HFStival 2010

I just learned (via The Comics Curmudgeon's Josh Fruhlinger on Facebook) that the HFStival is coming back this year - as an oldies show.

Midnight Sun: Third Eye Blind, Billy Idol to headline HFStival - baltimoresun.com

This is depressing, though not really unexpected. I took part in several HFStivals over the years, thanks to my sister. My first was in 1994, at RFK Stadium, and my last was in 2005, also at RFK. In-between we went to two or three others, mostly at RFK, at least once at PSINet stadium. Back in those days, at least the early days, the featured bands were mostly cutting-edge alternative, some people who had made it big and some who were just on their way up. But at the 2005 show, at least two of the acts could be considered somewhat more established - the New York Dolls and Billy Idol. By then the station that had been WHFS was no longer broadcasting alternative music - its format had been changed to what the Wikipedia article "WHFS (historic)" refers to as "Tropical Latin." WHFS eventually found a new home online, playing a sort of "classical alternative" format - a playlist essentially frozen in time.

And that, I guess, is what this new HFStival is. An oldies show, a nostalgia act, a chance for a bunch of thirty- and forty-somethings to get together and reminisce about how great music used to be, before they started playing that new-fangled stuff on the radio - why, that isn't music, that's noise - and what is it with the kids these days, with those clothes, and that hair...



Some posts about the 2005 HFStival:

Another Monkey: Musical unanswerables
Another Monkey: HFStival 2005 summary
Another Monkey: HFStival 2005 photos