Comments on: Radio Unnamable with Bob Fass

By: Howard Salat

Howard Salat — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 02:07:15 +0000

WBAI is mentioned a lot in the George Carlin biog called “Seven Dirty Words”One of lines was “Ignorant selfish politicians are elected by ignorant selfish voters”.

By: Howard Salat

Howard Salat — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 01:58:48 +0000

I remember the fantastic humor shows way back in NYC such as Super-Spade,Super-Jew, the skit about lifting an object with an array of pulleys-”It’s Your World & You Can Have It ” and much more.I was in my car a lot and almost went off the road while I laughed.Any possibility of re- hearing these shown on the net?
Thanks,
Howard

By: Bob Kennedy

Bob Kennedy — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 20:28:28 +0000

Mike Cala. Beginning in late ’69, I think, and definitely by the time we moved to the bigger place on 3rd (4th?) Street, I was one of the two Merton House “co-ordinators” with Frank Allegra (I was the young guy with the wife and baby boy) and have actually just started a novel about that place and my related experiences in the “movement.” Unfortunately, I’ve lost most of my notes/journals from the time and am having more than a little trouble dredging up memories from a lifetime ago. I’d love to trade memories with you by e-mail (regkennedy@hotmail.com) and/or phone. Are you in contact with anybody else who used to hang at Merton House? And by any chance are you the Mike (as I remember) who had incredible chutzpah for a “kid” and put all us “oldsters” (i.e., 20-somethings) to shame hawking anti-war buttons over near NYU to make money for the house? (I still have my “F*ck Nixon” button.)

By: Michael Cala

Michael Cala — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 02:08:55 +0000

Fass’s Radio Unnameable, along with Steve Post’s The Outside, which came later, politicized a working class Sicilian-American kid who hadn’t a clue about radical politics — or music, or history, or dissent — into an antidraft counselor on the Lower East Side during my teens. I believe the material I heard — both spoken and sung — helped me to understand why I needed to refuse induction into the armed services on moral and ethical grounds. As if that weren’t enough, the shows were just so much damned aural fun for a kid without any similar context in his “regular” life. “Hello, Hello” by Sopwith Camel played for over 90 minutes until pledge drive goals were met! Killingly funny, Fass’s ironic postmodern “DJ” was, as he shook up his audiences, compared to the mostly vacuous radio people onb “straight” channels were just selling us gas (as in hot air). Fass and WBAI brought me and a lot others to the Lower East Side to effect change, and revel in the radical strength and beauty of youth. (BTW, anyone remember Merton-Buber House, our draft counseling center, on 1st Ave and 6th Street?)