Post by the Scribe on Apr 12, 2020 9:09:20 GMT
feastyourearsthefilm.com/index.html
Feast Your Ears: The Story of WHFS 102.3 FM - Trailer
Published on Nov 11, 2015
Documentary film about WHFS freeform FM radio station. Interviews with DJs & musicians from the '68-83 era of social, cultural & political change. More info at www.feastyourearsthefilm.com
Feast your ears: Film to tell homegrown radio story of WHFS
Many former WHFS radio deejays appeared at a reunion of sorts in Bethesda last week celebrating the upcoming film Feast Your Ears, The Story of WHFS 102.3 FM. The film's producer, Jay Schlossberg, left and deejays Jonathan Gilbert - known as Weasel - and Damian Einstein before the celebration and concert by NRBQ. (By E.B. Furgurson III / Staff)
Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, there was a little radio station named WHFS.
For six years the station fed eager listeners its eclectic mix of music from studios in Annapolis. But before that, from about 1969 until the station moved here in 1983, WHFS was a vanguard of progressive radio, molding musical tastes and reflecting the culture — and counterculture — of several generations, from Woodstock to punk and new wave, and beyond.
A documentary film, "Feast Your Ears: The Story of WHFS, 102.3 FM," now in mid-production hopes to showcase the times, people and music that capture WHFS' influence on the local music scene.
The film's producer Jay Schlossberg hopes to have a rough cut by the end of the year and have the film ready to roll sometime next year.
"The station, the people who worked there and listened to it, experienced a time, an era of political change and social upheaval," Schlossberg said. "They were in the middle of it, all in their 20s. They sort of grew up together."
This interview features disc jockey Cerphe with Lowell George of Little Feat and Linda Ronstadt, and is an example of the free-for-all nature of the station's sound. It is a recording from the station's board of the March 3, 1974, broadcast.
Most of the old staff gathered last week at the Bethesda Blues and Jazz Supper Club, remade out of the old Bethesda movie theater, for a kickoff for the film's new website and the announcement of a Kickstarter effort to raise money to finish the film. The audience applauded as their old favorite disc jockeys were introduced. Even old front office staff got a cheer.
Disc Jockeys Jonathan Gilbert, known to all as "Weasel," and Damian Einstein, who both moved to the Annapolis station in 1983, got the biggest hand.
Einstein, who closely guards his privacy, wasn't sure he would come. "But then I read about it. Hey, these are my people," he said as another fan walked up to say hello or relate a story from back in the day.
WHFS disc jockeys, Weasel (Jonathan Gilbert) second from left, and Damian Einstein, right, ham it up with musician Jesse Colin Young, between them. At left is an unidentified record exec.The station moved to Annapolis in 1983. (Courtesy of Steven King / Handout)
Gilbert was enjoying the moment. "It is amazing the reaction the project is getting. It's outstanding."
What made 'HFS, as fans call it, different was the wide open, free-form musical event that hit the air. It was an organic thing. To call it a format would be a disservice.
"The music would go from Frank Zappa to Mahler to Emmy Lou (Harris) to the Nighthawks to the Slickee Boys, Danny Gatton and then the Beatles," Schlossberg said.
And the station was also the place where listeners heard many stars on the rise for the first time: Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Little Feat, the Allman Brothers Band and Elvis Costello. Later, the station helped to break U2, REM, the B-52's and the Cure.
The studios in Bethesda and Annapolis were often filled with performers broadcasting live.
One time, Texas troubadour Jerry Jeff Walker and the Lost Gonzo Band showed up and played from 12:30 to 6 a.m. Bonnie Raitt played on a few occasions. So did reggae's Peter Tosh. Linda Ronstadt and Little Feat's Lowell George sang a 10-tune set of duets one night in 1974.
All from the little station broadcasting over 2,900 watts.
"If you were on the wrong side of a tall building in Bethesda, you sometimes could not get the signal," Schlossberg said.
Progressive influence
But what was happening on the air gave the station an influence far beyond its broadcast oomph.
"Other radio stations across the country looked at what 'HFS was playing. They were way out in front of the progressive movement," said Mark Wenner, founder of the Nighthawks, the blues and rock 'n' roll band that got its break with help from a lot of airplay at their hometown station. "That's what helped propel us semi-nationally, we got a lot of credibility across the country."
The station supported and became a clearinghouse for local music.
"WHFS mainstreamed local bands," said Tom Carrico, a longtime manager and promoter, when he addressed the gathering in Bethesda on Wednesday night. "They didn't turn it into a 'local' show. It was not cute. It was not a theme. It was part of their regular programming."
He said that allowed bands to work five or six nights in Annapolis, and allowed managers and others to have jobs.
"I mean God bless WHFS," Carrico said.
