In a sea of multi-day music festivals trying to make their mark with the ultimate modern-rock lineup, one upcoming festival rises up - literally - like a mountain above all the others. With sponsorship by the oddly suited actuaries at Esurance, the Monolith Festival will debut the weekend of September 14 in Colorado's Red Rock Amphitheatre, an unforgettable natural environment. Five stages will keep things busy for the 9,000 ticketholders, with the Flaming Lips, Cake, Earl Greyhound, Juliette & the Licks, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Kings of Leon, and Flosstradamus among the 50-plus participants.

Now resigned to "classic rock" status, two of the 1980s' biggest arena-rocking bands are back next week with all-new cover collections. Poison passes - thankfully - on the eyeshadow and puckers up with Poison'd on Capitol Records, featuring eight new sessions and other rarities including a take on the Kiss party anthem "Rock & Roll All Nite," from 1987's Less Than Zero soundtrack. The party-people-pleasing set list features Alice Cooper's "I Never Cry," Tom Petty's "I Need to Know," The Cars' "Just What I Needed," and the Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See."

Mark your calendars and beg your local record store to hold you a copy of the June 6 NME magazine, as that week's issue will come with a limited-edition white-wax seven-inch of The White Stripes' new single, "Icky Thump." While the UK retail CD and seven-inch single bear the rare B sides "Catch Hell Blues" and "Baby Brother," respectively, the NME bonus bears an artistic, etched flip side instead of another song.

Most everybody knows that Blur song as "Woo Hoo," even though its proper title is "Song 2." Neither is particularly meaningful.

But Kyle Ferguson, a senior philosophy major at Augustana College, called one of his songs "Notes from a Solipsist," and that title frames the song's lyrics. Solipsism is a belief that one can only know what one directly experiences - that there might not be a world outside of your own mind.

"You identify your experience with the world," Ferguson explained. "So there's no reality external to your experience."