The dark

Welcome to year's darkest day. Here in the Bay Area the sky is appropriately dark, as a storm is blowing in. The rain's just started falling in Redwood City as I write.

I've been vastly amused this week by reading a piece in the Dec. 4 New Yorker, "Voice of the Cabal," about seminal presenter Bob Fass (Wikipedia article), who apparently invented the "free form radio" genre made famous on Pacifica stations. (The article is not online, but the New Yorker has posted an audio feature with the article's author, Marc Fisher, discussing Fass and playing clips from his shows. Update: Turns out the article is a side project, or perhaps an excerpt, from an upcoming book by Fisher, Something in the Air.)

I say "Pacifica stations" because I spent some formative years in suburban Houston listening to KPFT, though Fass broadcast (and still broadcasts) on New York's WBAI. The time was the early 70s and KPFT subscribed absolutely to the free-form radio ethos. I loved it so much that becoming a radio announcer became my first (and first to fall) career ambition.

The article has some fascinating information about Fass's development of the format, including some hilarious anecdotes about a then-unknown Bob Dylan doing characters, and later Abbie Hoffman becoming a regular presence. The article also describes what must have been the first-ever flash mob:

Back in the fifties, Fass's radio hero, Jean Shepherd, suffering a moment of overwhelming doubt, had asked his listeners to gather in an even he called the Milling. Hundreds of people convened on a dark street corner in lower Manhattan and just stood around. The police arrived and asked questions, and, as Shepherd had instructed them, the listeners declined, politely, to respond. Then, without further communication, they went home. Shepherd returned the next night to his studio, revived.

I experienced a moment of synchronicity this morning while driving in to work. A reporter on "Morning Edition" was riffing on this being the winter solstice and included a minute on light pollution and the International Dark Sky Association. It occured to me that, just as a predominance of artificial light has polluted the night skies over populated areas and taken away the pleasure of star-gazing, nowadays the frantic pace and rampant commercialization of media has all but driven out the quiet, conversational style of programming developed by Shepherd and Fass during the graveyard shift when "no one" was listening.