10 Best Moments From DeLuna Fest 2011

Photos by Mark C. Austin

Most things are better on the beach: hot dogs, cheap beer, and even scorching humid heat. So when we got the chance to cover some of our favorite bands and musicians on the golden sands of Pensacola Beach, we definitely made the most of it. From the outrageous to the mind-blowing, here are our 10 Favorite Moments from DeLuna Fest 2011.

10. Ra Ra Riot Dancing With Fans

Festivals are great opportunities for bands to hang out and interact with their fans in ways that just wouldn’t be possible in a standard music venue, and DeLuna Fest this year had its fair share of bands being awesome. Ra Ra Riot and Givers have a close older-brother relationship, and Ra Ra Riot found their show to be a good time to get down and dance with fans and totally make their entire weekend.

9. Ghostland Observatory Light Show
The folks that designed and ran Ghostland Observatory’s light show deserve a spot on this list for what they did Saturday night. With lasers and lights of every kind and color bursting forth from the beach stage, even those on the hotel balconies swore they seemed to be calling down a mothership from the sea of stars that filled the background of this electronic duo’s performance.

8. Perry Farrell’s Stage Antics
Near the beginning of Jane’s Addiction’s show, Farrell blurted out the fact that he wished his penis were big enough to touch the entire thousands of people at the DeLuna Festival. While those unfamiliar with Jane’s Addiction might have this statement a bit befuddling, these are the kind of outrageous statements of controversy that the band thrives on, and you better believe fans laughed alongside every ridiculous part of Jane’s crazy stage antics.

7. Grouplove
The up-and-coming indie rock band Grouplove gave us another great example of a band interacting with its fans. After their amazing performance of their single “Colours,” Grouplove, unlike many other bands, nonchalantly headed down off the stage and hung out with their fans right after getting done for over a half hour. They don’t call them Grouplove for nothin’!

6. The Airborne Toxic Event’s Dive Into the Ocean
While some bands might go into the crowd for a song or so, these guys went the extra mile and took a dip in the cold ocean water with their fans both before and during their show. Our guess is that if the crowd didn’t know or weren’t into The Airborne Toxic Event’s music before this performance, they at least thought Airborne was one of the coolest, most down-to-earth bands at the festival.

5. The Shins’ Back-To-Back Classic Rock Covers
Not only did The Shins perform Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” (which they premiered on Fallon last week), they followed it up with a fantastic cover of David Bowie’s classic “Ashes To Ashes.” These two covers were just icing on the cake of The Shins’ overall near-perfect set list and even got the crowd of hipsters singing along to Pink Floyd.

4. Matt & Kim Just Being Themselves
Matt & Kim is one of those bands that can get any crowd laughing and dancing no matter how bored or cynical they might be. When they run into a crowd as pumped up as the one at DeLuna, madness is sure to ensue. Balloons were burst, clothes were flung off, and booties were shaken, but it’s only because Matt & Kim are the happiest band in the world.

3. MUTEMATH Percussion Breakdown
Near the end of their set, Mutemath announced they were only doing one more song—the fan-favorite “Chaos”—yet they stuck around after it to play not just one more, but to wrap things up with a fierce, full-ensemble percussion breakdown. The whole band got involved: Bassist Roy Mitchell-Cárdenas got on the drum set while drummer Darren King brought out a metallic percussion instrument and started rattling off drum rolls at rapid-fire pace. By the end, all members of the band were furiously beating on cymbals, with King having knocked over pretty much every piece of his kit before the band left the stage. Our question was this: Who needs Linkin Park when you’ve this kind of energy?

2. Girl Talk’s Beach Party
If anybody knows how to throw a beach party, it’s Gregg Gillis. Whether it was his creative use of an Adele sample or his “never-gets-old” version of show-closer “Shout,” it didn’t matter if you had already seen Girl Talk live before: This was DeLuna, and we were on the beach listening to an amazing artist in possibly the best setting you could imagine.

1. Big Boi Playing OutKast Songs
Big Boi’s mid-afternoon performance on the main stage the second day of DeLuna could have easily been a show closer. The show could have been seen as a retrospective of his career, as the one-half of OutKast performed some of their band’s biggest hits, including “Ms. Jackson,” “B.O.B.” and “Rosa Parks,” as well as his own songs like “I Like the Way You Move.” Big Boi called one of the largest audiences on the festival and earned one of the show’s only encore performances.