Vampire Weekend, The National Rock Eclectic Big Ears Festival

3/29/10, 3:34 pm EST

When you think of classic college towns, Knoxville, Tennessee doesn’t exactly spring to mind. Unlike Athens, Georgia, or Chapel Hill, North Carolina, whose respective universities spill into the downtown streets creating a vibrant, eclectic social hub, the University of Tennessee buttresses “The Strip,” a mostly soul-crushing stretch of countless fast foot chains and down n’ dirty student bars. For various reasons, the city’s nearby downtown area has struggled through the years — part of it is geography, it’s separated from the university by a man-made park and a busy six-lane highway