FREE FORM INFUSION
Free form radio. An entirely new type of radio art, it emanated from the ever-active mind of a virtually unknown New York actor over the airwaves of a tiny, also virtually unknown listener-sponsored radio station. Free form radio, unlike the carefully formatted music programs or the closely monitored talk shows of the early and mid-1960s, meant free reign by the programmer. Free reign to fill a block of radio time with thoughts, experiences and schemes. Free reign over the aether to create radio so personal that a listener would feel as if he were inside the programmer's mind. Fass's first listeners were those few who both owned an FM radio-which in and of itself was certainly not the norm in the early 1960s-and, for whatever reason, could afford to stay awake all night to listen to it. The potential audience was minuscule at best. And yet Fass trudged ahead with his radio experiments, and listenership grew when listeners began to realize that they were hearing something completely new.
Bob Fass was born with a gift for radio. Fass's radio palette consisted of the same supplies as that of any other broadcaster at any radio station across America-two turntables, a microphone, a stack of records, perhaps a guest in the studio or a friend on the phone. The radio program that he created, however, transcended these common wares. "Good morning, Cabal," Fass would almost whisper to open the show every night at midnight. When Fass began Radio Unnameable, a friend had suggested that he devise an address for his audience. A postcard from a listener suggested the term 'cabal.' "I leafed through the dictionary," Fass recalls, "and I looked it up and liked it. It comes from the word 'horse.' Originally people who rode out at night with their identity concealed-even from each other-to plot or plan something subversive. And I thought, 'That's it!'"1 "Good morning, Cabal," like a sigh into a listener's ear. Listeners would tune in every weeknight all over New York City, form the Bronx to Brooklyn, Staten Island to Long Island and especially in East Greenwich Village, to be wrapped in Fass's aural blanket. Fass would combine strains of thought, music and verse throughout his program like an accomplished painter, adding layer upon layer of color until he had achieved the evening's desired shade. Each piece of folk music that Fass played would be but a single component, each friend he would invite into the station to talk about the state of the world would be another, each civil rights organizer or live performer or poet or spiritual leader or Communist phone caller or anti-Communist phone caller . . . . Each would be a layer of paint that Fass would blend to form an image. His final work would then appear seamless; the listener would be left spellbound as to how complete the evening's mutual journey had been.2
What would comprise a "typical" night on Fass's Radio Unnameable? Even a devoted listener would not be able to guess how Fass would proceed. Fass could begin one night's program with several songs from the Library of Congress blues collection, then speak for a while about a War Resistance demonstration while Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom" would fill the background, then talk with a woman whose friends had been arrested at a march and try to collect the $500 to bail them out, then take a phone call from Abbie and Anita Hoffman who just want to say hello, then play Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" and sing along, then talk with a woman who has lost her cat about how his cat is also named "Mao," then play Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band over and over because he loves the album, then talk with a hippie named Quasimodo about a "shindig" being thrown for volunteers of Liberty House. Fass could open another night with a discussion with a hippie about her seeing a woman let her child run wild at the Be-In ("It was just sort of a sad commentary," the hippie says. "Her little daughter is just left there so that she can go spread her love around to other people. It was just sad, that's all." "Do you draw a larger truth from that?" asks Fass. "No," she replies. "It's just that I was wondering if in the middle of this institutionalized love there's a little of this sad aspect. . . . It bothered me, that's all."), then speak with friends Jim Fouratt, Alan Maloney and Peter Maloney who had stopped by the studio to explain why they marched in the Flower Brigade in the Patriots' Day Parade, then play Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and a selection of Joan Baez songs, then chat on the phone with a WBAI reporter calling from Tokyo, then spend the rest of the night listening to callers talk about why the U.S. should pull out of the War. On yet another night, Fass could string together a series of songs with the theme of "flying" to promote an event he is planning at JFK International Airport, have Dave Bromberg and Jerry Jeff Walker up to the studio to play some live tunes, involve five callers in a telephone roundtable discussion about the Diggers, play a Buddhist chant under a speech by Hitler and then roll sounds of a battlefield above background songs with themes of friends who have been lost. Music, politics, love, anger, fear, hope and hate . . . . Every emotion and event that overlapped and intertwined to comprise a day in the life of the turbulent 1960s. Fass would present such shades of life every night, all night, in a voice infinitely smooth and comfortable. Boundaries between the records Fass played, the figures with whom he spoke, the issues he discussed and the images his engendered would blur by the end of the evening. The divergent strands of life which Fass presented would have fused to form a lucid whole by the time Fass would say "Bye bye."3
Fass had a penchant for the complete presentation. He frequently took photographs of demonstrations and of Be-Ins and sit-ins and arts festivals. Fass tried to create a perfect double-exposure with many of his photos, imposing the picture of a tribal icon over that of a dancing hippie woman, or the bright eyes of a child over a line of battle-ready police. By exposing one piece of film to two complementary images, Fass strove to show visually what he proved aurally, night after night-beauty exists in the way events intertwine.
