Sorry to get all provincial here, but this reporter's hometown of Denver, Colorado is pretty stoked today with the announcement of the Monolith Music Festival's inaugural lineup. The fest will take place on September 14 and 15 at the legendary Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and it's Denver's first full-scale attempt to launch its own Sasquatch-type spectacle. The bill, while not particularly imaginative or daring, has some solid, middle-of-the-road crowd-pleasers like The Flaming Lips, The Decemberists, Cake, Kings Of Leon, Spoon, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah–but there's also a grip of great smaller acts (Ghostland Observatory, Cloud Cult, YACHT, Flosstradamus, Earl Greyhound, The Broken West, William Elliott Whitmore, Bob Log III) and even some excellent Colorado bands the whole country should get acquainted with, including Hot IQs, Born In The Flood, Bela Karoli, and Everything Absent Or Distorted.
Yeah, mid-September is the tail end of the exhausting summer music-fest season, but Monolith will be a worthy destination–especially for you out-of-towners who've never experienced a concert at Red Rocks. Drop a line, you can crash on my couch.