Melissa Nugent ‘25
After eighteen long years, the HFStival is finally back. First held in 1990 in Reston, Virginia, the HFStival is an alternative music festival held by the radio station WHFS, a now-defunct rock radio station that served the D.C. area from 1961 to 2008. Though the HFStival was once the largest music festival on the East Coast, it ended in 2006 when WHFS became “Baltimore’s FM Talk” on a different channel. However, after nearly 20 years, the HFStival returned last month at Nationals Park in Washington DC, featuring a lineup of staples of the 1990s-early-2000s rock scene, including Bush, Incubus, Death Cab for Cutie, and Jimmy Eat World.
When I first entered Nationals Park, I was not surprised in the slightest to see that the majority of festival-goers were at least 35, most of them being middle-aged couples. These people had probably seen a few of these bands in their primes and were ready for a day of reminiscing. Here are some highlights:
I arrived at the festival around noon, just before Lit took the stage. Their set only lasted five songs, but they ended with their hit “My Own Worst Enemy” and got the entire crowd (which at that point was, truthfully, not very impressive) on their feet.
Next came Filter, who also stuck to playing their most popular songs, including “Hey Man Nice Shot” and “Take a Picture.” During the bridge of “Take a Picture,” singer Richard Patrick changed the lyrics from “Hey, dad, what do you think about your son now,” to “Hey, son, what do you think about your dad now?” This joke, which made my dad laugh and I didn’t even notice at first, was the first of many self-deprecating “old” jokes made by bands performing that day.
Skipping ahead a few hours, the sixth band up that day was Jimmy Eat World. I love Jimmy Eat World, and that love is strengthened every time I see them live. Their set was extremely tight despite having some technical difficulties – they seemed so comfortable making conversation with the crowd that I didn’t even realize it was because their guitars weren’t working. They too stuck to the classics – half their set was from Bleed American, their fourth and most popular album (you might know it as the album with “The Middle” on it).
The one set that felt out of place that day was a DJ called Girl Talk, who performed between Violent Femmes and Jimmy Eat World. He played for an excruciating 45 minutes, blasting noisy club music and pelting the crowd with toilet paper and blow-up dolphins. I’m sure he has his fans, but I don’t think they were among the middle-aged attendees at a ‘90s alt-rock festival.
The band that blew me away the most was, surprisingly, Bush. I knew a couple of songs going into their set, but I didn’t know much about them. It turned out their music was perfect for this kind of festival – heavy, distorted guitars, and solid, punchy drums that did a great job of filling Nationals Park. “Comedown,” the last song they played, was a great example of this and kept the audience buzzing until long after they left the stage. Gavin Rossdale (whom, until then, I mostly just knew as Gwen Stefani’s ex-husband) had an incredible command over both the stage and the audience. During “Flowers On a Grave,” he climbed down to the barriers and threw himself into the waiting arms of the audience, which was the best attempt I witnessed all night to recapture the chaotic glory of past HFStivals. Well, that and Brandon Boyd of Incubus taking his shirt off halfway through their set to embrace the rain.
The most overwhelming feeling I noticed throughout that day was nostalgia. Between the bands cracking jokes about their age and the screen that cycled through photos and clips of HFStivals in the ‘90s and 2000s, there was almost no room to think about anything but the past. But what does the future of the HFStival look like? The original HFStivals were to showcase the kind of music that WHFS was playing on the air, contemporary music from contemporary bands. But now that WHFS is no more, it is hard to recreate that. How long can one profit off of nostalgia? Will there even be another festival next year?
As I left the festival that night, I was struck by another thought: what will our generation’s HFStival be? What will make us nostalgic when we’re 30 or 40 years old? Whoever it may be, I hope they’re as good as Bush was.