Listeners in the early to mid-1960s would hear radio experimentation and topics discussed on Fass's show that they could hear nowhere else. Nowhere else in radio would a programmer would play two records at the same time or backwards, or the same song over and over simply because he liked its message. Nowhere else on the airwaves in the early to mid-1960s could a listener hear callers and host alike criticize LBJ for escalating the War in Vietnam, encourage men to burn their draft cards, or talk in glowing terms about their drug experiences. Radio Unnameable was a "counterculture" radio show before anyone even applied the term to America's drop-out youth. Bob Fass was a "hippie" before there were "hippies."
Fass was not the first to break the conventional boundaries of radio. In the late '50s, WOR's Jean Shepherd captivated listeners with his monologues about the state of America. Author and '60s New Left member Marty Jezer recalls listening to Shepherd for his thought-provoking talks about an America lost. "Much like Kerouac and the beats," writes Jezer, "[Shepherd] had a very romantic image of America. A kind of Whitmanesque belief in the pure democratic spirit of ordinary people. And innocence lost. He was not political (indeed, he was probably a bit conservative), but he gave those of us proto-new lefties listening in a sense of American lost which we wanted to recover."4 Fass's experimentation differed tremendously from Shepherd's. Shepherd was more of a writer than a radio artist; the monologue was his form of expression. In addition to his own thoughts, Fass blended music of all varieties, an assortment of movement personalities and a constant stream of callers into Radio Unnameable. Fass addressed topics far more explosive in a far more controversial manner than Shepherd. Shepherd's show was syndicated; Radio Unnameable was heard only on WBAI. Shepherd was "safe" for commercial radio. Fass's unpredictability would have had advertisers howling.
A style of radio similar to free form had also begun to develop during the early '60s at both KPFA and WBAI. KPFA's John Leonard had his own somewhat free form program-Night Sounds-in the very early 1960s.5 WBAI's Chris Albertson had programmed the relatively unstructured The Inside, also in the early '60s.6 Neither of these shows was as spontaneous as Fass's; neither programmer shared Fass's great talent to know when to continue to speak to a caller, when to play a Dylan song or a jazz tune or a spiritual or when to let the recorded sounds of an event replace even his fluid description of it.
Fass's free form experiments inspired countless other artists to embark on a path of radio experimentation. Fass devotees Vin Scelsa's and Larry Yurdin had helped turn WFMU at Upsala College in New Jersey into a full-time, free form radio station in the spring of '68. FMU consciously emulated Fass and Radio Unnameable; "We looked to BAI as our mentor, our older sibling and our rival as well," Scelsa recalls.7 FMU's free form didn't last too long, however; its playlist returned, according to Steve Post, "when one day someone from the administration happened, accidentally, to turn on the station." Most of the staff walked out in protest, rather than have their radio rights confiscated.8
Commercial radio also had a short-lived fling with free form early in the 1970s. One of the "Big Boys" 9-New York's WABC-hired former WBAI volunteer and WFMU mastermind Larry Yurdin to create a commercially successful free form format in the fall of 1970. WABC existed as an experimental, political, predominantly free form station for nearly two years.10 Regardless, ABC eventually shook free form. Yurdin had invited Vin Scelsa to become part of the ABC experiment. As Scelsa describes its demise, "The management finally came in and said, 'We can't allow this kind of freedom. We can't allow these hippies . . . . Let's give them a playlist.'"11 ABC couldn't handle the freedom of free form.
