In an era of algorithm-driven music playlists, the idea of a radio station whose DJs play whatever they want may seem quaint. Yet some people find it appealing, to judge by the advance response to “Feast Your Ears: The Story of WHFS 102.3 FM,” now playing on WETA-TV and available on the PBS Passport streaming service.
By Mark Jenkins
The documentary has almost 30,000 followers on social media, according to director-producer Jay Schlossberg.
WHFS went on the air in 1961 as the area’s first stereo station. (The call letters stood for Washington High Fidelity Stereo.) The Bethesda-based outlet struggled financially but stumbled upon a profitable niche in late 1968. That’s when it allowed Frank Richards to program a few hours nightly of non-Top-40 rock mixed with folk, blues and jazz. General Manager Jake Einstein didn’t hire Richards; he sold him the airtime, which Richards had to underwrite by selling commercials.
By early 1972, WHFS had become a nearly 24/7 “underground” or “free-form” rock station. “It kind of happened organically,” Schlossberg says. “It wasn’t like anybody sat down and said, ‘Hey, let’s put a bunch of hippies on the radio and play this crazy new music.’”
Schlossberg worked for 11 years to complete “Feast Your Ears,” whose title comes from a 1970s WHFS slogan. But the 69-year-old first-time director’s involvement with the station goes back much further than that. Between his junior and senior years of high school, Schlossberg had a summer job at WHFS.
“This was my station. Culturally, socially, politically,” he recalls. “It was a center point of the community in so many ways. And I was part of that community. I was a teenager.”
The station was also beloved by performers, many of whom appear in the film. These include ones with local roots or connections, such as Nils Lofgren, Emmylou Harris and Little Feat’s Bill Payne, and such out-of-towners as Marshall Crenshaw, Taj Mahal, Roger McGuinn, Jesse Colin Young and the Persuasions. That last group did a soulful musical endorsement of “Feast Your Ears” that’s available on YouTube.
Schlossberg and his fellow producers, including former WHFS DJ Jonathan “Weasel” Gilbert, illustrator Dick Bangham and onetime Washington Post comedy critic Dave Nuttycombe, could find little video footage of the station’s glory days. “Nobody had an iPhone or a camcorder in 1971,” the director notes. Many sequences rely on what he calls “motion graphics,” animations of still images.
But over the course of the film’s long gestation, WHFS fans did provide a wealth of photos, posters, newspaper clippings and audio recordings — far more than Schlossberg could use. “Could I have made this a four-part, four-hour series?” he ponders. “Sure.”
Available on PBS Passport streaming service.
