(J. Neas reports from his native North Carolina on last weekend's inaugural Hopscotch Music Festival.)
Living in the South can be a frustrating endeavor when it comes to getting great concerts. Bands often seem to think that the region consists entirely of Washington, D.C. and, perhaps, Atlanta. But thankfully, Greg Lowenhagen and Greyson Currin of Raleigh, North Carolina's Independent Weekly decided that it was time to fix that. Thus, they helped to create the Hopscotch Music Festival that happened in Raleigh this past weekend. Aquarium Drunkard was on the ground for all three nights of the fest.
Earlier this year, AD spoke with Currin and Lowenhagen about the festival. "[The Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) scene] is what it is. It's the product of a few separate, but connected, small but mid-size cities. It's not New York. It's not that big, obviously. But in terms of the size of these towns, it's an extremely productive and passionate group of musicians," said Currin when I asked him about the city's scene in comparison to larger cities that are the more typical hosts for a festival of this size. Currin is also a staff writer for Pitchfork Media and I posed this question to him as someone who would have a sense of how the Triangle stacked up. "Something to keep in mind is that for every band like Bowerbirds or Megafaun or the Rosebuds, Love Language - bands that are on the national radar - there are literally hundreds of bands in this relatively small community and they're playing every night. That's the essence of this scene here."
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