Recap The best and worst of Monolith Festival

Monolith is over, and that means so is summer. The end-of-season Red Rocks festival, which wrapped up on Sunday, was host to more than a hundred acts and a few thousand fans. It was a weekend's worth of buzzworthy bands, overpriced beers, and drunken/dehydrated stair-climbing—and, yeah, it was pretty great. We’re exhausted, but there’s just enough in us to dole out some well-deserved superlatives. Here’s The A.V. Club’s winners/losers for the best, worst, and grossest moments at this year's Monolith.

Best under-attended set: The Cool Kids
The Gothic Theatre holds about a thousand, but only 50 or so showed up to watch The Cool Kids Friday night at the Monolith pre-party. Maybe everyone was pre-gaming at home, readying themselves for the weekend’s endless stream of bands, but they sure did miss out. The Kids rocked it anyway, slamming through their set of ’80s-style hip-hop at break-neck rhyming speeds. 

Worst DJ etiquette: Chromeo DJ set
The Chromeo boys slapped down some decent tunes at the Monolith pre-party Friday night at Moe’s, but the two lost points breaking one of the universal, unspoken rules of DJing: If you’re in a band, it’s in bad taste to play your own stuff (especially three different songs in the course of 25 minutes). It’s like wearing your own band shirt—it may feel comfortable, but you probably just shouldn’t do it, unless you want people to think you’re an arrogant prick.

Biggest bummer: the rain
Thanks, mother nature, for making out-of-towners think that it rains in Colorado all day long, when we natives know it didn't start raining here until, like, 2007. On the plus side, the drizzle made The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart's set feel like a missing scene from Say Anything. We're still swooning.

Worst place to see a great DJ set: Girl Talk on the Esurance main stage
While Gregg Gillis kept his massive mash-up set true to form by beckoning fans to join him onstage, the dance-party effect just wasn’t the same. Seeing Girl Talk from 100 feet away is kind of like watching Soul Train in your living room instead of going to the club. Also: The Breeders + Twista + Tone Lōc = Best Girl Talk mix of the evening.

Best undressing onstage: Kathy Foster of The Thermals
After repeatedly pulling up her bra straps between songs, Thermals bassist Kathy Foster lost it. Her bra, that is. Halfway through their set, she turned her back to the audience, unhooked, and pulled the offending garment out from under her shirt, returning to the mic and saying, “Don’t you hate it when you’re rocking and your bra strap keeps falling down?”

Most shameless promotion: Method Man & Redman
The pair—the odd ones out on the indie-rock heavy bill—used their main-stage, co-headlining set to hype just one thing: How High. The 2001 stoner-comedy, which of course stars both rappers, was name-dropped several times by the two from “How many of y’all have seen How High?” to “How many of y’all are going to see How High 2?”—a reminder that even the toughest rap names can stink of cheese.

Best Scottish accent: Frightened Rabbit and The Twilight Sad (tie)
When you think heavy, guitar-driven rock ’n’ roll, you think foreign accents, right? Naturally. Frightened Rabbit’s Scott Hutchison and The Twilight Sad’s James Graham both hail from Scotland, but their individual accents achieved different effects. Hutchinson’s brogue lent a playful air to Rabbit’s main-stage performance, while Graham stalked the subterranean WOXY stage, brooding into the microphone with his low, Glaswegian growl. The Frenchmen in Phoenix had nothing on these guys.

Best band that insurance wouldn’t cover: Monotonix
A Monolith staffer told us that Monotonix were asked to play on the floor in front of the outdoor Southern Comfort stage—rather than on it—because “the insurance wouldn’t cover them.” Sounds like the stuff of urban legend, but the Israeli band certainly lived up to it: The group uprooted its setup (a tiny drum kit, a guitar player, and a sweaty, shirtless lead singer) several times, forcing the surrounding crowd into an awkward backward and forward shuffle. Monotonix frontman Levi Elvis also pushed, spit on, ran through, and climbed atop the audience, only to climax all this by mooning everyone and sticking the mic in his butt several times.

Biggest disappointment: Passion Pit
Boston’s Passion Pit released its full-length Manners a few months ago to critical acclaim, but supposedly didn’t start seriously rehearsing those songs until, er, several months later—and it shows. The keyboards and backing tracks were too loud, and singer Michael Angelako was nervous and awkward, like he didn’t know what to do when he wasn’t singing. When he was singing, his near-constant falsetto sounded feeble and hoarse.

Most crowd-endangering set: Health
Crammed into a limited-capacity room of the Radius stage, the sweaty crowd had nowhere to go once the noise quartet began blowing everyone’s faces off. Perplexed festival-goers fleeing the scene through the same tiny doorway that rabid fans were trying to enter made for one messy and claustrophobic fire-code violation. The most amusing part? A girl, commenting on the size of the audience, asked, “Are these guys local or something?”

Most free stuff: madeloud.com
The social networking site madeloud.com—which aims to bring “indie fans indie music without filters”—may still be in its beta stage, but its representatives hit the festival hard with free hats, T-shirts, guitar picks, bottle openers, and buttons. Awarding swag to concertgoers who paid big money for festival tickets? How deviously clever.

Best hair: The kid with the Casualties’ style mohawk
Anyone present on day two of the festival was guaranteed to run into the kid with the giant mohawk—or actually run into the kid’s giant mohawk. You know the one: He looked about 10 years old, his dad looked like Blake Schwarzenbach from Jawbreaker, and he was constantly surrounded by girls taking photographs.

Biggest litterbug: Shag Lounge
Flyers for the Lounge’s Scumbag Sundays—a green cardstock emblazoned with a toothless babe in silver ski garb—were everywhere, from the seats to the stairs to, appropriately enough, covered in puke on the floor of the ladies’ bathroom.

Best non-show show by a Monolith performer: John Famiglietti from Health 
Before enjoying a soft-serve cone from the indoor vendors, Famiglietti spent 20 minutes playing outside the VIP lounge on promotional keyboards with headphones on. (If only we could have heard what he was playing.) Also seen: Famiglietti simultaneously talking on his phone while smoking something out of a pipe outside the media tent.

Easiest Monolith performer to stalk: John Famiglietti from Health
See above.

Best stage upgrade: Phoenix
After MSTRKRFT’s last-minute cancellation, Paris-based indie-rock band Phoenix was bumped up to the main stage, where it should have been in the first place. Judging by the massive audience turnout, there would have been a stampede had the band played its original slot on the much smaller Southern Comfort stage. The band’s performance was stadium-worthy, complete with fog machine and a seizure-inducing light show. Can't wait for next year.