I started listening to HFS back around '83. It sounded NOTHING like any other station. It was filled with many strange but fun artists, musicians, and wanna-be's. Once I got my head wrapped around that, I could not go back to commercial radio. One rarely heard the same song twice in one week, let alone twice in one morning.
I remember winter nights in high school, getting into the car, and hearing Joe Jackson on the radio. HFS was the backdrop to the war games we would play. HFS was the consolement to my broken hearts. HFS was the bringer of music that I fell deeply in love with.
When I came home from college, I would tune in as often as I could. I made notes about which bands I liked, then bought those records, *if* I could find them, at Books Strings and Thing, our local book and record store.
Nice was a friend when I worked all night, at my first full-time job, when I got out of college. We rocked those boring hours away.
Corporate culture eventually bought HFS and strangled it like a python. It was soon a walking-dead commercial station. I enjoyed tuning in, hearing obnoxious personalities, and never hearing actual music. After 30 seconds, I got annoyed and tuned them off.
So, they finally turned the station from an Evil Dead zombie to a Masked Wrestler zombie. Ah well, at least now I can listen to obnixious personalities in a different language.