Radio Unnameable remained on the air well into the late '70s due almost as much to the Hill-inspired, experimental nature of WBAI as to the unique talent of its programmer. WBAI realized that it had found a gem of a radio artist in Bob Fass, and Millspaugh encouraged his experimentation. Though others may have tested the free form waters before and numerous programmers have attempted to do so since, Bob Fass still remains the archetype free form radio artist. "Fass may not have been the only one to ever do free form radio," declares former Fass follower Liza Cowan, "but he was the best."12
Bob Fass joined WBAI in 1963 because he needed a job. Fass was an actor by trade. He had been in the cast of Threepenny Opera in early '63, but the play had closed and he needed work. His friend, Dick Ellman, worked at BAI and suggested that he become a radio announcer.13
Fass had had some experience with radio. When he was in high school Fass had helped with a short- lived folk music program on WNYC. He had had little control over the music that was played on the WNYC show, and desired a radio venue to do with as he wished. Fass produced a couple of folk shows at the student radio station at Syracuse University, but never became deeply involved in the station's inner workings. Fass also had some experience with WBAI. He had listened to the station in 1960 and '61 as it stretched its radio legs. As a listener, Fass had viewed WBAI as a "great audio bazaar," a radio station on which ideas flew by from all angles, upon whose air radio was an art, not just an occupation.14 Fass needed a job, and WBAI needed an announcer with a smooth voice. The match was made.
Fass's first task as announcer was to read what Pacifica called "miscellanies." A Pacifica program director, when unsure how long a program would last, would schedule in a "miscellany" between the predicted end of one program and the intended beginning of another. Most "miscellanies" consisted of sort poems or stories read by the announcer on duty, or random comments on events or on life, all that would ideally make a smooth transition between the previous program and the next. The announcer was responsible to have enough verbiage prepared to fill large time gaps for, at unpredictable Pacifica, a program that was scheduled to last an hour would occasionally end after scant minutes. A "miscellany" was often an audition for an announcer, a chance to demonstrate both his own creativity and his technical announcing abilities. An announcer's "miscellanies," if done well, could place him in line for his own program.
Such was the case with Bob Fass. Fass's voice flowed like thick molasses over the "miscellanies" he created. Fass's smooth bass was all that WBAI could have desired, and he became accepted at the station as talent-to-be-developed.
WBAI signed off the air at midnight before Bob Fass asked if he could do his own program. Fass offered to do a program from midnight to five in the morning, and the station manager decided that if, for a minimal announcer's salary, the station could add five hours of programming, he should allow Fass to do what he wished.
Fass had certainly not intended to create a new form of radio when he began his Radio Unnameable. He simply did not want his program to be placed in a "folk ghetto" or a "jazz ghetto." Fass was interested in an assortment of musical styles and cared deeply about a range of political issues. He had virtual free reign over BAI's late night and saw no reason to ignore any topic or form of music that intrigued him. Only after he began programming Radio Unnameable did Fass stumble upon the singularity of his talent.15
Essential to the development of such a spontaneous form of radio art was a station which trusted its broadcasters to create quality programs, encouraged them to take risks and implored them to explore their own ground. WBAI helped cultivate Fass's talent most by leaving him alone to explore his own artistic territory. Despite the sanction which Hill's theories gave to a programmer such as Fass, however, Radio Unnameable was not a popular program among Pacifica's Board of Directors. Many of these Board members, as well as several of the older staff members at WBAI, were "Old Left." They viewed Fass's program as too personality-oriented for a Pacifica station and saw little redeeming value in speaking with folk musicians, or in taking phone calls from any youth who wished to praise the psychedelics he had just ingested. They did not believe Radio Unnameable to be consistent with their own "cultured" view of what a listener-supported radio station must represent.16
According to Fass, Radio Unnameable survived primarily because of its airing time.17 Despite their dislike of Fass's style of programming, older staff and Board members were rarely awake from midnight to five in the morning to complain. Those who opposed Fass were not able to consolidate their opposition. Fass remained on BAI after Millspaugh became manager because Millspaugh knew that Fass's personality would attract listeners, even from midnight to five A.M., every weekday night.
When speaking today to those who listened to Bob Fass regularly throughout the '60s, one can sense an almost spiritual reverence that they still hold for Radio Unnameable. Before the cultural explosion of the mid-1960s-before listening to Radio Unnameable became a ritual shared by the city's counterculture community-those who discovered Fass felt as if they had untapped a passageway into a magical world, and many instantaneously became religious Radio Unnameable devotees.
