FOT Forum
The Best Show on WFMU => Show Discussion => Topic started by: Eric on October 22, 2006, 02:10:43 PM
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Is this a good idea for a topic? Has it already been done? It can be deleted, if so. I just thought it might be kinda interesting.
You can be approximate of course....I don't expect you to count them all up, just ballpark is fine. It's not meant to be a competition, really.
the first show I heard was July 25th, 2006 on a recommendation from a friend with great taste. I have to admit, I was so so close to putting it off because it seemed like I had just missed too much looking at the archives (ha, about 5 years?) but thank god I went for it cuz I was hooked from Philly Boy Roy's call. Since then, I've listened to probably 20-25 shows in all. Definitely no more than 30. It's been amazing...I can't imagine my life without it, really. I hope that doesn't sound creepy/sappy.
Is this lame?
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Is this a good idea for a topic? Has it already been done? It can be deleted, if so. I just thought it might be kinda interesting.
You can be approximate of course....I don't expect you to count them all up, just ballpark is fine. It's not meant to be a competition, really.
the first show I heard was July 25th, 2006 on a recommendation from a friend with great taste. I have to admit, I was so so close to putting it off because it seemed like I had just missed too much looking at the archives (ha, about 5 years?) but thank god I went for it cuz I was hooked from Philly Boy Roy's call. Since then, I've listened to probably 20-25 shows in all. Definitely no more than 30. It's been amazing...I can't imagine my life without it, really. I hope that doesn't sound creepy/sappy.
Is this lame?
I was familiar with the Ronald Thomas Clontle call, but my entry point into the glorious world of The Best Show was this:
http://www.fluxblog.org/2004/02/my-mommy-made-me-boots-timmy-von.html
I think I've listened to every show from 2004 to the present, and a good portion of the shows from 2000-2003 (since there was so much to explore in the archives, for a lot of older shows, I've scanned through them to catch the key bits with plans to fully absorb them in the future).
"It's been amazing...I can't imagine my life without it, really." = Nice. Welcome to the FOT Army. Since you're new to the show, perhaps you have yet to take a gander at the recaps (started in November 2005). Enjoy:
http://www.recidivism.org/tbsowfmu/
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I *think* at this point I have listened to every archived show. I ffwded through the marathon shows though as there isn't a whole lot of funny there.
Actually my podcast and its related crew are artistd in residence in a local space we are having a series of events, roundtables etc. after the first one I was approached by a couple who were TBSoWFMU fans (and were excited by my bootleg Tom S. Intro a few weeks back) and I recounted what hooked me in.
I was in my studio in grad school listening to WFMU as I had just figured out how to stream it. I had listened to the station for day, half listening, suddenly TBS comes on and Tom is on the drums yelling about the Stanley Cup. I was hooked. I stopped working and listened to the whole show, it was some of the most entertaining radio I had ever heard. Great stuff. I will seriously weep bitter tears/if and when TBS ends.
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I will seriously weep bitter tears/if and when TBS ends.
Get ready to cry. Big announcement on Tuesday.
Tom.
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I will seriously weep bitter tears/if and when TBS ends.
Get ready to cry. Big announcement on Tuesday.
Tom.
Are you kidding me?
I've listened since the Zach Galifianakis show on the podcast. I was hooked from then on and went back and listened to all of this year and a lot of the rest of the archives.
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Satellite radio again?
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No, there's no big announcement. It was a bad joke. Sorry.
I'm not going anywhere! Wheee!
Tom!
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No, there's no big announcement. It was a bad joke. Sorry.
I'm not going anywhere! Wheee!
Tom!
That's probably in your best interest. You don't want to wind up in the role of Stephen King Simulacrum opposite Spike's Kathy Bates. Brrrrr.
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No, there's no big announcement. It was a bad joke. Sorry.
I'm not going anywhere! Wheee!
Tom!
That was like saying someone died and then saying "just kidding" a day later.
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Annie Wilkes SPIKE: Gohd came to me latht night and told me your purpothe for being here. I am going to help you HOTHT a new RAYYDIO THYOW.
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L'August 14th 2006. I was in France and read the Danielson interview on one brief interaction between my laptop and the internets. On the same interaction, I got that episode. I LAUGHED. I'd always wanted a podcast I'd like enough to listen to regularly. So I got the next one and listened to it on the train across France towards home. I LAUGHED SOME MORE! That was a lovely day.
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The first Best Show I heard and to this day my favorite one was January 31st with Bryce getting his hand bit off by a lion and predicting the Oscars (Jack Lemon). Mahky Ramone also had about an hour long call (in the jugglah) and we were visited by The One and the Ones Brother, not to mention Garrett (I'm gonna melt you.)
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I was introduced to TBS through the Sound of Young America podcast (http://splangy.com/radio). They had an interview with Tom (http://media.libsyn.com/media/tsoya/tsoya111205.mp3) and then played some clips from one of his CDs. From there I found the WFMU archives and my productivity took a nose dive. I'm laughing more at work though, which is probably good.
