Monolith Festival 2009: Day 1 [Red Rocks Ampitheater; Morrison, CO]

As I trudged up the stairs at Red Rocks -- which I can say from experience are just about equal to the infamous two-mile staircase in Vancouver, B.C. -- for the Monolith Festival, I began to wonder if this festival thing makes a lot of sense. Flashing back on all the weather-, alcohol-, and boredom-related atrocities of the past, I couldn't help but question the necessity of such endeavors. AM I GETTING TOO OLD FOR THIS? Am I nothing but an obsolete fannypack strapped to the waist of indie festival culture?

At Monolith, I came to the conclusion that YES, festivals CAN be fun, but only if you don't neglect preparation. With that in mind -- and a baby in tow -- my wife and I packed the following survival items (and every single one of them came in handy):

- diapers/wipes (duh!)
- trail mix, granola bars (in case the press tent, which will inevitably contain absolutely NOTHING but trail mix and granola bars, runs out of food)
- full schedule / venue map
- the phone number of the publicist who hooked up the ticket (in case of trouble)
- umbrellas (don't get it twisted; easily the most important item)
- ponchos
- extra sweaters/hoods/coats
- earplugs (for tiny, 2-year-old Penny)
- gasmask (I've never seen so much weed smoking at a concert; best not to inhale the secondhand)
- camera
- sunglasses
- towels (don't get it twisted; this was the second-most important item)
- blankets

See what I mean? This shit is Nervous.

So yeah: We were prepared for the elements. What we weren't prepared for was the wide-ranging barrage of music that hit us in the face like an errant ball in a batting booth, crushing our resolve down to powder. POWWWWW! With the exception of OK Go (which is a given, no?), just about every band we saw painted our proverbial back porch red with powerful sound and stage presence.

The Walkmen: Is there a better way to start a day? I think not. The five-piece -- which will inevitably be playing the Big Rooms soon enough -- crammed the stage with cocksure grandure, rolling out a few new songs and placing an emphasis on method and mood. The fresh cuts dug us in the deepest, as they saddled up atop a freight-train rhythm and rode to unknown destinations as we all sat in a boxcar, groovin' to the chugga-chugga of the shakers, toms, and tambourines.

Traditional favorites like “All Hands and the Cook” and “In the New Year” seemed a step slow, but it gave singer Hamilton Leithauser the chance to really, really, REALLY stretch his voice to the absolute breaking point, like a rubber band just before it snaps. It lends even more mystique to the rhythm section, which, with two people, often creates a roar not unlike the distant rumble of Spector-era girl-group/fake biker-gang pop. If you feel your balls shrinking and crawling back home, The Walkmen have probably started their set ...

Speaking of shrinking, my boner did just that once M Ward started playing at the main stage. Yes, like Iron and Wine so many times before him, M Ward played the main stage. Why? It didn't suit the artist OR the venue; Ward's sound is not quite big enough and his band not quite whip-tight enough to fill the cavernous maw around them. This crossroads-as-indie, Fat Possum-esque performance belonged in a more intimate venue.

Then came DOOM, a rapper who reportedly doesn't flourish in a live setting (if it's even him at all; I'd say it is). And as his two “crew” members attempted to hype up the crowd, it became apparent why: DOOM suffers from stage fright. As he sat backstage for 23 agonizing minutes, his “crew” played random beats and made random statements, urging the crowd to “make some noise” (seemingly in order to lure DOOM out of his lair). It was fucking ridiculous.

DOOM finally emerged -- he must have been polishing his mask; that thing shined like the never-dimming lights of heaven -- and all was forgiven. What he lacked in charisma and between-song obnoxiousness he more than made up for with note-perfect live transcriptions of his studio joints. And when he passed the joints on to the crowd, he never wet that shit up; the clarity problems I've read about were exaggerated, as even an unknowledgeable DOOM-ite could understand just about every pun, phrase, parable, and sniglet. Chalk one up for DOOM in the ongoing debate concerning his “weak” live show...

Ugh, Girl Talk. I liked the album, but check, please ...

And there we were, face to face with the gayest, frilliest, most-indebted-to-unicorns-and-unicorn-fantasies-in-general band you could ever slap a feather boa on, of Montreal. With an actor's troupe, androgynous regalia, a movie screen flashing FUCKED-UP images, and a generally Pinnochio-on-Pleasure-Island sort of vibe, of Montreal lived up to every porn-soaked fantasy I'd been secretly engaging in.

Also, for someone still catching up to of Montreal -- I still haven't heard Skeletal Lamping, just cracked Hissing Fauna open a few months ago -- the song selection was perfect, dipping into the last three albums and tossing in a few oldies for good measure. From there, I don't really know what to say, so I'll just pump out a few descriptors: disco donned in ruby-red lipstick and crucifixes, men in bear suits, rosy cheeks and mascara-smeared eyes, guitar players almost too costume'd to play their axe, floating pixels, electronic samples melting onto the crowd like ice cream into a giant waffle cone, men in dresses.

Moving on, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs are, well, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs; at this point, I don't know what else to say about them. Karen O still has a costume designer or two working ‘round the clock on her Björk-ish corsets, apparently, and she still treats the stage as if it were a piano and she were Michelle Pfeiffer. And her drummer still hits his snare with a nice, “crack”-able, military-style sideswipe. They also occasionally sport an unnamed second guitar player like Pat Smear in Nirvana. ‘Nuff said.

Sounds like success! Now for Monolith: Day 2, featuring Method Man and Redman, The Mars Volta and... Passion Pit?

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