Lynnie Tofte's experience with Radio Unnameable is not unusual. Lynnie hailed from Staten Island, a middle-income, working class, conservative borough of New York City. She discovered Bob Fass as most others did before Radio Unnameable became a public phenomenon-because in 1965 there was very little else to choose from after midnight on the FM dial. Lynnie, who was twelve years old at the time, found WBAI on the FM because she used to listen to Bruce Elliot. Elliot's folk music show was on WOR- AM; when Lynnie would switch her radio from AM to FM, WBAI was at the same point of the dial. She heard Fass's voice and was enthralled.
Lynnie viewed Radio Unnameable as her portal out of Staten Island. Every night she would tune in to hear Fass and his guests and, for a brief moment, leave her body and hook her mind into their world of music, politics and laughter. "[Fass] was my friend, my reality for years, long before I met him," she recalls with a tremendous glow. "This is Staten Island, it's not cultural!! I never heard anyone come out and say that the Vietnam War was wrong. It didn't even occur to me. You couldn't have that kind of a thing. And they made it sound like a party! There was a party every night. And my life was pretty drab and miserable then, but there were these guys on at night . . . . " Lynnie stayed up all night, every weeknight, listening to Fass. She used to pray that he would leave early so that she could go to sleep, and she missed school frequently out of pure exhaustion. "I used to tell people to stay home," says Fass of those who stayed up all night to listen. "They won't fire you. If they fire you, I'll give you a note." Lynnie was so fanatically attached to Fass, that when her radio antenna fell, she spent nights holding the antenna outside of her window, knowing that by doing so she could tap into BAI's magical aether.
Lynnie realized through listening to Fass that even though she was different than most everybody in her actual community-she loved music and hated what the government was doing in Vietnam-she was part of an electronic community. Listening to Fass was like nightly hanging out with her true community of friends. Lynnie became more and more glued to WBAI as she grew more and more outraged with the people around her. "It proved I wasn't alone," she recalls. "It was really important . . . ."
Lynnie discovered through WBAI an entire world that she would never have otherwise found. This fundamentally changed her personality. Lynnie knew that she was not alone in her politics, and this gave her the confidence to argue with her family, friends and neighbors about what was going on outside of their Staten Island vacuum. Lynnie's life would not have been the same if not for Radio Unnameable.18
Lynnie was also not alone in her development of a Bob Fass "addiction." Vin Scelsa was also "addicted" to Fass's show from his first exposure. He first heard Radio Unnameable in 1967, when he was working as a night security guard. Scelsa was flipping the radio dials when he heard a song from the Beatles' recently released Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The song that was playing was a cut that he hadn't expected to hear on the radio. When that song was over, another track from Sergeant Pepper followed it. And then another. The first side of Sergeant Pepper ended. Scelsa heard a scratch, then a series of thuds, then what sounded like the needle being placed on a moving record. The d.j. had turned the record over; he was going to play the entire album! Scelsa listened for a while more, then he had to walk his rounds. He turned on the same radio station when he returned to discover to whom he had been listening. Sergeant Pepper was still playing. The d.j. was playing the album over and over again! Scelsa hadn't even heard Bob Fass talk before he was hooked.
Scelsa was even more intrigued when Fass did begin to speak. Scelsa had found a radio programmer who spoke the way he spoke, talked about the things he thought were important, and loved the same music that he loved. Soon after becoming an avid fan of Radio Unnameable, Scelsa went on to pioneer a free form radio format at WFMU at Upsala College in New Jersey. He then worked at WABC during its early '70s stab at free form radio, and now does a free form show every week on New York City's popular radio station, WXRK (K-Rock). Vin Scelsa owes the inspiration for his own radio career to Bob Fass.19
Tom Michaels has listened to Fass almost religiously since 1963. He was introduced to WBAI by a "leftist" uncle who, in addition to giving him copies of the Partisan Review and I.F. Stone Weekly, encouraged him to listen to the station. Michaels was fascinated by the expansive political and cultural discussions that occurred nowhere in the media but on Radio Unnameable. Michaels until recently did not feel comfortable listening to any radio station other than WBAI: "I wasn't at home," he recalls of attempts to listen to other stations. "I felt like I was waking up in a strange hotel." Though he does not listen to many other WBAI programs today, he still tunes in specifically to hear Fass's show.20
Liza Cowan started to listen to Fass in 1967 while she was a junior in high school. She volunteered at WBAI when she was a senior to file records for Fass and help him during his show. Cowan would find records for Fass which dealt with themes that he would choose: "He'd go, 'Alright, I want cars,'" she recalls, "and you had to go through the entire library to find things dealing with cars."21 Cowan joined the staff of WBAI in 1970 and in '71 she originated one of the station's first feminist programs. Cowan felt deeply personally involved with the station even before she became a WBAI staff member; she had become a feminist directly as a result of a program she had heard on the station. "Just listening to certain programs," she says of her fascination with WBAI, "totally changed my life."22
Mesmerized by a radio programmer's voice and vision, these BAI listeners forged new paths for their own lives because of Bob Fass and his radio program. There are doubtless hundreds, if not thousands of similar stories which can be told by countless Bob Fass devotees of how Radio Unnameable gave them the confidence to fight for their beliefs in the face of adversity. Listening to Radio Unnameable they became connected with people who spoke like them, acted like them and wanted what they wanted in the world. No matter how lonely mainstream America may have made them feel, by listening to Radio Unnameable they knew that they were not alone.
