to boring for you. It sounds like this years Depere Days over Memorial Day weekend for us. I cant remember half the bands that were there on Sunday when we went. That is how bad most of them were. If they are good we will remember them but forget them if they are bad as soon as you walk out the gate. I hope next years is better. Anyway nice review.
You’re showing your age ZS. “Whump, whump”, is what the kids are into nowdays. You can tell this by standing on any street and listening to the “whump, whump” of the teenager’s car stereos.
I wanna go to Scott’s concert and go a few rounds with the PETA idiots!
Geez Zomb, am I ever old. Am totally stuck in 60s. Yikes.
Love your take on music…and those pithy comments even more!
HEY your site finally let me comment YAHOO!!!!
SME - I had a totally pretentious conversation with Badman about the word “modern” and its misuse in art and music. If “Modern Rock” started in the mid-80s, it’s 2007. So yes, there’s nothing modern about “Modern Rock.”
In art, Modernism started in the 1890s but got more prominent in the early 20th century. Postmodernism started in 1949 but got big in the 50s. So what are now? Post-Post Modernism?
Scott - One of these days, I’ll do a PETA post.
Laura - I had to look up Zendik because I had no idea what you’re refering to. Wikipedia has a webpage on it, and it led me to zendik.org. Wow, you know some obscure stuff.
Tweety - Thanks. Yeah, hopefully yours next year is better. When you go, please write a review. I love hearing about other people’s taste in music.
Tshsmom - Unfortunately, it wasn’t even the whump whump of the bass like in a rap context, but more like a droning whump whumping from really bad mixing. I couldn’t even hear the bass drum, but heard the bass feeding back really badly. This sound engineer was really bad and more than anything needs a day job. He (or she) has no business being in music.
Bridget - There’s a lot of good music written today. The thing is, you have to dig for it. Like every time period though, the majority of music is crap. It’s just a matter of having the patience to sift through the bad to get to the good.
If I remember and remember who the bands were. If I dont care for the band I usually dont remember to much about them. Its a mental block for that stuff for some reason. I could probably do one for the bands I know that were there and I do like that we missed. I will see if I can find the flyer we had while walking the grounds.
Tweety - That would be cool. Probably a good thing to mentally block the bad bands.
Er, yeah, I totally misused Modern Rock there. I only meant “today’s rock”. 90% crapola.
Erm, in the grand scheme, I think 90% of ALL rock is crapola. There was some real crap in the early days too… There’s very few artists in rock music that truly do something original and meaningful and do it well.
That said, some of the crapola is good fun to clean the house to or to get drunk and go dancing.
“I hate Scooby Doo punk.” For some reason that term makes me laugh…can’t help but picture Scooby with a mohawk moshing in a pit. lol Nice review Zombie.
SME & Laura - Agree with Laura. 90% of any time period is crapola. But we all are entitled to our guilty pleasures.
Moni - Thanks. I tried to come up with an insult and “baby punk” just didn’t have the same connotation as “Scooby Doo punk.”
Cool, I’ve been diggin’ some Silversun pickup songs lately. Good to know they put on a good live show. As for any of those other bands you’ve mentioned I don’t really care for. Like you, I am a metal head.
Indeed it’s never a good idea to have the leader of a revolution have a bone in his/her nose. It really takes away any seriousness ones cause might have.
Bsoholic - Yeah, I remember you mentioning your music and I liked it. Surprised you like Silversun Pickups.
I’ve never been good with grunge but I do love my alternative rock. I think you might enjoy the Pixies, not for me, but they inspired songs like Nirvana’s Smells like Teen Spirit.
I so love Interpol, I am seeing them 3 times this year. July 1st in London Astoria, August 26th in Leeds Festival and November 29th in Wood Green (North London). The Bravery is on my ipod but I would not listen to them over and over. Nowadays I’m very much into Arcade Fire, whom I’m seeing at the Leeds Festival as well along with Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
Tonight I was watching this rock documentary (love this program, it’s once a month) and they explained that after REM, The Pixies and Nirvana, producers were signing up loads of bands in the hopes to find something as brilliant as the latters; hence all the crap (also refered to in my household as pussy rock). Oh you got me started, that’s my favorite topic.
La Cremiere - You might really like Badman’s tastes. He loves The Pixies and Nirvana. Not my taste, he dragged me along because his date couldn’t get out of work.