After getting to know the live music scene in Hong Kong over two years, I pitched a story to HK Magazine, the local alt-weekly, about the city’s lack of a flagship music festival and the roadblocks to organizing gigs large and small. The tide was turning with Clockenflap, an upstart event that had taken place for two years on a smaller scale, run into red tape, and was now debuting as a multi-day event in a newly developed waterfront area. Ahead of its big debut, I sought out and interviewed key people in the Hong Kong live music scene and chronicled previous attempts to mount large-scale music events. My article ran as the cover story in November 2011.
Elsewhere in the city, the hard-to-categorize, long-running band Deerhoof was playing Hong Kong for the first time. I spoke with guitarist John Dieterich ahead of his visit, and the interview ran in the same issue.
