That was the motto for WHFS. Evolve.

WHFS was a modern rock station in DC. It gave those of us in the outlying rural areas hope that someday, we could move to a place where people knew what cool was.

I remember finding cassettes at people’s houses marked “WHFS” and begging to hear what was on them. It was like the last person with gasoline in the post apocalypse movies.

I remember going to WHFStival- and seeing the best band in all of recorded sound- Too Much Joy. I remember 30 thousand people chilling out, playing volleyball in their doc martins, sliding in mud and playing Frisbee with pizza boxes and jumping around listening to some of the coolest bands out there- bands who didn’t need MTV- all for 7 measly bucks.

Hell, “yeah baby, I’m totally into HFS” could be used to impress the right chicks in the right circles. This is back when modern rock wasn’t cool with the post Reagan preppies, so brief moments of cool were a reason to live.

Well, HFS did indeed evolve. As I learned over at Shab00ty and Sledge’s blogs today. It evolved into a Spanish-only station.

Actually, it de-volved over the years. What began as an independent upstart, slowly sold out to the man, bought a suit and cut his hair and bedded the devil- pimping good charlotte and avril. HFS had long since fallen off. They died an ignoble X-Files death, rather than a proud Buffy one like 97X.

Anyway, give me a minute while I relive my youth and listen to Long Haired Guys From England.

Shecky Magazine posted this Time article by Dave Chappelle that I really dug. I found I related a lot to the feelings he expressed regarding writing and performing.

The evolution of my jokes happens very organically. If there’s something I see on the news or something I’m thinking about, I might go down to the club and just talk it out, almost conversationally, and funny things will arise. I don’t sit at a desk and think, “I want to tackle the issue of AIDS” or “I want to tackle the issue of racism.” I don’t look at things that way. Sometimes I’ll think up things just because I know they’re inappropriate, which is kind of the fun of comedy. It’s liberating.

That’s pretty much how I develop stuff for the site and my standup- just stuff that seems funny in conversation. Since I try to do new material each week, I’ll get anxious when it’s half-way thru and I haven’t had a really funny conversation. I’ll just be cracking up with someone now and have to run around looking for a pen. Or Heidi and I will be in Wal-Mart and the person next to us is cracking me up & I’ll just whip out my phone and record something about them. She gets a bit embarrassed by that.

Something else he says about appropriateness struck a cord too.

There are some things you don’t want to do to get a laugh. Every once in a while, you’ll have what my writing partner Neal Brennan calls “buyer’s remorse,” where I’ll say something, and it’ll get a laugh, and after that I’ll regret it and think, “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.” Sometimes it’s obvious to you, and you’ve got to call foul on yourself. Generally, I like the jokes to be empowering or enlightening on some level. But then again, part of being a comic is saying things that people haven’t said before—so you’re gonna say inappropriate things from time to time. The trick is not to pay too much attention to the boundaries. When your humor becomes too self-aware, you might be less effective.

I think that when you try to stay too far on either side of the appropriateness fence you risk your comedy. I don’t try to be lewd or squeaky clean- but like Chapelle says, usually inappropriate stuff is funny.

The rest of the article offers some great insight. I don’t know enough other comics to know if this is how we all feel, but I totally relate to what he’s saying.