When - How - Why (did you start listening to the Best Show)

[erika]

If this topic has already been addressed, lemme know...

When/How/Why did you first start tuning into the Best Show? When did it become a necessary part of your week?


I had seen posts about the BS on AST for almost a year and never tuned in, although Tom clearly had a strong following over there... When he had Zach Galifianakis on, I tuned in and made my first call. Then I listened to the Seth show, called again, and was hooked from that point forward. (I think I listened and participated in the pledge drive as well)

It wasn't until I started listening weekly that I even knew about Wursters calls. Somehow I just hadn't paid close attention to the show, and I hadn't listened to the CDs before.

Now I'm hooked on all of it.

I listened to the 9/18/01 show on Friday and heard Tom come up with the name "Friends of Tom" and, to say the least, it gave me the warm and fuzzies   

[kenkwan]

I heard about the Best Show through Fluxblog. He had the series of Bruce Willis calls edited out of the show. I was pretty much hooked from then on.

http://bestshowvault.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-have-wolf-eyes.html

[dave from knoxville]

I started listening to WFMU after seeing it mentioned in Uncut magazine, and eventually gravitated to the shows that had podcasts. It was mostly 7 Second Delay for the first year, but then I got interested in Tom when I heard him more or less co-host a show with Andy from the streets outside the studio.

[mike a]

The podcast, basically.  I was aware of Tom's WFMU show, and before that his zine and record label, but only when the show went to podcast did I begin to listen.  It took me a few weeks to figure out what was going on, but I became hooked within a month.

[Laurie]

A fellow who has all of the fruits and also the pretzel from Pac-Man tattooed on his arm told me all about WFMU. I just happened to be listening to the internet radio one Tuesday evening, and I was hooked.

[Deric W. Haircare]

I think it was when Matthew Fluxblog sent me some Best Show .mp3s, ca. '03 or so. Because I think I totally glossed over the stuff he posted on Fluxblog. He later intuited correctly that it was "my thing" and gave me a couple of CD-Rs worth of classic Wurster and Earles calls. And the addiction began...

[bobby.]

I was using wireless internet in a restaurant in France last August and I read a Danielson interview on Pitchfork...

I quickly figured out how to do the podcast thing because it sounded like fun and I wanted something to listen to.

THANKS BRO DAN!

[buffcoat]

My former college roommate (who was in a Chapel Hill band and got the first CD through the band connections, as did many people early on) said "you should listen to this" and handed me a CD of "Rock, Rot and Rule."

I thought it was hilarious - especially the dog being named Kenneth and when RTC answers one of Tom's questions with "He just blocks him!" in his consternation about the Cavs-Magic game.  

Later, I was reading Mark Prindle's site (a good friend of that same college roommate while we were in college) and read his review of "Chain Fights."  I ordered it and the Gorch and Jeff Cooper were even funnier.  

TS: "I was under the impression that stealing was kind of always a big deal."  
RG: "Not York in the 50s, that was paradise, baby!"

A few weeks later I idly looked up S&W online and thought "hey!  These guys do a weekly radio show on the Internet?" and started listening to the archives.

[Emily]

on the radio. driving home from rutgers after my tuesday night class in 2005.

[christine]

I feel like the Best Show and I have been ships in the night for years and I'm kind of embarrassed that it took me so long to notice, but ultimately I came to it via my beloved Superchunk.  I honestly can't remember the order of events, but someone told me a long time ago that the drummer from Superchunk also did comedy in some context and I thought that was the greatest thing I'd ever heard.  I think I was already vaguely aware of the Rock, Rot & Rule premise when I saw Jon do a micro-interview as RTC at SXSW.  Eventually I found out that Jon's comedy was somehow related to "that half-hour Smirnoff Ice thing with Jon Benjamin" that my then-boyfriend had played for me a year prior (I remember Googling it later, coming up with the Best Show archive page and being very, very confused).  But the tipping point was when a friend of mine made me listen to two straight hours of Scharpling & Wurster calls on a bus ride to Philly, namely Gas Station Dogs, the first Mother 13, the first Philly Boy Roy, and at my request, the Smirnoff Ice call (and maybe something else that I'm forgetting).  I immediately started listening on Tuesdays and devouring podcasts and archives and have been a hopeless wreck ever since. 

On the upside, playing catch-up is really, really fun.

[senorcorazon]

Talking to a guy at a wedding in New Mexico; he and his wife were the only people from New York or New Jersey there and we spent a long time talking about how we could never live in this one horse town because of the things we'd miss. He told me about The Best Show and his explanation was about as bad as mine is now to people: "It's like a call-in show, but a lot of the calls are fake, and this guy gets really mad about stuff, and also there's music, and, uh, never mind." My brother also blathered on about it, and once I got another office job that would let me wear headphones I was trolling around finding podcasts, and booyah. Now my girlfriend has to listen to me daily saying, "today, I was listening and there was this funny thing, and then, and then" like Rain Man and Judge Wapner.

[Dan B]

I read somewheres that Zach Galfianakis was on the 5/30/06 show, so I downloaded the podcast when it came out.  I thought it was too long for me to get into so I didn't listen for a few weeks.  And the podcasts built up in my iTunes, until one day I decided to listened to the Zach one and then another.  I think i listened to three podcasts in one day.  Then I went back and got every old podcast I could and started listening live.

[Gregory]

I had downloaded the 2004 Yo La Tengo request-a-thon and Tom provided the vocals on a Rod Stewart song and I really liked it. Those songs also introduced me to wfmu, but I never listened to the best show because I was just a casual listener to the station and talk radio didn't really interest me.

Then that radio free yo la tengo podcast came out, and I recognized Tom's voice and thought the show was hilarious. Anyways, that brought me back to the show, and it was only a little time before I was hooked.

[redmedicine]

I was actually turned onto it by those pottymouths Rick and Rose from the Poster Children.  I tuned in for the argument between Rick and Tom, but stayed after hearing the saga of the Albany Soaker. 

Yo La Tengo - Really Not into it

[Andy]

I had an architecture professor who had gone to Columbia.  In 1998, he was playing WFMU in his office at Halloween and it was something like 24 hours of scary sounds.  So I started listening intermittently.

Skip ahead to 2003.  I was finally out of school and had more free time than I knew what to do with, so I got into remote control airplanes.  My wife hated when I worked on them, but she just happened to have class on Tuesday nights.  I don't remember why I remembered the station, but I would put on WFMU while working on my planes.  At first I would just have it on in the background and for a while I just thought it was a funny show with funny callers.