HFStival
| HFStival | |
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Logo of the 2005 HFStival held in Baltimore, Maryland
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| Genre | Alternative rock |
| Dates | various |
| Location(s) | |
| Years active | 1990–2006, 2010-present |
The HFStival was an annual Washington, D.C. / Baltimore, Maryland rock festival. Held every summer from 1990 through 2006 by radio station WHFS, and annually since 2010 in commemoration of the now-defunct station's legacy, the HFStival was at its peak the largest yearly music festival on the East Coast. 55,000 to 90,000 people attended the annual event, which had traditionally been held at RFK Stadium until the station moved to Baltimore in 2005. That May, the new WHFS at 105.7 held its first HFStival at M&T Bank Stadium. Though not originally called HFStival, two earlier concerts held on the Fourth of July were the foundation for the first festival and are considered part of HFStival history.
The HFStival began as the WHFS Fourth of July Festival, an all-day concert followed by a fireworks display, which was held twice at Lake Fairfax Park in Reston, Virginia 1990 and 1991. The first proper HFStival was held in Upper Marlboro, Maryland in 1992, and the following year's event, on July 4, 1993, the event was moved to RFK Stadium for the first time, where it would continue annually return for the next six years. In 1993, when the first RFK lineup was revealed, some controversy arose among the station's listeners over the inclusion of the Stereo MCs; the previous events had only included mainstays of rock and alternative music and the MCs, a hip hop group, seemed out of place. Once the concert went on, however, the audience's enthusiasm paved the way for WHFS to include more artists from outside the station's normal playlist on the HFStival's stages — which would, in future years, include more hip hop acts, electronica artists, and such disparate musicians as crooner Tony Bennett and performance artists the Blue Man Group. The weather during the 1993 concert was so hot (reaching more than 100 degrees on the stadium's floor) that the concert date was moved to May for subsequent years.
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