Colorado fans of indie rock, rejoice.
With trips to Southern California’s Coachella, Washington’s Sasquatch and Tennessee’s Bonnaroo getting more expensive annually, the metro area now has its first-ever behemoth indie rock music festival at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Monolith will take over the Morrison park Sept. 14-15, and The Denver Post is the first to report its initial artist line-up for the festival’s first outing.
Oklahoma City psych-rockers the Flaming Lips and Portland, Oregon’s literary pop maestros the Decemberists are among the biggest names on the initial release, which also includes Spoon, Kings of Leon, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Cake, Cloud Cult, Ghostland Observatory, Flosstradamus with Kid Sister, Das Efx, Earl Greyhound, Juliette & the Liks, Yacht, Ra Ra Riot, Bob Log III, Lords of the Underground, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Autovaughn and Otis Gibbs.
The festival organizers – Matt Fecher and Josh Baker – were previously responsible for the South Park Music Festival in Fairplay and the Midwest Music Summit in Indianapolis, respectively. They’re partnered with AEG Live’s Denver offices for Monolith, which is surprisingly the first event of its kind at Red Rocks.
Some local luminaries will be playing one of the festival’s five stages, including Everything Absent or Distorted, Bela Karoli, Machine Gun Blues, Angie Stevens, the Swayback, Cat-A-Tac and Gregory Alan Isakov.
Tickets – prices to be determined soon – go on sale at 10 a.m. June 2 through Ticketmaster outlets, ticketmaster.com or 303-830-8497.
Pop music critic Ricardo Baca can be reached at 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com.