Listeners were certainly not alone in their reverence for Fass's talent. Even WBAI staff members became drawn into the Fass whirlwind and eventually patterned their own radio styles after his.
Steve Post grew up in the Bronx. Post worked at menial jobs in order to pay his rent after graduating from high school in the early '60s. Post got a job working for the New York Friends Group, a Quaker organization whose office was located in a building with numerous other pacifist and civil rights organizations. He quickly became distressed with the path his life was taking despite his working for a good cause. Post did not want to be a typist/clerk forever.
Post began to ask his friends at the end of 1964 if they knew of any available jobs. He was overjoyed when a friend of his told him of an opening at WBAI. Post had always wanted to be in radio. He had known that WBAI existed-he vaguely recalled his brother listening to a BAI jazz show, after which the broadcasters would ask for subscriptions-and recognized it as an "oddball radio station."23 Rather than work in another Quaker organization, Post called WBAI and inquired about the job.
Post called WBAI and spoke with someone in the management of the station. The first job offered to Post was that of station bookkeeper. Post had failed math in high school and knew that this was not the proper job for him, so he asked what other positions were available. The person at the station with whom he was speaking told him that BAI needed somebody to edit the program guide. Post was confident with his grasp of the English language and he accepted the position. Only after he hung up the phone did he realize how odd the call had been. He had just been hired for a job with no interview and no application. Perhaps, Post reasoned, he had been hired because of his answer to the manager's question of how much he wanted to make; he had responded, "I'll take what you can pay me."
Post showed up for work two weeks later. The man who had hired him was nowhere in sight and he discovered that, despite his conversation to the contrary, he had been hired as the station's bookkeeper. Within an hour, someone from the station had taken him over to the bank to make him signatory for all of WBAI's accounts. Almost before meeting him, WBAI had given a twenty year old kid from off the streets-someone who had flunked math!-control of all the station's finances. That was the way that BAI worked.
Not surprisingly, Post was a stunningly inept bookkeeper. Still, no one else would take the job so he remained at the station. By spending his days and nights at WBAI, Post was constantly within reach of the radio position that he had always wanted. Post would occasionally get to make announcements when there was no one else around to fill the duty. He had a program of his own by the end of the year.24
Post modeled his program, The Outside, very closely on Radio Unnameable. He had spent much of his time at the station as a Bob Fass volunteer, editing tape and running errands for Fass in exchange for being able to watch him work. Post quickly fell in love with the concept of free form radio. Though he knew that he could never be as spontaneous as Fass, Post decided that he wanted to do a free form show. Post began The Outside by planning which records he would play and what he would say between them. He slipped into his own artistic zone as he became more comfortable.. The Outside soon stopped sounding like a carbon copy of Radio Unnameable. Listeners even eventually stopped calling The Outside, and saying, "Hello, Bob?"
Post began The Outside in the fall of 1965. Soon thereafter, the program fell into a regular late night slot on Saturday and Sunday nights. The Outside was less overtly political than Radio Unnameable, and Post was more prone to a comic treatment of contemporary issues. Post had been known as a "wiseguy" throughout school, and carried a gift for making people laugh into his own radio art. He and writer/satirist Paul Krassner would often create brilliant satirical dialogues, take quick-witted jabs at political events, and generally lighten the heavy social mood. When he finally hit his stride, Post developed a cast of regular caller/characters; by 1967 he had begun to encourage his listeners to call up Radio Unnameable and say, "Hello, Steve?"25
The combination of Fass and Post made WBAI nights a refuge for late-night souls who were hypnotized by the spontaneity of their free form art. By '65, Fass's own art had spilled over into Post's show, and by '66 had begun to infiltrate the rest of the station. Soon after Post's free form vision became standard listening on the weekends, another Fass-inspired fellow acquired a niche in WBAI's program calendar.