WHFS had been a sleepy little station in an apartment building in Bethesda playing easy listening and classical music when in 1969 three students fresh out of Bard College walked in and pitched an everything-goes free spirited radio show. They were turned down. But then the station said it would sell them airtime at $160 a week.
So they hustled and wrangled ads and "Spiritus Cheese" went on the air in July 1969, the same week that men landed on the moon.
Three weeks later, the trio was at Woodstock with a press pass but could not get in.
"Just then Johnny Winter got out of a helicopter. We had known him from gigs at Bard, and we yelled at him," recalled Josh Brooks, one of the three Cheese staffers, who spent about 10 years at the station and now sells advertising at a Frederick radio station.
"Winter yelled, 'Hey, let them in,' and there we were — wow — backstage at Woodstock."
Brooks got interviews with Jerry Garcia, Neil Young, and Jim Hendrix's conga player.
"Pretty amazing. Just at the right place, at the right time. And things took off for us."
Spiritus Cheese has been credited with changing 'HFS. But one of the surprises Schlossberg, who worked one summer at the station and was hooked for a lifetime, found is there were two other shows at the station with a similar eclectic point of view. "Electric Brew" and "Through the Looking Glass" had been on the air for a short while.
But "Spiritus Cheese" spirited the station from what was to what could be, even though they were tossed off the air after complaints of foul language in a Firesign Theater record they played on the air. Brooks stayed on though.
Many credit station part-owner Jake Einstein, for giving the merry pranksters free rein. "Jake let them do their thing," Wenner said. "He deserves a lot of credit."
Einstein later brought the WHFS call letters to the 99.1 frequency in Annapolis, then after selling it in 1989 he returned to create WRNR radio in Annapolis with the old 'HFS format, and some of the DJs, his son, Damian Einstein, John Hall and others.
Film flame lit
Schlossberg got the idea for the movie after a 2013 National Record Day event at Joe's Record Paradise in Silver Spring, where DJs and serious vinyl record fans have been finding rare discs for years. There was a panel featuring many of the old WHFS DJs. Schlossberg could not go but later saw photos of all those who attended.
"I literally said out loud: 'Oh wow, they're all not dead yet. Someone needs to do something about this,' " Schlossberg said.
He organized a meeting a few months later in the old Triangle Towers apartment building from where WHFS used to broadcast it's "homegrown radio." And the project was born, with most of the old crew on board.
So far scores of interviews have been shot with musicians David Bromberg, Roger McGuinn, Bruce Cockburn, Joan Armatrading, Jonathan Edwards, Chris Smither, Freebo, Nils Lofgren, Paul Barrere, Bill Payne of Little Feat and more.
Rickie Lee Jones, Dan Hicks, Jesse Colin Young, Don Dixon and Marti Jones, plus Michael Lang and Wavy Gravy of Woodstock fame are on the list of interviews not yet in the can. Many local musicians and industry folk, like Wenner, promoters Seth Hurwitz and Mike Schreibman and others are also on the to-do-list.
To help him get there, Schlossberg — whose day job is running Media Central LLC, a company that books video and film production crews, and post production services across the country and the globe — is organizing a Kickstarter online fundraising project launching Sept. 19.
"That money will allow us to get researchers on board to search the National Archives and other sources, and finish the film," he said.
The call letters WHFS still exist for a station at 104.9 FM in Baltimore, but it is not associated with the previous iteration.
For more information
For updates on the movie production and other details, visit www.feastyourearsthefilm.com
and www.facebook.com/feastyourearsWHFS.
www.capitalgazette.com/news/ph-ac-cn-whfs-film-0727-20150727-story.html
a Linda Ronstadt album for $3.99:
WHFS Weasel's Monolog Last Day on Air July 14, 1983
Published on May 19, 2015
WHFS, the Original WHFS in Bethesda, MD last day on air.
Weasel comes on after his theme and Bob joins Weasel. Weasel tells Bob, a joke that Murray the K would tell, then they talk about Weasel's can of Space Ravioli with Aliens, food ingredients and how to cook. More of this day at WHFS can be heard at www.archive.org search WHFS. I have the wrong month on the tape written down.
WHFS-FM 'Sailing Shoes' by Lowell George & Linda Ronstadt
.
WHFS-FM 'Unemployed' by Steve Goodman
Published on Oct 20, 2012
The late Steve Goodman recorded live on the radio at WHFS-FM (high atop the Triangle Towers) in Bethesda, Maryland. Probably in the Fall of 1975 with DJ Don "Cerphe" Colwell. I have never heard this song on any of his recordings so I made up the title. Apparently he was rather dissatisfied with the economic climate under President Gerald Ford and wrote this song.
