20 years ago.
Wow.
It wasn't called the HFS-tival that year, in fact it wasn't even our idea. The Fairfax County Department of Parks and Recreation called and said "Hey, we're having a family friendly fun Fourth of July festival, would you like to help promote it and bring some bands?"
So we did. The Tragically Hip, The Pursuit of Happiness, Concrete Blonde, Neal Cody, Winter Hours and a couple others I can't recall.
It was $5 a carload. It was fun. We decided to do it again.
The next year there were bigger bands and a much bigger crowd.
It was more fun. We decided to do it again.
It wasn't until year four, when the Painful decision to move to RFK Stadium was made that the name HFS-tival was created. There was a lot of of arguing for and against the big stadium. After all stadium shows suck.
So we had to be bigger than the venue. We promoted it "We're taking over RFK for the HFS-tival 20 bands for 20 bucks." Sold out in 53 minutes. It didn't matter Who the bands were, the audience wanted to be there for the scene, the Party, the event of the summer.
But the bands were great. INXS, The Posies, Iggy Pop, Stereo MCs, Belly, Matthew Sweet and X. And More.
2 stages, inside and out, rides, beer, games and Gak! We had a Gak pit - remember that stuff? Nickelodeon sent us cases of it and we filled a bath tub - and people reached deep down in looking for prizes.
We provided free booth space to about 50 progressive non Profit organizations to hand out info and talk to the people. It was awesome. So we decided to do it again.
And again and again. It was imitated dupilcated and made a LOT of money for the station.
Until the Year there was no HFS.
But this year there is another HFS-tival. Sometime in September. At Merriweather, promoted by WHFS2 which can be heard online or via the HD2 Channel of 94.7 fm in DC.
Tickets have been on sale for a while now, great seats still available.
No rides, no games, No Gak.
Nearly 25 years ago I began a career in Broadcast Advertising sales at a company that represented Classical Radio Stations exclusively. We had a fine roster of major market stations, many that had been in the format since the dawn of FM radio. Shortly after I joined the company we added a new client station, KDFC San Francisco. The station owner was Ed Davis. After returning home from serving in World War II, Ed boarded a train a train and arrived in San Francisco. In 1948 he obtained the license for 102.1 FM and launched KDFC as San Francisco's Radio Concert Hall. By the time I met Ed in 1984 He was a wealthy man, but not from selling radio ads. He had made much more in Real Estate, including acreage atop the Mountain in Sausalito across the bay from San Francisco where he built a tower for his station and was later able to rent tower space to numerous other broadcasters. For those of you who are not broadcast engineers, FM radio relies on height to get the optimum coverage and Ed bought the highest ground before most people even owned an FM receiver. He saw the future before others. He was in the right place at the right time and more importantly knew he was in the right place at the right time. KDFC was the first station to broadcast in stereo. The first to have unattended overnight automation and in many more cases Ed was quick to innovate. Ed would have loved Flycast. To be able to listen to his great station as I am now, on an iPhone on a train between Philadelphia and Baltinore would brought him great joy. So Ed , thanks for your vision and passion for great music and quality broadcasting. By the way, 60 years later, that Mozart guy is still a star and I am thrilled to have KDFC on the Flycast.fm network.
Our neighborhood is directly adjacent to the Pimlico Race Track, site of the Virgin Mobile Music Festival, and the residents had some concerns regarding parking, trash and the potential for overnight car camping.
The promoter, I.M.P. was very responsive and even provided dues paying neighborhood residents with 2 for 1 tickets. I acted as the coordinator of the voucher program. The local weekly got wind of our good fortune and decided it was a good angle for their coverage of the festival. So they called and spoke to several people and then we met up at the show and they took pictures of myself and Chelsea. While Chelsea is far better looking than I and looks much more like a typical Festival goer - I made the front page.
Hilarious.
Wearing my Straw Hat and with camera in hand, I look every day of my 50 years. But I am rocking out. The caption says so!
The full article, including caption, is HERE .
