The first day of the annual Monolith Festival 2009 was no place for casual fans. Temperatures hovered in the high 40s for most of the the day while intermittent rain filled Red Rocks Amphitheatre with puddles and sent runoff cascading down the venue's hundreds of stone steps. But as Gregg Gillis of the mashup act Girl Talk screamed sometime after 9 p.m., most people were too fired up to care if the skies kept bringing the rain.
Gillis' set, during which dozens of fans crowded the stage for a rain-slick, 90-minute dance party, would have been the highlight of the night if Yeah Yeah Yeahs hadn't been in such rare form. Singer Karen O took the stage in a psychedelic wizard costume that distracted the crowd from the miserable conditions and kept them dancing right until the show ended around 11 p.m. Other acts ranging from pop-punkers OK Go to indie rapper Doom rounded out the day.
As the weather cleared for day two of the monolithic musical madness, concertgoers greeted the better weather with hands in the air and crazy dancing legs. Any dance fuel that was held up inside because of the prior night's storm was let loose as the stellar lineup took to the stages.
Many were sad to hear that headliner MSTRKRFT had to cancel their show last minute, but the quickly rearranged schedule gave French indie rock band Phoenix a chance to take the main stage instead of one of the smaller stages they were originally scheduled for. These were tough shoes to fill, as their show was pinned between Method Man & Red Man and The Mars Volta. But much to the crowd's delight, they came through with what some would say was the best show of the day.
Check below for photos from both days, band profiles and more Monolith coverage that you can't get enough of.
