The Peace Quad was transformed into a music festival on Saturday for WHRW’s annual Moefest.

Attendees wandered around, exploring tabling organizations while waiting for featured musicians to take the stage. They set up picnic blankets, donned Moefest t-shirts and painted a large banner filled with designs of WHRW’s members.

WHRW 90.5 FM is Binghamton University’s radio station, allowing students and community members to host their own shows. The station has been active since 1966 and broadcasts 24/7. From grunge to pop, a wide variety of music genres play on air, along with talk shows and news programs. The same could be said for Moefest, as the day was filled with everything from staff performances to those of beloved student bands.

The opening act, Blizz the Illest, brought energy to the crowd with his hip-hop sound and creative rap flow. Audience members cheered as he introduced himself, sharing that aside from his pursuit of music, he’s also a janitor at the University. As the first performance of the day, he set the tone for the exciting shows to follow.

The Moefest lineup included headliners DOOM GONG and Black Lung, with additional performances by Stuck in Place, Blizz the Illest, Meech, Green Creeks and upcoming Spring Fling opener Middle Management.

“My main goal when organizing this event this year was prioritizing the music first and foremost,” Ethan Appel, WHRW’s music director and junior majoring in studio art, said. “And so I wanted to foster an event and music festival that I myself would want to go to. I made sure to pick people that I was specifically playing on my show at the station.”

Appel explained how he contacted artists with smaller listening counts and negotiated contracting, payment and scheduling to bring them to Binghamton. He also designed the t-shirts sold at the festival, sporting the names of musicians in colorful purple font.

Appel has been involved with WHRW since his first semester at college. He discussed the act he was most looking forward to as the performances continued.

“Definitely the two headliners, DOOM GONG especially,” Appel said. “They were a band that I’d listened to, actually, for a while and they’re smaller, but they’re a band that’s really good and they’re really cool people. Especially meeting them now, they’re all super nice, super down to earth and they have an insane setup.”

The crowd grew as the festival went on, with students picnicking and playing lawn games with friends in between sets. Middle Management took to the stage around 4 p.m. to wild applause from onlookers. As the winner of the Student Association Programming Board’s Battle of the Bands [HYPERLINK: https://www.bupipedream.com/ac/middle-management-wins-sapbs-battle-of-the-bands/177112/] and upcoming opener for Spring Fling, Middle Management has exploded in popularity in the past months. With a powerful vocalist backed by talented brass players and a lively band, students got up to dance and sing along to their performance. The set included a mix of originals and covers, all enthusiastically received by the audience.

Zackery Tosic, the lead vocalist and guitarist of Middle Management, production director for WHRW and a junior majoring in computer engineering, discussed his involvement with the E-Board.

“I facilitate people making announcements that we play hourly — they range from a bunch of different things, like PSAs, general announcements and promotions for stuff that we’re doing,” Tosic said. “We have to play them every hour on the hour, everything that we play on the air has been produced by people at WHRW, so I help people make those announcements and carts, as we call them.”

Tosic explained that Middle Management was created only six months ago, making them a relatively new addition to the local music scene. He said he enjoyed the energetic audience’s reactions as the band performed.

“I love the picnic atmosphere, it was very nice,” Tosic said. “I love a day at the park. I like the fact that everyone’s dancing, people were playing leapfrog and that was incredible. I couldn’t have asked for a better frog.”

The audience’s energy was still incredibly high as the next act, Stuck in Place, began to play. Listeners jumped, twirled and danced together during the performance. The band emulated the same energy, with the vocalist even jumping offstage to be with the crowd. As the winners of last year’s Battle of the Bands, Stuck in Place clearly had fans present at Moefest who came to hear their raw, moving sound.

Mari McLaughlin, WHRW’s general manager and a senior majoring in psychology, has been involved with the station for around two and a half years. She highlighted the interesting staging of some featured bands, like DOOM GONG’s percussion setup with a gong and two drumsets attached to each other.

The rest of Moefest was filled with the same high-energy audience and incredible performances from featured bands. The festival drew thunderous applause and cheers from students, dancing, singing and lounging on the Peace Quad. The blue skies and blooming trees served as the perfect backdrop for such a showcase of talented musicians.

“It’s not even necessarily about the music that people come here for,” McLaughlin said. “It’s a little bit of a counter culture because it’s obviously not the dominant form of media right now. You get a very specific set of people and I like that. Everybody is real nice and I never really have to deal with that many problems. It’s very, very chill.”