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VICE at Hopscotch: Last Two Days and Final Thoughts

The tastes of Hopscotch are broad, but finely detailed. It's a fan's festival for sure, especially with regard to the smaller, more niche-oriented acts. Was it fun? Sure. The best music happened in the crevices.

I don't think I've ever been in a city this size (population 400,000 plus) that is so conspicuously clean. Outside of major theme parks it's such an oddball site to see uniformed people walking around sweeping up trash and cigarette butts. I'd heard that the city of Raleigh really gets behind Hopscotch, and all available evidence confirms this, and that they'd made a special effort to keep downtown sparkling. But it was clean way outside of this area, too. I drove around and even in the rough patches it was noticeably tidy.

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The second day of Hopscotch was the first day there were tons of day parties. It was also the day I realized my internal compass had lost its magnet. An entire day of hit-n-miss, errors and happy accidents was to follow.

The Pour House was hosting the Brooklyn Vegan/Figure Eight Management party but no one from Brooklyn Vegan was there. No signs, no nothin’! And the room was bare as bones at noon when things kicked off with indie-dance go-getters White Life. By the time they stopped playing the crowd swelled to around 20 or so due mainly to their not letting the sparseness change their course. Even so, they didn’t do anything for me at all. So I shuffled around in that weird festival daze within which one is constantly looking for coffee, shade or free stuff.

Made it down to Kings but caught only bits of proper sets because I was planning my night and trying like hell to listen to as many samples from as many bands as I could to get at least some direction. Regret set in a few hours later when I admitted I should have just stayed put and stayed in the standing-room-only, uh, room and payed closer attention to the scramblingly killer line up. Who? Bill Orcutt, Alan Bishop & Chris Corsano playing as a trio, William Tyler, Hiss Golden Messenger and others. All I wound up seeing was the “incidental music” played between sets by Nathaniel Bowles and Mike Gangloff, both of Black Twig Pickers.

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Thrill Jockey Records was “hosting” its showcase at Neptune's and Guardian Alien played an OK set that my snobby side convinces me would have been more awesome if I'd just kept my eyes closed. But my old punk blood and dander kept rising and all I could think was “What a bunch of hippies!” and then drummer grabbed a little gong and started hitting it and I split. I wasn't gone long, though, because I still wanted to see White Hills and was expecting to be aurally slaughtered. I kind of was but not the way I thought. Sans drummer for this set the pair of Dave W. and Ego Sensation played a sonically seductive—admittedly kind of a gross way of putting it—drone set. And Neptune's had the AC on super high so it was chilly and arctic and great.

Not a lot else happened the rest of the day that really piqued my interest until it was time to see Jesus & Mary Chain at City Plaza. Now, let's talk about this. City Plaza is an area of downtown Raleigh situated smack dab in the middle of several hotel and banking towers. Walls of glass hundreds of feet high and about as well-lit as Disney World at night. This was where JAMC were going to sing about honey dripping, heads in gutters and killing oneself on a motorbike? Yes, that was the plan and, yes, JAMC played those songs but under the illuminated canopy of Bank Of America, Wells Fargo, PNC, Marriott and Sheraton there was a hell of a lot lost in translation. Really seemed like the band phoned it all in to me. There are bands, great ones even, that would fit in such an atmosphere just fine but the Mary Chain just isn't one of them. After giving this the old college try I walked around the block to see Glenn Jones at the Memorial Auditorium. But, wait, there's more…

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I'd been getting lost around Raleigh with some comical regularity so when I crossed the street and saw hundreds of girls in gowns, old people in tuxedos and tons of rose bouquets I just started snapping photos. Then there were more girls. Then more. And they all wore white gowns and carried bouquets. Was this a Moonie mass wedding? No. It was the North Carolina Debutante Ball! It was totally one of those moments where you'd ask yourself, “Did I drop acid earlier?” I tried like hell to find any good information about the mysterious Terpsichorean Club, the Raleigh  secret society which hosts this event, but found none. I asked one non-deb if I could take her photo for VICE and, she said, “Darling, you go right ahead.” I suspected she didn't know VICE from Vanity Fair but she was already posing before I could explain. Older dude totally photo-bombed me, too.

The Meymondi Concert Hall, where all this jazz took place, is right next to the Memorial Auditorium, so I figured it out eventually. Glenn Jones was well into his set. He's solidly in what he calls the “Takoma School”--i.e. John Fahey-style playing. And having been lucky enough to have seen Fahey live I can attest true to this. Mesmerizing stuff. Chris Corsano got up at one point and played percussion toward the end, too.

Next on the agenda was POP. 1280 at Slim's. OK, first, they were easily the most photo-ready live band of the week. I was getting so bored with photos of dudes with closed eyes leaning into a microphone. How does an existential snake writhe? What's it like to be inside a burning building that's trapped under ice? That's what POP. 1280 sounds like. Every throb, every beat, every vocal line. An apocalypse that surrounds but is still somewhat out of reach. And it's the distance that makes it desirable.

