Monolith Rocks

On Saturday, we headed out to Red Rocks to attend the Monolith Festival. I was expecting a Mile High Music Festival-esque day. On the contrary, I thought this was put together much better, with the exception that they could have used more signs saying the schedule/stages/maps.

We checked out the Morning Benders – in the Rock Room of the visitor center (they referred to it as the dungeon, very hard to find, not great sound quality and an odd room for such a show). Despite this, I found them adorable and fun to watch! Next we saw my favorite of the day: Cameron McGill and What Army. What a random group of guys for a band! From the skinny pianist to the very much like Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite guitarist, to the very interesting head bobbing lead singer – these guys are all unique and extremely interesting to watch, put on a good show. Cut Copy was like being at a club – fun all around but they ended their show apologizing that they went over their time limit and were getting kicked off – sort of odd.  Mickey Avalon was scandalous and just not good. I thought everyone knew he was not good but likes him because it’s funny to like someone so horrible – but apparantly the 17 year olds in the crowd were very, very serious about liking Mickey – and wanting to have his coked out babies. On the whole he was the only disappointing show I saw – and even his theatrics were good (girls stripping down from fur coats to their black leather outfits carrying around whips. Entertaining at least.) Vampire Weekend, and Atmosphere were great shows as well. Silversun Pickup’s were okay in my opinion – but the crowd seemed to love ‘em. We were too cold to stay for Devotchka.

Other highlights of the festival:

the Dell tent: complete with fake tatoos, a button making station, and girls who did your hair in a number of fashions and sprayed it bright colors. (We participated in each of these. I got the rock symbol on my arm. Holly got a bird on her back – and a mohawk for a hairdo.)

the Hoola-Hooping Girls (no music festival is complete without them).

the fairly nice weather until about 9 pm when it dropped 30 degrees in 5 minutes and started raining.

the Red Rocks view can’t be beaten – great place for a music fest!

Check out Westword’s reviews and pictures.