Live performances from the Game, Holy Fuck and Anberlin drew over 6,300 attendees to Warren Field last Friday, making FallFest 2009 the largest in the event’s history.

Holy Fuck kicked off the festival at 8 p.m., meandering through a set of electronic jams that failed to draw much response from the early crowd. They were followed by power-poppers Anberlin, who roused the indifferent student body by dropping shout-outs to San Diego and covering ’80s favorites such as New Order — earning them scattered mosh pits and head-banging from the audience.

After a 20-minute wait, always-feisty West Coast rapper the Game strutted onto stage, wasting no time before addressing his latest beefs. He dissed former affiliate 50 Cent’s crew with a crowd-backed chant of “G-Unot,” then earned scattered “boos” when he attempted a round of “Fuck Jay-Z!”

After pulling about 30 female students from the crowd to dance on stage behind a huge posse of towel-tossing homies, the Game lifted two heavy gold chains from around his neck and gifted them to a girl on his left.

Near the end of his performance, the Game’s deejay started mashing Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 tracks in tribute to the recently deceased pop star. However, the Game soon motioned to cut the lightweight beats, asserting that he “ain’t one of them guys,” and that he “likes pussy — a lot of it.”

“I thought it was pretty out there,” Sixth College freshman Ryan Brown said. “I definitely thought it was rude. I didn’t like how he kept putting on the Michael Jackson and then stopping it to put on something else.”

Warren freshman William Cho agreed that the Game was disrespectful.

“The only [other] bad thing was so many people were smoking weed and I could hardly breathe,” Cho said.

The A.S. Council moved its annual festival from the usual location at RIMAC Arena to Warren Field this year. The field’s 10,000-person capacity was large enough to hold all who wished to attend — including about 500 faculty, alumni and nonaffiliates who had purchased tickets for $18.

Last year, FallFest headliner Lupe Fiasco attracted approximately 6,500 attendees. However, 2,000 angry students — collectively yelling “Fuck A.S.” — were turned away after RIMAC Arena reached maximum capacity.

Associate Vice President of Programming Alex Bramwell said his department spent $135,000 on the concert this year, compared to the $90,000 spent in 2008.

“It’s more expensive because we had to bring the services like the dressing rooms for the artists, catering, the stage — the backstage area had to be built from scratch,” Bramwell said.

According to Bramwell, the festival’s security staff was increased to about 50 this year to confront threats posed by the larger, more open venue.

“The venue is so much larger and there’s so many more holes and ways to get in,” Bramwell said. “We were a little on edge because of the borderline riots [last year].”

Despite five alcohol-related citations and one arrest, Bramwell said things were running well enough by 9 p.m. to send home four of the eight police officers hired for the night.

“We think everything went really smoothly, it’s my definite recommendation to keep the set up relatively similar [next year],” Bramwell said. “The field left us for plenty of room to grow.”

Readers can contact Yelena Akopian at [email protected].