WHFS DJ Don “Cerphe” Colwell with Linda Ronstadt in 1977 after the singer was interviewed on his show
And What a Time It Was: Telling the WHFS Story on Film
Posted on: August 24, 2016
by Ellyn Wexler August 17, 2016 –
Jay Schlossberg wants to take us back in time to an “era of cultural, social and political upheaval.” During those years from 1961 to 1983, he and countless other mostly teens and twenty-somethings were steadfast fans of the free-form progressive radio station that rocked the metropolitan area’s airwaves from the Triangle Towers apartment building in downtown Bethesda.
Bruce Cockburn & Jay Schlossberg – WHFS – photo by Jay at City Winery
“Feast Your Ears – The Story of WHFS 102.3 FM” is Schlossberg’s work-in-progress documentary about WHFS, where locally-legendary DJs—including Weasel, Cerphe, Damian, Josh, Adele and Thom—spun non-Top 40 tunes and chatted about the important issues of the day. “It was more than a local radio station,” Schlossberg said. “It was the voice of a generation.”
The substance was transmitted in more than one way. “Not only were we getting messages through the music of these national and local musicians,” said the Dufief resident who is the film’s director and executive producer, “but we also were getting local news (on topics like) when an anti-war protest would be held, where to buy records, health food, the nearest surf shop. The station served as a conduit for all the thriving retail businesses that sprung up around the culture.”
Most important, Schlossberg emphasized, was that WHFS promoted and supported local music. “We heard news about the live music venues—who was playing where and when.” After rattling off the names of some of the major places—The Psyche Delly, The Cellar Door, Redfox Inn, the Bayou, Lisner, the Warner, he observed, “’HFS was the center of it all.”’
Schlossberg’s allegiance to the station was cemented at age 17 when the Charles W. Woodward High School student was fortunate enough to have a summer job there. “I’d pay you to let me work here,” he remembers thinking in 1972. At Montgomery College the following year, Schlossberg was among 16 students who started the campus radio station. He served as WMCR’s program director and DJ, aspiring to be like Weasel and Cerphe, and honed his guitar skills by jamming in the student lounge when he was supposed to be in class.
The idea to tell the WHFS story came to Schlossberg some 30 years later after seeing a group photo on Facebook of the iconic station’s DJs, taken at the April 20, 2013 Record Day celebration at Joe’s Record Paradise in Silver Spring. “I said out loud, ‘Oh my God, they’re all not dead yet. Someone needs to tell this story,’” he recalled. “Of course, I knew them all already, but seeing the photograph just crystallized it. A flashbulb went off.”
Schlossberg is president and owner of Media Central, the global crewing, production and post-production services broker-agent company he founded on Aug. 1, 1993 (Jerry Garcia’s birthday, he noted). His clients have included HBO, Lucasfilm, Discovery Channel, Paramount Pictures, Showtime and BBC Worldwide. His company Media Central Films has produced a web series, “AutoExotika Presents: Cars ‘N Coffee,” with episodes in Bethesda, Las Vegas, Santa Barbara, Cincinnati, Palm Beach and Paris.
Despite his successful businesses and concomitant media industry contacts, Schlossberg had never done a documentary before. Thus, it was essential that he research and brainstorm the project by talking to people who had been there as well as industry professionals. About six months post-epiphany, he hosted what he called a “meeting-party” with the WHFS DJs in the building where they once broadcasted.
Maryanne Culpepper, former president of National Geographic Television, was enlisted as executive producer “to help with the front and back ends, to help me get the plane off the ground and into the air and with the landing,” he said. “She knows about film festivals.” Also on the team are consulting producer Jonathan Gilbert AKA Weasel; story consultant and former Washington Post writer Richard Harrington; and Bethesda native and writer of “Homicide” and “The Wire” David Simon, who helped with background and context.
Filming began in June 2014, and a Kickstarter fundraising effort in October and November 2015 raised $65,000 for the project. With two-thirds of the filming completed, Schlossberg expects the editing process to begin in September with a rough cut by the end of the year. Plans include local screenings—perhaps at AFI in Silver Spring and Landmark in Bethesda—and Netflix and Showtime and even director Morgan Spurlock have expressed interest and encouragement. Schlossberg is confident and optimistic about the film’s future. “We have gotten a lot of positive feedback from the trailer,” he said. “And I think the film will have wide-ranging international appeal, too.”
Having acquired a taste for music documentaries, Schlossberg is also acting as executive producer of “The Humbler,” a film about legendary guitar player Danny Gatton.
Visit www.feastyourearsthefilm.com to see the trailer, donate to the film, buy merchandise and read other stories about the documentary.
Bruce is in the trailer and in the film.
Credit: towncourier.com/and-what-a-time-it-was-telling-the-whfs-story-on-film/.