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I believe the first show I heard was October 11, 2005. I was just flipping through the lower end of the radio dial one night. When I landed on 91.1, I heard Tom in ultra puberty chaperon mode. I loved the way he dealt with the callers right off the bat, HE MEANT BUSINESS. There was also smash or trash, battle raps, and crazy callers. I was hooked from then on, been enjoying the archives. No other show comes close!
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As uberlame as it sounds, I "discovered" TBSOWFMU from randomly stumbling upon this review of Rock, Rot & Rule (http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/record_review/22243/Scharpling_and_Wurster_Rock_Rot_and_Rule) on Pitchfork, back in Summer of 2003. I was so intrigued that I fired up SoulSeek, searched for "Scharpling", and in that instant, my whole life changed. Seriously.
What's sad is that I probably would have been a fan MUCH earlier before then, as I was a loyal listener of Irwin & Michelle's Incorrect Music show, which aired a few hours before Tom's every Wednesday. I'd always see "The Best Show on WFMU" listed on the schedule, and always found the name of the show to be funny, but sadly, I never stuck around to actually listen to it.
Who knew that of all people, Pitchfork would end up playing a significant role in greatly expanding my cultural horizons?
To directly answer the question though, I have indeed listened to every single archive of TBSOWFMU from the very beginning, with the exception of the "missing" shows which were taken offline because they included bits from the Stereolaffs CDs.
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I got a copy of "Rock Rot and Rule" from an honest-to-God Chapel Hill band member - but not until about 2002-3. I started listening to the show not too long after that.
Then I started to notice that Tom and Jon were showing up in all kinds of media that I already liked - Jay Farrar, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, that detective show on USA.
I think I've now heard every bit TS and JW have done on the Best Show since they started archiving.
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The first thing I heard were the Bruce Willis calls, through Fluxblog. After that, I listened to every show while at work. I started at the beginning of the archives, with the Yankees Vs. Mets fans. I just started going through the archives again.
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that detective show on USA.
I just discovered that Monk is on Saturday afternoons on BBC2 UK. I got happy, because I have that station.
I also just discovered that the BBC2 that I get has slight teeny tiny schedule variations, and Monk is one of them. It would be!
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I've heard ever Best Show since January of this year. My addiction did not start well. I heard two Scharping and Wurster bits on "The Sound of Young America" one night when we were having some transmitter issues and I was stuck out there.
Needless to say, NOT the best time to listen to the miraculous Moebius strip of their humour turning on itself and contorting again and again.
However, something happened. The piece about the "1-2-punch" at the end of KidEBay stuck in my head. Later that night, when I couldn't sleep. I found myself at their website curiously listening again, and in the process waking my now ex-wife up with chortling and laughter.
I put the credit card down and bought "Hippy Justice" which I wore out. The very week, it happened I brought Chinese food home and listened to the live broadcast. And so it goes, as least until recently.
I have them all on my IPod and listen to them in parts on a regular basis...and now, I get paid to listen to them, tee hee. Oh, and the Scharpling Squad here is growing too. Thanks for such a great topic and some fascinating posts.
MIK
WUSM
www.wusm.usm.edu
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Very cool to see so many people reply. It's been really interesting to hear about how people found out about the Best Show, I should have mentioned that in my original post. Keep em comin'.
"It's been amazing...I can't imagine my life without it, really." = Nice. Welcome to the FOT Army.
Thank you, good to be here man. I should say, i have yet to enlist officially, but I'm getting to that.
Since you're new to the show, perhaps you have yet to take a gander at the recaps (started in November 2005). Enjoy:
http://www.recidivism.org/tbsowfmu/
Oh sure, I have that and FOTpedia to thank for most all of my Best Show knowledge. I would've been lost without it.
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I have no way of counting. I listened to like every show from around 2002 to Fall of 2004, but then I moved to California and dropped out for like a year and a half. Then I got back on the train.
The first one I listened to the whole way through was the interview with Jimmy McConaugh, author of "Shakey", the Neil Young biography. I believe there was a Kevin call that night, and I TOTALLY thought Kevin was REAL. I remember just thinking it was hilarious that this guy had a show on fmu and he had to deal with his brother's old friends calling and getting all passive aggressive on him, and I thought it was awesome how he was dealing with it: being nice turned to just humouring him, to being definitely irritated, to just telling him to buzz off and Kevin getting increasingly needy and hostile at the same tiime. Even before I figured out it was a bit (like 2 weeks later) I knew that Scharpling understood the world as I understood it. It's difficult to explain...
