SF Weekly's All Shook Down Festival - Photo by Spencer Crooks

The San Francisco Bay Area has a wealth of great bands, but for some reason it’s not widely recognized as the wellspring of music that it is. Maybe it’s because we share a coast with Seattle, L.A. and Portland which have long been touted as fertile ground for artists or maybe it’s just that we had our day (see the 1960’s) and we’ve simply passed the torch. However, after Sunday’s All Shook Down Festival in North Beach, it seems it might be time for the SF Bay to take the torch back.

Whether your bag is punk, country, jazz, folk, dance, indie, funk, rap or some genre bending combo of them all, SF Weekly’s first ever All Shook Down Festival was the place to be this weekend. The mini-fest brought together a large handful of the SF Bay’s amazing local acts and scattered them throughout the quirky, intimate bars, cafes and restaurants at the intersection of Grant and Green streets in North Beach. It took the essence of a large scale, city-wide music fest, like Noise Pop or New York’s CMJ and condensed it into one day and a few blocks. There was something for every music fan, except maybe polka, with each venue loosely sticking to a theme, punk at Columbus Cafe, jazz at Grant and Green Saloon, indie rock at Maggy McGarry’s, dance/electronic at The Church Key, etc. and a main outdoor stage billing local rising stars with two national up-and-comers, Janelle Monae and Neon Indian.

With San Francisco already boasting a list of awesome music festivals; Outside Lands, Treasure Island and Noise Pop, All Shook Down could cement the city by the bay as the premier festival destination. Enjoy a slideshow from the day’s festivities.

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