A Walking Disast3r: Monolith Music Festival Day 2 Recap:

Monolith….Day 1 …I’m going to let you finish but I just want to say that Day 2 is the best day of the festival......of all time.

After an awesome and wet day 1, the weather goods delivered a perfect day 2. Getting a chance to sleep in a bit and recover we headed out in hopes of catching some bands we had yet to see. The good folks at Flip Video were gracious enough to provide us a Flip Mino HD to catch some of the action this year, please check out their line of Flip cameras for your concert recording needs. Upon arriving at the venue we noticed that all the press photographers were on the Southern Comfort Stage, which stirred our curiosity a bit. We looked at our schedules and had come to the conclusion that Monotonix was the band we were not going to miss this year. After reading reviews and watching endless You Tube footage of past shows we knew we were in for a treat. Who really cares if you can understand a single lyric these guys sing it is their ball to the wall un-staged show that had people buzzing about one of the finest sets of the festival. They served up a hot plate of in your face no holds barred chaos. They stole beer from the audience, climbed on the audience, spit on the audience, and the crowd soaked it up. At one point (kids close your eyes) front man Levi Elvis took the microphone stuck it where the sun don’t shine and managed to continue the rest of his song. I won’t even go into their short shorts these guys were wearing, it was something straight out of the 80’s. One thing is for sure these crazy Israeli bastards sure know how to rock.

Next up was a trek down to the Esurance Main Stage to catch a band I have always wanted to see. I was expecting a little bit more from The Dandy Warhols and left quite unimpressed with their pretentious stage presence. It seemed as many in the crowd were expecting a more exciting set only to be left disappointed. Who knows maybe a later time slot would have benefited them.

I decided to stay at the main stage to catch another band I felt did not live up to the high expectations I had perceived. Maybe it was their “epic” Lollapalooza set that had me excited to see these guys. Now let me just say that the crowd quickly filled up the main stage for these guys. I guess when you are just punching buttons on a monitor you kind of lose that substance factor.

The next group to take center stage was the hip-hop slapstick duo of Red and Meth…for those of you not down with the slang that would be Redman and Method Man. The two exchanged lyrical barbs back and forth and hit the decent size crowd with a little hip hop flavor. With hits such as the fitting ”How High” the duo plugged their upcoming movie and soundtrack “How High 2”. As the hip hop world continues to embrace the new generation of artist leave it to these two to bring back a little nostalgia.

Day 2 seemed to bring up more bands that I wanted see, In fact taking the SoCo stage was a band that played last year to a much smaller crowd, it goes to show that if you market your band right and make good quality music it pays dividends, such was the case for Passion Pit, who had the whole upper level of Red Rocks shaking the ground…no they really had the ground shaking. With a their highly acclaimed album Manners in rotation almost everywhere the band delivered crowd favorites such as “Sleepyhead” and “Little Secrets”, to the supportive crowd.

After some re-shifting of bands from the SoCo Stage to the Esurance Main Stage all due to MSTRKRFT cancelling (rumblings from the crowd included that they snorted to much cocaine the night before), the main stage belonged to the Parisian boys known as Phoenix. Thomas Mars and crew took center stage where they so rightfully belonged in the first place to rock the crowd with a tight set and accompanied minimal light show that had the Red Rocks crowd singing word by word almost every song. These guys seem to be blowing up at just the right time.

The artist you were mostly likely to run into during the whole festival would probably have been the Canadian duo of Chromeo (who by the way were able to plug AWD in the video on this page). These guys where everywhere from the kickoff party Friday night to randomly catching sets from all the artist throughout day 1 and 2. What has to be one of the most famous stage props in the business, the mannequin legs holding up their keyboards and other instruments. The crowd chanted CHROME-O-OOOO, Chrome-O-OOOO, although I have been a big fan of their music, I had never seen them live and came to appreciate the live instruments used in their sets, by far one of the more underrated performances of the festival.

Last but not least the Sunday headliners hold a special place in my heart as they are originally from my hometown of El Paso, Texas. What started off as At The Drive In the early days of their careers has branched off into several factions, we had groups such as the dub-inspired Defacto, the alt-rock Sparta, which later became the country-alt-rock Sleeper Car and finally the prog-rock Mars Volta. All in all they all have become inter-wined between its members and very much the foundation for their current projects.The Mars Volta has a unique fan base to say the least you are either a fan or you are not, such was the case at Monolith as it clearly showed by the capacity of the venue. Nevertheless they put on a show that I consider one of the best at the beautiful, historic venue. With lead singer Cedric Bixler-Zavala commanding the stage and Omar Rodriquez-Lopez providing the soundtrack it was an experience never to be forgotten. A perfect way to end day 2 of the ever-growing festival, a big thanks to everybody involved in putting the festival together, organizers, staff, artist, fellow bloggers, writers, photographers......see you guys next year.