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The first one I listened to the whole way through was the interview with Jimmy McConaugh, author of "Shakey", the Neil Young biography. I believe there was a Kevin call that night, and I TOTALLY thought Kevin was REAL. I remember just thinking it was hilarious that this guy had a show on fmu and he had to deal with his brother's old friends calling and getting all passive aggressive on him, and I thought it was awesome how he was dealing with it: being nice turned to just humouring him, to being definitely irritated, to just telling him to buzz off and Kevin getting increasingly needy and hostile at the same tiime. Even before I figured out it was a bit (like 2 weeks later) I knew that Scharpling understood the world as I understood it. It's difficult to explain...
Thats the show that hooked me. Yeah I'm with you about the Kevin bit being real. It just made my skin crawl hearing it not knowing.
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the first one i listened to was the april 19, 2005 show when tom interviewed bishop pablo fontana. i used to listen to 7sd, ken's show and michael goodstein's choking on cufflinks often, but had never given tbs a try.
i think i was just bored that particular evening. went on the internet and started listening to the live stream hoping something interesting was on. the interview starts out pretty normally and it gets increasingly hilarious with every passing minute.. took a while before i could figure out what was going on.. nothing had made me laugh so hard.
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I loved the Clontle thing - but I was hooked big time from the moment I heard "You got the Gorch!" and then seconds later when he kept insisting that Tom agree to buy his book. Why don't all interviewed authors start out like that?
Anyway, I became a fan for life the moment Zachary Brimstead says, "Sir, I have no time for trifle... trifling... moo-vies. I think I speak for all your listeners when I say, 'Play some barbershop quartet music!"
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I'd never heard of the show until I stumbled upon the archives this summer. It sounds fake to claim so, but I was bored enough to go browsing around alt-comedy web sites when I hit upon the FOT site and tried the archives. I listened to the most recent one at the time which had The Mommas and (the) Poppas, Philly Boy Roy, and Tourgasm talk. I only skimmed the episode so I was oblivious to its true nature. It seemed like another call in show but with some very creative callers and host who'd play along with them. It sounded fun in passing, but I'm not a call-in show fan so I moved on and soon forgot all about TBSOWFMU.
That is until a few weeks ago after exausting every last decent comedy podcast I knew of, I went looking for something new and once again came across the Best Show. I'm glad I decided to give it another chance cuz it's my new favorite thing. It's definately a show that takes some patience to get used to its rhythm, but it's pretty rewarding once you do.
The banter between Tom and the call in characters is the draw, but I think what hooked me most was Tom's brilliant rants. I tend to agree with most, but even on the occasion he's ripping on something I kind of like, it's even more hilarious to me. He could spend 3 hours pissing on all of my personal heroes and I'd love him for it.
Now I'm slowly working my way backward through the 2006 shows. Aiming to reach 2005 soon.
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I would like to officially campaign for the restoration of the missing archives. I feel like I missed a few issues in the full run and it makes me sad. Maybe a members only site with access, or sell them on itunes or something. A premium for donating to the marathon maybe, a CDR with mp3s of the missing shows.
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It's funny, speaking of Kevin...
A week or so after I downloaded that first Rock, Rot and Rule mp3 from Soulseek, I had started combing through the actual RealAudio archives of the show. I had only known about the "Wurster" side of the Best Show facade, but did not know about Andy Earles.
The first time I heard one of his calls (it was the "Samson" call, when he mistakenly called the show, thinking it was a telephone dating service), I was so stupefied, that while I was listening to this bizarre call, I typed search terms into Google, trying to verify if the names and places that were being mentioned did indeed exist. I actually needed to do that, because at that point, the persona that Earles was playiing was just plausible enough for me to believe that such a man could actually exist.
Once I found that Google had nada on "Cockatoo Carl's" and "Casa del Agua Caliente Apartments", I knew that I finally, officially "got" The Best Show on WFMU.
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The first Best Show I ever listened to was a fairly early one (I was already an FMU listener), and I tuned in and heard Tom in one of his jingoistic pro-Bush moments. He was saying something along the lines of "How dare you criticize the President" or "All loyal Americans must support the President no matter what" or maybe "Thankfully Bush won the election".... and I didn't get it. I changed the station or listened to a John Allen archive or something. My reaction was, what is this guy doing on FMU? Just what the world needs... another right-wing blowhard on the radio.
The next time I tuned in to TBS I heard Tom and Wurster (as a sleazy record promoter, maybe sometime in '03?) and I GOT IT. It was a great bit that went on for a long time, and ended with the inevitable "Am I on the radio? You mean I've been live on the radio all this time? Oh sh#$!"
I was hooked!
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The next time I tuned in to TBS I heard Tom and Wurster (as a sleazy record promoter, maybe sometime in '03?) and I GOT IT. It was a great bit that went on for a long time, and ended with the inevitable "Am I on the radio? You mean I've been live on the radio all this time? Oh sh#$!"
I was hooked!
I love that call, with the bassist who has a full sundae trimmings bar on his bass neck and makes an ice cream sundae during the solo because he thinks it looks cool.