This Friday evening on “The Local Beat” is going to be a fun one as we are going to try to do the show live from downtown Raleigh at Wristband City in the Sheraton Hotel for Hopscotch Music Festival. With power outages and bad Internet connections we will cross our fingers to see if we can make it work.

Hopscotch will be beginning its second day as the Local Beat takes the air and we will be joined by a variety of guests that may include WXDU‘s Ross Grady, old school local band Soccer member and Lenovo Social Media Editor Gavin O’Hara, as well as several different local musicians who plan on dropping by. The conversation will focus on Hopscotch and the people and music involved in it.

It all starts at 5 p.m. with plans for the show to only last until 6 p.m. so we can all join the Dodos, who are playing live in City Plaza starting at 5:45 p.m.

Feel free to come by and watch the Local Beat from Wristband City, whether you are a Hopscotch goer or not!

As always “The Local Beat” starts at 5 p.m.  every Friday evening on WKNC. Listen live here and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and ReverbNation!

It’s finally time for round two of Hopscotch Music Festival, coming up this weekend, September 8-10 in downtown Raleigh.

Free Electric State at Local Band Local Beer, March 25, 2010. Photo by Karen Mann of Mann's World. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

This year offers a special free day party sponsored by Port Merch - College Radio Showcase, presented by WUAG, WKNC, WXYC and WXDU. The four college radio stations are part of UNC-Greensboro, N.C. State University, UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University, respectively. The stations have collaborated to create an awesome lineup of local music from the Triangle (and slightly beyond) by each choosing one band to represent them: Nests (WKNC), Whatever Brains (WXYC), Free Electric State (WXDU) and The Bronzed Chorus (WUAG).  These bands cover the genres of post-country, shoegaze, punk, experimental and indie rock.

The day party will be at White Collar Crime on Saturday, September 10, noon until five.

All Hopscotch day parties are free and require no ticket for entry. For a full list of Hopscotch’s day parties, refer to their day party schedule.

This Thursday through Saturday, December 3-5, The Pinhook in Durham will be hosting The Great Band Swap—based on a 2007 concert.

The format: three nights, four local bands a night, and every artist must cover at least one song by one of the other three artists that night.

The Pinhook website (http://thepinhook.com/) provides the following line-ups and descriptions

Thursday, December 2 features the anthemic punk rock of Pink Flag, the soulful, old-school pop of Brett Harris, the classic-rock hooks of The Pneurotics, and the shambolic majesty of Dry Heathens. The WXDU deejay team.

Friday, December 3, local legend Billy Sugarfix leads the way with his whipsmart catalog of charming, confessional pop. Juan Huevos brings ebullient homemade hip-hop, and Durham duo Joy In Red squares off with Raleigh art-garage outfit Antibubbles. Deejay sets will be provided by WXYC.

Saturday, December 4 is the wildest bill, hitting most of the genre extremes in indie rock. Cassis Orange provides distilled electro-pop with a subtle Japanese edge. Mosadi Music is hard-edged, political hip-hop with searingly tight live instrumentation. HOG takes heavy-metal and stretches into psychedelic dirges and molten, fleet fingered hooks. And Embarrassing Fruits channels the finest guitar rock of the past 20 years, mixed with lyrics about girls, partying, and small-town ennui. The WKNC crew will spin records.

As listed, after the performances local college radio stations WXDU (Duke University), WXYC (The University of North Carolina), and, of course, WKNC (North Carolina State University) will provide the music by deejaying.  I will be representing the station with my co-host and valiant General Manager of WKNC 88.1. It should prove to be a most interesting and entertaining local happening each night and overall, and may earn a status as an annual event.

Tonight on the Local Beat we begin our second installment of the Local Beat Roundtable Series.  If you remember from back in August when we had our first in the roundtable discussions with Betsy Harris, Karen Mann, Jake Seaton, Linnie Green, and Bryan Reed the focus on these roundtable discussions is not to focus on the music that make up our scene but the people who promote it and document it.

This evening we are having several exemplary characters in on the program for what should turn out to be some great conversation.

Ross Grady has been the most prominent local music documenter probably ever in our region.  It seems his dedication to the scene knows no bounds.  In addition to running Triangle Rock and starting up Alt Music Chapel Hill Ross is also the guardian of his radio program on WXDU that happens every Sunday from 4pm-6pm.  Be sure to listen in on 88.7 or stream it live on the internet!

Ryan Sweeney is another radio personality who was the general manager at 89.3 WSOE in 2009.  He is now living in Cary and the Director of Communications at the popular website Choose Local Music.  In addition to other things Ryan is a great local music connoisseur who should have plenty to share.

Glenn Boothe is the main man at one of the most significant local venues in the Triangle, the Local 506 in Chapel Hill.   Commonly the central hub of local music in our area, the Local 506 is commonly mentioned by bands and fans alike as their favorite place to watch live music in our area.   I can’t wait to chat with Glenn about his thoughts on the music in our area.

Another music venue owner, Chris Tamplin is stopping by.  Chris was the main organizer for Local Beer Local Band and booked shows at Tir Na Nog before starting his own venture with Durham’s newest local venue, Motorco.  Chris should have some fascinating insight into the different cities and their relationships to the music surrounding them among other things.

Eric Chen is also dropping by.  You might have heard Eric on WXYC for nine years or seen him at many Hammer No More The Fingers shows (as well as others) with his video camera in tote.  Eric has been documenting the music in our area for some time now and I am sure he will have plenty to add to our convseration.  Check out his Vimeo Account here.

Hammer No More the Fingers + Phil Cook @ Trekky House 5/24/10 from Eric Chen on Vimeo.

It is certainly a special treat to have each of these amazing individuals on the show all at once.  It is not going to be a Local Beat you will want to miss.  Be sure to tune in at 5pm on 88.1 or listen live online.  Also, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and ReverbNation.