Radio: An Elegy

It occurred to me recently that I don’t listen to commercial radio much anymore or buy CDs that often (much less mp3 albums). I listen to our fantastic local college station in the car, and at home I have been listening to a few of the cable music channels that come with our fancy cable, but mostly I listen to music I already know and only buy a few CDs a year, and those on recommendations from friends. My younger self would be appalled, wouldn’t understand how I could survive without a fresh infusion of new tunes, why it’s been years since I spent time in a record store browsing through the racks. That girl was so thrilled to score a record store job for a summer in college, and thought she hit the jackpot when she got an internship at her favorite radio station.

In my adolescent years, I was a faithful listener to WHFS 99.1 FM, a legendary alternative rock station in the DC area. All my friends listened, and so did my big sister and all her super-cool friends. It was the first place I heard Nirvana, Pearl Jam, nine inch nails, The Cure, XTC, and so many other bands. When Kurt Cobain died, we all turned on the radio, as WHFS unspooled all the Nirvana tracks they had and we mourned together.

Each year, as the school year wound down, my friends and I thrilled to the list of what bands that would be playing the HFStival that year– was it a 13 bands for $13 dollars year, or 15, or 17? The first year I went was at the end of tenth grade, and my sister and her college roommate drove me to RFK stadium to hear James, the Afghan Whigs, Pavement and others. My friends were all very jealous, and I felt ultra-cool. The next year, my friend’s father picked us up after taking the SAT, and I went for the first time with my own friends (I think Counting Crows was on the bill that year). It became a yearly ritual for me, even though I went with different friends and boyfriends almost every year, and I saw many, many different bands, especially as the festival expanded into multiple stages.

My senior year in college, I achieved a long-standing dream and interned with the morning show, during which time I scored a fair amount of free CDs and t-shirts, met Spike Jonze, and helped put on that year’s Festival, which was especially important because it happened in 1999 (99.1, remember?). I wrote my senior thesis on the shift to FM radio in the 1970s and pirate radio in the UK, including some stations that were literally pirates, sailing in quasi-international waters and boradcasting punk and rock back to shore. Right after I graduated from college, my boyfriend and I took his younger sister to her first HFStival, and I vowed never to go again– too many hard-rock bands, too many college guys yelling, “Show us your tits,” and just too many drunk people overall– but it felt right to close the circle by introducing another young girl to one of my favorite memories.

But even while I was an intern there, I could see the station changing. When I was hired, one of the questions they asked me was what five albums I would bring on a desert island (my answers included Exile in Guyville, OK Computer and Stereo Type A). I remember asking the guy if my answers were okay, and he chuckled and said, “We’re just trying to weed out the Metallica fans.” Less than a year later, I turned on the radio and heard “Enter Sandman,” as the station made a desperate play for the male, aged 18-34 demographic. Years as part of a larger broadcasting conglomerate meant programmed playlists and DJs who could barely stand the bands they played on the air anymore.

On January 12, 2005, one of the old DJs snuck into the station and changed the playlist to play Last Goodbye, by Jeff Buckley, which became the station’s last song– immediately afterwards, the station switched to an all-Spanish language format, with no public announcement, and as it turned out, very few announcements to longtime staff. By random chance, I was listening– I was home for the winter break, and was driving through my mom’s neighborhood on my way to meet up with high school friends. I remember hearing Jeff Buckley, and being surprised to hear that kind of music on the station I used to love, and then hearing a jolt of sunny Spanish music, which sounded so strange to me after Buckley’s beautiful elegy.

WHFS was such a big part of my teenage years, in forming my tastes, my interests, and who I wanted to become. Those songs literally changed my life, were the soundtrack for so many of the best times I remember from those years, as we all hurtled towards adulthood. I registered to vote at an HFStival, smelled marijuana for the first time there, and walked into the public bathrooms once to see a man and woman leaning up against the wall having sex (all different years, by the way). If you had asked me then, I don’t think I could have articulated what the station meant for me, and I would never have believed that it could disappear so quickly and leave so few traces behind.

I know now that the station and its listeners were my first experience with a community that extended past my street or my school, my first time feeling part of a group of people larger than myself, feeling like we shared ideals or beliefs, all because we were playing the same songs on our radios.