2009 Monolith Festival :: Saturday

So Friday night ended with bottle rockets, slingshots, whiskey, and free t-shirts courtesy of our friends at Gigbot. Honestly, the weekend could have ended there and I would have been happy. But oh no, Saturday and Sunday held unknown adventures.

Due to hangovers and the desire to not be the first ones up there, we got a bit of a late start on Saturday. It appeared I could indeed shove my well laid plans up my well laid ass. We got there at about 12:45 and I hadn’t had a full opportunity to tailgate before I trekked from the upper north lot at Monolith to the upper gate… where, to my dismay, I was informed that there was no re-entry for media this year. Bummer. So much for seeing The Antlers. And Speakeasy Tiger. I’m going to sum up my dissatisfaction with the way Monolith was managed (specifically spotty rules and security) after Sunday’s review. At the time I was high on cheery festivalliness, so it was all good brah. The sun was peeking out, I got myself a hot dog and shotgunned a beer with some dear friends before going in to see Thao With The Get Down Stay Down.

Seeing Thao up close and personal was a great way to start the festival. It turned out to be the brightest moment of an otherwise dull day. She and the band displayed the kind of life and bouncy energy that Monolith (in my mind) is all about. They started with Bag Of Hammers and ended with my favorite, Beat (Health, Life, and Fire). She spoke adorably about what an honor it was to play at Red Rocks and how she once got high in the parking lot. Awww…

I headed upstairs for Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros as my friends headed downstairs to see These United States. One thing that kind of bugged me about the festival, especially Saturday, was the timing. ESTMZ was one of many bands who started at least five minutes early on Saturday. Not really a problem unless you have a photo pass and are only allowed three songs in the photo pit. I guess they made up for it later on Saturday (see Doom below). ESTMZ was a band I had heard a lot about on the blogosphere leading up to Monolith and I could see why. It was like watching a hippy commune and/or a group of Bennington College students perform. Everyone played like 6 instruments, they were all singing along at the top of their lungs with frontman Alex Ebert. I thoroughly enjoyed my time watching them, and so did the euphoric Monolith crowd at the SoCo stage.

Then came the rain and washed the smiles out.

It was as if Frightened Rabbit brought the Scottish weather to match their dreary music. The foursome launched into their set as sprinkles began to fall on their loyal fans who made an impressive showing considering the weather and the time slot. I found myself sucked in, as I am an unabashed sucker for sad bastard music. Even more so if said music comes from the UK and is more indie-rock than emo-pop. Yes to Frightened Rabbit. The rain began to fall harder and I scurried away to protect my camera, but the crazies up front, they were still a-dancin’.

I took my time walking up the Red Rocks stairs because I figured I had at least five or ten minutes before The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart took the SoCo stage. Wrong. Was my watch soaked and broken? Was I trippin’ balls? Nope, they started early. It seems like everyone in the world is totally head over heels for this band to the point where it’s not cool to like them any more. They had a great turn out on Saturday and sounded a lot better than any other band I heard on the SoCo stage all weekend. By that I mean their sound, for whatever reason, was engineered better. The lyrics were clear and the guitars and percussion did not step on each other’s toes (the camera mic was covered when shooting the video below). However, their performance didn’t knock my socks off. Listening to the record and going to a show didn’t seem to be much different.

At around 4:30 it really started to rain hard. It’s easy to complain about the weather, but it’s very hard to dismiss the fact that it severely fucked with everything that happened at Monolith from that point forward. I would have loved to have checked out some interesting new bands inside while the storm passed, but there was a line of about 60 people waiting to get in. Outside. Uncovered. Heck, I would have loved to play in the rain (I brought a poncho) if I could have gone out to the parking lot to drop my camera off for a few hours. Instead I used my media credentials to get into a tent that had free food and booze. I smoked a half a pack of cigarettes and waited for Doom. What would you have done?

Not wanting to have to again muscle my way into the photo pit like a jive sucker, I got to the Doom show about ten minutes early. My mistake. He was supposed to take the stage at 7:00, but didn’t go on until after 7:15. Again, not a big deal to me, but some fans behind me were clearly upset. “Start the fucking show!” and similar requests were yelled at Doom’s poor DJ who was trying to keep the cold, wet, and impatient crowd appeased. Apparently there was some trouble figuring out how to get Doom to the stage. I don’t know. Anyway, after the show there was even more mystery. Some people thought that Doom was perhaps performing to a backing track. Honestly, I was pretty close to the stage and I couldn’t tell. It is weird though, to have a guy up there performing who is walking all over a dimly lit stage, wearing a mask, and holding a mic directly against his mouth. The show was fair. I was turned off by the whole coming on late thing, as I had other acts I wanted to see soon after Doom. If it was a Monolith mistake, that’s one thing, but at the time it seemed like a so-eccentric-it’s-cramping-my-style prima donna move. Can you tell we were starting to get restless?

We hip-hopped our way downstairs to see Hollywood Holt. We were getting tired. We ran into a friend who told us about the nightmare that was the Starfucker show (he was roped into helping security, people were trampled, it was not pretty). Million $ Mano was spinning as we went into the Rock Room Stage, and things started feeling better. Then Hollywood Holt came out and bounced around for a few seconds before telling us we weren’t good enough. “You won’t believe the shit I’ve done to be here,” he said, “Y’all are lucky I’m even here.” No shit? I think he was lucky he wasn’t performing to an empty room at that point. I know part of his shtick is calling out the audience, but maybe a measure of caution should have been used when people have been walking up and down stairs, rained on, and hassled by security all day. Just sayin’. He could have used all that audience angst to get us riled up and mosh-pitting or something. Also, he wouldn’t stop talking. There was about two or three minutes of blather between his two or three minute songs that were neither welcomed nor needed. All that aside, when he was actually performing (music) he was a lot of fun.

I was almost out of energy. We went back upstairs for some Of Montreal, a band who I was really into for a hot second before I got sick of the falsetto, twee, craziness of it all. Without all the studio help I thought they sounded a lot better. The stage show itself was worth checking out. They had cameras with trippy effects set up all over the stage that they projected on a large screen behind the band intercut with Monty Python-style animations that went along with every song. Also, there were some weirdos with costumes. Just your typical Of Montreal show, I suppose.

Then we left. Yes, I’ll save you the suspense and say that we missed both headliners (The Mars Volta on Sunday). Of Montreal got a late enough start that we were able to check out a few Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs from the top of the main stage before braving the downpour during the drive home. The hangover started to set in about halfway back to Denver, but with sunny skies in the forecast for Sunday I was mentally preparing to rally and make Day 2 of Monolith a winner.

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Hey, fool! Check out our friends’ Saturday reviews:

• The Donnybrook Writing Academy
• Reverb
• Fuel/Friends