Larry Josephson had gone to school at Berkeley and then moved to the East Coast in the early 1960s to work for IBM in upstate New York. Josephson found little to occupy himself as a single man alone in Poughkeepsie and he soon got himself transferred to the company's New York City office.26 Josephson had had brief contact with KPFA in Berkeley, though he had never worked for the station, but figured that if he wanted to make friends in New York City he should volunteer at WBAI.
Josephson had had some experience with ham radio when he was a youth, so he volunteered at WBAI as an audio engineer. A week after he volunteered he received a call from the station asking if he could help record a series of talks at the New School called, "The Negro and the Press." Josephson dragged the station's "portable" recording equipment to the lectures and recorded the series. He met Bob Fass when he returned to the station to deliver the tapes. ". . . [T]here was this sort of large man who looked like Moses or something," remembers Josephson," standing in the next room. I saw him through a little square of glass through the soundproof door, and I looked in and this guy sort of beckoned me in."27
Josephson became an instantaneous Fass devotee and began to hang around the station. Shortly thereafter, Fass got him a job as the station's weekend announcer. Josephson asked Albertson if he could fill the position of morning man during the staff walkout of 1965. Josephson began In the Beginning in March 1966.
In the Beginning was a different sort of morning radio show than any other that had previously graced the New York City airwaves. WBAI's previous morning man was poet A.B. Spellman, whose show was low-key, downbeat and tired. Josephson, on the other hand, destroyed all radio conventions by expressing his anger at having to wake up so godawful early in the morning. The New York Times called Josephson "the anti-morning disk jockey."28 Josephson would complain when he was sick. He would yawn when he was tired. Whichever side of the bed Josephson got up on would be the wrong one.
Josephson's In the Beginning was an intensely personal program. In a free form style echoing that of Fass, Josephson would talk about topics that meant much to him and play music that reflected his ever- changing mood. His was a personal type of politics; his private problems became common topics of public conversation. Listeners connected with Josephson despite his constant grumbling. He, like Fass and Post, developed an intensively loyal following. People still recognize him on the street from hearing his voice, and they often still remember the names of his children.29
Free form radio is an inherently personal form of art. A free form radio show clearly reflects its programmer's personality, much more so than a program formatted by a station manager or a talk show with pre-determined topics, because the programmer has the liberty to improvise. When the programmer feels anguish, s/he may play a song or tell a story that reflects that mood. If the sorrow turns to hope by the end of the program, free form allows for the program to reflect that shift.
Free form radio had already been born over WBAI's airwaves when Millspaugh arrived in '66. Millspaugh, unlike the station's previous management, recognized free form's power to attract listeners. He realized that when a broadcaster would bare his soul on the air as Fass, Post and Josephson did every day, listeners would develop a personal connection with him. One can trace this notion directly to Lewis Hill, his respect for the broadcaster and his audience, and his notion that a broadcaster with a certain hopes, dreams and desires would attract an audience with similar aspirations.30 The previous management had viewed Fass, Post and Josephson as artistic afterthoughts. Millspaugh placed them at the focal point of WBAI and banked on them to bring in listeners.31
The free form radio wave at WBAI coincided exactly with the nation's talk radio explosion. Both, perhaps, were but different shades of the same embrace of participation through radio. Free form radio, however, was "interactive" on a much more visceral level than even the most participatory talk show. The free form listener, rather than just listen to an interesting conversation or call in to comment on a topical debate, would connect with the programmer on a personal plane. So intimate was the forum offered by free form radio that it lured a listener into more than the program-it enticed the listener into the host's inner world.
Millions of New Yorkers listened to the radio on every given day in the mid-1960s.32 Of these millions, Fass's midnight-to-five FM audience may have only reached into the thousands. These thousands of listeners, however, developed an invaluable connection to one another through Radio Unnameable. Because Fass wanted desperately to improve the society which he saw crumbling around him, the listenership which his free form program attracted was likewise concerned and motivated to seek a better America. Listeners to commercial talk shows may have tuned in because they wished to comment on the state of the world. Fass's "Cabal" tuned in to Radio Unnameable because they wanted to change it.
a.
"Exterminate all rational thought. That is the conclusion I have come to."
- Bill Lee, Naked Lunch