Bob Fass

Bob Fass (born June 29, 1933) is an American radio personality and pioneer of free-form radio, who has broadcast in the New York region for over 50 years. Fass's program, Radio Unnameable, first aired in 1963 on WBAI, a radio station operating out of New York City.

Show content

The show was described as a free-form show often with random phone calls and political discussion."

Notable guests include investigative reporter Mae Brussell, Abbie Hoffman commenting on the Chicago Seven trial, a planning session for the Central Park Be-In, and the first radio appearance of Phoebe Snow. The show has featured the work, and interviews, of musicians such as Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, and Abbie Hoffman, and the first performances of Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant" and Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr. Bojangles."

Response to the show

Neil Fabricant, Legislative Director of New York's ACLU during the 1960s, has said that Fass was "a midwife at the birth of the counterculture." Ralph Engleman, in his book, Public Radio & TV in America: A Political History, cites Fass as "the father of freeform radio."