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Got lost AGAIN looking for the Ital show, circled the block and wound up at Slim's again which was fine because White Hills was playing a full-on show tonight. Utterly cinematic, harrowing, horrifying and necessary. And dammit if Dave. W doesn't look just like Alice Cooper.

My head was pounding so I headed back to the hotel, got turned around again—I swear I'm not always this idiotic—and was getting totally frustrated with myself. Then, I heard a saxophone coming out of a parking garage and had this weird Woody Allen/George Gershwin moment. The music wasn't the same, of course, but the mood was. I threw some cash in the players case and started snapping photos. When he stopped playing the progression he was in he said, “Hey, sorry I've got this pick in my hair. I'm not trying to make a statement or anything.” His name was Austin Barnard, he has no website and only a business card with an email address (apollo4900@yahoo.com). Right before I left him he said, “You know, I was playing tritones right then. Just for fun, really. It's nasty stuff.”

Five minutes later I found the right street I needed and the night was over.

Saturday was packed with day parties but it was also packed with this weird family-fun-fair vibe that I tend to bristle at. The whole groovy-band-in-the-street, drinkin' draft beer, wearin' flip-flops scene just turns me off. Case in point was the Megafaun party. I was able to stand exactly five minutes of Mount Moriah and nothing else at that thing.

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When I realized Raleigh natives Double Negative were playing a block away—albeit on another street stage—I ran down there and saw exactly two minutes of 'em before they stopped. That's the cleansing power of hardcore, folks. Two minutes can clean five out of your ears just like that.

Oh, wait, let's back up. Before any of this I caught Old Bricks at Kings and really liked them. T'was a shame the sun was shining into the room so brightly, though, as the only proper thing to shine on this show would be a fire, or a streetlamp, or something else specifically bright but otherwise surrounded in darkness. The whole set sounded like it was born in an echo chamber. Like waves caught in a sea cave that will never reach the beach. RIYL: Codeine, Low, Galaxie 500.

Now let's jump forward. Grass Giraffes, my local boys from Athens, were glowing. Their nervous energy was apparent but it propelled them. Every time I see them I remember that I'm not actually sick of guitar pop at all, it just needs to be this good. It needs to make me think, as the set progresses, “This song is my favorite. No, wait, this one!”

A storm hit Raleigh around 6:30 PM and Escort was canceled on the City Plaza stage. The Roots played their set starting around ten but by that time I was watch Burglar Fucker play psycho guitar-n-sax while getting their equipment completely wrecked by drunk “fans.” Mic got knocked out, guitars unplugged, pedals all flipped over, etc. I dunno. Whatever.

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The Long View Center is a church and I saw a stunningly beautiful set by Poland's Jacaszek. Seriously floored. All I could do was sit back and have it wash over me. It creaked and swayed. Swelled and ebbed. Hissed and fluttered. Like Erik Satie and the quieter parts of Village Of Savoonga. Tried to stick around to catch Secret Cities but they took way too long setting up and it was time to see Danny Brown at CAM so that was that.

Danny Brown is nuts. And a hell of a lot of fun. All he wants to do is have a good time all the time. So dirty, so silly. At one point someone threw a North Carolina Tar Heels hat at him. He put it on but then looked at it and said,” North Carolina is cool, but I'm from Detroit so you know I'm a Michigan fan, right?” Then he showed that he was raised right by politely handing the hat back instead of just throwing it. What a guy!

The night was almost over when Flosstradamus played. The crowd was ridiculous by this point with poor white folks “dancing” but mostly throwing their hands in the air like they just didn't care. A guy in a chicken mask tried to get up onstage but that didn't work for him so he went back to trying to grind. Danny Brown, as promised, was in the crowd to “party” and he did. It was all a little bizarre but not in that way of being “oh, wow, this is a real moment”-bizarre but more like “Does anyone here realize they're still in an art gallery?”-bizarre.

None of which is to say it wasn't cool or fun. It was both. Maybe I was just beat tired.

After hanging with some homeboys after this show Hopscotch was over for me. I slept a handful of hours and started my drive home. Was it a success? Artistically and organizationally, yes. These folks have it handled all the way down to the embroidered cloth wristbands. Every detail is checked and double checked. And the quality of acts was really, really good. The tastes of Hopscotch are broad but finely detailed. It's a fan's festival for sure, especially with regard to the smaller, more niche-oriented acts. Was it fun? Sure. The best music happened in the crevices and dark hallways far from the tourist-board photo-op of City Plaza. But that's always the way and I don't doubt that, if we really sat down and had a chat, the Hopscotch organizers would agree immediately.

Previously: Field Report Day One

@gordonlamb