“We’ve returned to the scene of the crime!” an impish Brian Ritchie, bassist of the Violent Femmes said when the band took the stage at HFStival at Nationals Park on Saturday, Sept. 21.
The Violent Femmes played the second iteration of the festival in the summer of 1991 at Lake Fairfax Park in Reston, Virginia. Same crime, different scene. With I.M.P.’s lineup featuring additional HFStival alums including Bush, Incubus, Lit, and Filter, the 2024 reboot drew 25,000 attendees and aimed to recall or relive its ’90s and ’00s glory days.
In its prime, HFStival, organized by radio station 99.1 WHFS, was one of the leading music festivals in the country. Starting one year before Lollapalooza, the annual event moved to RFK Stadium in 1993. Thanks to the explosion of alternative music into the mainstream, the popularity of HFS exploded right along with it—becoming the place where surprise appearances (a la Courtney Love) and performances (such as Tony Bennett) would make headlines. But, in January 2005 when WHFS became El Zol 99.1, the annual event faced uncertainty. The fest lived a half-life following the radio station’s death, continuing sporadically for a few years in various locations. The final HFStival was held in 2011.
So the question on attendees’ minds as they entered Nationals Park on Saturday was: Could I.M.P. recapture the glory of the original?
As it turns out, the reboot wasn’t about reliving past glories. Rather, it was about recalling a musical legacy while potentially building a new one. The majority of festivalgoers had attended past HFStivals. This time, however, they brought their kids along.
“Watching people and their kids sing back lyrics that were a thought in my head over 28 years ago is really something,” Emerson Hart, lead singer of Tonic (the band behind the 1996 hit “If You Could Only See”), says during a backstage interview.
Other than the lineup itself, there were lots of callbacks to the days of musical yore. Footage of past HFStivals and songs from the ’90s played in between sets, and former WHFS DJs Bob Waugh and Gina Crash introduced bands.
Gone from previous festivals was the second stage, where bands like Third Eye Blind and Fuel once played before they hit it big. Also gone was the mass general admission crush that would happen on the main field, allowing for lots of crowd-surfing and plenty of dehydration, giving the backstage medical room a run for its money.
Instead, a much smaller, more civilized general admission pit was surrounded by barricades and seated sections. And the entertainment between sets included a Guitar Hero contest (where both contestants ended up winning guitars) and a cupcake eating contest where the winner scarfed down 12 cupcakes in 2 1/2 minutes (no word on how he felt afterward).
Not that the artists didn’t try to relive the old days. Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of Bush (whose set paused briefly due to sound issues), left the stage mid-set to mingle with fans at the barrier. Rossdale came just shy of crowd-surfing.
As light rain fell during Incubus’ set, the band segued from their hits into a cover of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” a case of the throwback throwing back even further.
“What a lineup, huh?!” Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie yelled from the stage. Gibbard performed double—and back-to-back—duty. His performance with Death Cab was immediately followed by the Postal Service’s headlining set, which was billed as their last live performance.
“I went to high school for a year in Herndon, Virginia,” Gibbard said during Death Cab’s set. “As I started getting into music, I listened to WHFS so I’m dedicating this song to them.”
It’s unclear whether this version of HFStival will become an annual event, but for one glorious day, fans relived their youth, but in a much more civilized manner.
