Back in the Day

Radio in the area has prett' near always sucked, but there was a time when it sucked a whole lot less. (Tangent rant: You know, for a reasonably major metropolitan area and the nation's capital, you'd think the radio wouldn't be so bad. But no. It is. Cleveland has better radio than DC. Of course, Cleveland Rocks.)

Jake Einstein, who gave us WHFS, has passed away. Way, way back in the day 'HFS was where you'd tune in to hear music that you couldn't hear anywhere else. And where you'd go and be assured that you'd never hear a song repeated during any one-day period in a time when Top-40 meant "the same 40 damn songs played over and over until you hated all of them." Or perhaps "play these dozen or so songs every 40 minutes."

I'd always described 'HFS as playing whatever music they could find, but they were legitimately famous in this area for having a dj-selected playlist instead of a computer-generated one. They were even allowed to bring in stuff from home to play. Possibly the most famous story about the old 'HFS was the one about the day that Cerphe bought his first new car and spent his shift playing nothing but car-related songs.

Over the last few years a bunch of refugees from 'HFS have found a home on so-much-less-sucky-than-most-of-the-rest 94.7 The Globe, including Cerphe and Weasel and they seem to have brought their music collections with them (well, at least some of their music collections). So there's that, at least.

Farewell, Mr. Einstein. Thanks for the good stuff.