Old school Phil Hendrie - Best Show influence?

[heliumsocket]

Does anyone know if S&W are fans of old school Phil Hendrie? He's another evening-time terrestrial radio absurdist, or at least was back in the day.

For anyone who didn't grow up in the Southern California AM broadcasting area, he hosted the late evening time slot on a pretty hard-line conservative talk station, KFI 640. He would act as the host, as well as a call-in guest (using a microphone, a mute button, and a telephone). He'd switch back and forth between the two, lightning fast. After setting the table for a while with some outrageous topic, he'd take calls from the stations listeners, and the screeners would generally only let through people who thought the show was for real.

In the 90s, he would never ever break character or let on that it was anything other than a generic AM call-in show.  He would just TORTURE the hotheads and chumps who normally listened to the station. His mostly straight-faced parodies of Art Bell's Coast to Coast, which aired on a different AM station at the same time as Hendrie, were great. His stuff can get a little crass, but hey, he was on talk radio.

Phil Hendrie - Lord Vader

I think around the turn of the century, he devolved into a generic conservative AM radio guy. But man, I remember crying to some of his bits in the mid 90s. Just interested to hear if he had any influence on the Best Show!

[Tom Scharpling]

The first time I ever heard any Phil Hendrie was probably around 2001 or 2002 when we were already doing the calls on the show - Jon Benjamin played it for me. I have probably heard about an hour of the guy's stuff since then. I liked what I heard but I don't think there's any influence; probably some admiration in there. But since he devolved into a conservative radio host - correct me if I'm wrong but I believe he was scared by 'the events on 9/11' into becoming a right winger, which to me is the mark of a complete coward.

Tom.

[Paul DeLouisiana]

The caller sounds a lot like Petey.

[ABBAs Helicopter]

Phil got a bit of the Jeff Jarvis/Dennis Miller bug for quite a few years there. Despite that he insisted that he was still a social liberal and still stood his ground on environmental issues and still spoke out against things like over-reaching christian agenda in government, he still ended up pushing hawkish foreign policies.

It's my theory that Clear Channel (or rather Premier Radio Networks) pushed Phil to talk politics every chance he had. A lot of his fans think that this is what helped to burn him out the first time around. Since he left and came back to radio, it appeared that he drifted back towards something a little more consistent - the last time I heard him (in late 2008), he seemed to rip on Palin every chance he got.

[Mr. Spacely]

Yeah, I listened to a lot of Hendrie back in the day, and even post 9/11, he never seemed all that "conservative."  He got quite hawkish, but hardly conservative in the political sense. 

Actually, Hendrie was briefly on 640 *with* Coast-to-Coast, he was the lead in (talk about awkward).  Then he got s-hit-canned and they brought in conservative John Ziegler, who went on to have a huge feud with fellow conservatives (?) John & Ken before himself getting s-hit canned.  Hendrie also had a lengthy feud with 97.1's Tom Leykis, who -- depending on who tells the story -- may or may not be responsible for ending Adam Carolla's FM radio career. 

I'd probably be the only one to buy it, but I'd love to read an oral history of LA talk radio from 1995-2009.

[heliumsocket]

Thanks for the response, Tom. I'd also love to hear what you think about Longmont Potion Castle sometime. I see parallels between your show and him. Mostly in the silly humor, word-trickery, and the overall vibe of his albums.

Mr. Spacely -- that's the kind of book that would have screaming ghosts come flying out of it every time you opened it.

One last great Hendrie piece:

Phil Hendrie - Push Number 2

[buffcoat]

I love Longmont Potion Castle, and I love the Best Show, but I don't see a lot of overlap.

[ABBAs Helicopter]

Hah! I forgot about his wars with other hosts. But yeah, right up until the end of his first run he ripped on Leykis regularly. For all the joking he did in regards to Art Bell, Art took it in stride and at one point even did his own ribbing of Hendrie.

Another thing: Premier Radio Networks regularly created separate awkward situations with their sponsor advertising. So you had weird things like Dr. Laura advertising vitamins or something during Phil's show, even as Hendrie ripped her apart directly and indirectly through characters. 

Even more awkward was Phil advertising phone cards for his "good friend" Glenn Beck during his show, when you consider that Hendrie had a serious beef with Beck over plagiarized material. Every time I was subjected to Glenn's show before 2006, he seemed to be doing a lot of bad comedy. Supposedly, he had more decent humorous material, which I came to discover was almost always ripped off from other places, including Hendrie's show.

[Pidgeon]

Is Glenn Beck's humor as awkwardly dark and creepy as I think it is?

[ABBAs Helicopter]

Is Glenn Beck's humor as awkwardly dark and creepy as I think it is?

It certainly is, but before he had a number of meltdowns in 2005/2006 it was offset with a bit of non sequitur wackiness that came off as a little forced. I think I'm going to blame his admitted and well documented years of cocaine abuse. (Edit: and I mean for both the emotional state that led to his meltdowns and his creepy sense of humor.)

[Mr. Spacely]

David Foster Wallace has an awesome Atlantic piece from '05 all about KFI 640.  Phil Hendrie comes up a few times.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/04/host/3812/

[Kiwi_Herman]

I always thought the best show was more influenced by two men comedy teams like Bob & Ray, Cook & Moore, Leno & Eubanks.

[fish]

I love Longmont Potion Castle, and I love the Best Show, but I don't see a lot of overlap.

LPC uses a voice modulator

[Mr. Spacely]

I always thought the best show was more influenced by two men comedy teams like Bob & Ray, Cook & Moore, Leno & Eubanks.

Yeah, I definitely hear that.  I also think it's very much a parody of local call-in radio shows.  Anyone who sets out to parody those is going to end up with something vaguely in the same universe as Hendrie or S&W, simply because of the genre conventions being sent up.

One thing I love about S&W, though, is that "Tom" is also a character in Newbridge and has both friends and enemies.  And of course, Wurster's super-heroic efforts to overcome his lack of impression skills by using weird pronunciation and syntax to set apart his characters.
 

[Kiwi_Herman]

SCTV's Melonville and The Simpson's Springfield is also probably an influence on Newbridge.

Oh!And I also was going say how much Tom is hugely influenced by Fudge,but that would've been me just stating the obvious.