The Best Show on WFMU

The Fripp/Tony Levin shit was top shelf

Huey Lewis heartbeat sample in the sound collage still manages to freak me out a little.

yeah, this is completely gutwrenching

The final collage:

http://25.media.tumblr.com/4f11de6bee9de1c6da870a51dff62884/tumblr_mxzju3Qzs71r39bvko1_1280.jpg

:-(

Great fakeout there.

yeah huge lol as soon as i recognized the tom waits, i knew something was up

A very enjoyable and emotional finale

yeah the collage was amazing

tom was p emotional

played one of my all time fav quotes:

"You might not like Mr.Bungle musically, but you gotta respect what they're doing"

I took photos of TS turning pink while singing Bad Co or some other '70s warhorse at the fundraising finale a few years ago, and they're pretty scary.

Apparently Spike called in to the "Talking Best" aftershow on Redundancy Radio (another WFMU program). Haven't listened yet.

Ended up going to a listening party w/ a friend last night; sound was too muffled to hear much of the collage / Comedy Jams, all the more frustrating since you could hear random snippets of calls.

A+ ending, was also interesting to hear the hows and whys of those first few years.

A dude from Polica wore a homemade "Best Show for Life" t-shirt on Jimmy Kimmel last night.

Had been wondering about that Pink Floyd bit in one of the sound collages, this was new to me and awesome:

It's a phone conversation between two guys named Derek and Kurt. Kurt made and recorded the call during which he knew just the right questions to ask to get Derek to say some of the greatest things I've ever heard. Based on references made I've been able to determine that the call is from 1993. I first heard it sometime in the late 90s/early 00s. The call was the equivalent of "Rock, Rot & Rule" among touring metal bands of that time.

The entire call is nearly 45 minutes. I cut it up into individual tracks as there are a few times that Derek puts Kurt on hold for a couple of minutes. I uploaded the call to my Google Drive. Have at it!

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0Bw-_rbWKUrXSZnd0T1pxbVlpLTQ&usp=sharing

Gilly one-noting you into the fuckin ground IMO

I'm sorry to do this m@tt but I believe it was TROWER who was one-noting you to the ground

Hahaha iirc Gilly landed the helicopter directly on my fucking face.

Hey JRN... no worries, don't want to slight Grower!

It seems that the Friends of Tom message board on the FMU site has disappeared...which sucks.

omg, I've been looking for the rest of those phone calls for years. thanks!

https://twitter.com/BadGuyZero/status/420099251700776960

http://www.avclub.com/article/inside-the-final-days-of-the-best-show-on-wfmu-201219

I'm loving AP Mike's weekly Skype thing...

scharpling @scharpling
We want to bring back The Best Show. We're hitting some walls. If you want it back, tweet #BringBackTheBestShow and let everyone know.
about 6 hours ago

Totally unsurprised. I wonder how many times Ken F. asked him "are you sure you don't just want to take six months or a year off?"

That's obviously a joke.

?

Anyone know what the shitty thing was that happened to Tom that he referenced on Facebook and Twitter yesterday and today? If it's personal, then it's none of my business, but it sounded more like a plan for BestShow2014 fell through.

Huge gear theft at the post office, apparently.

Oof.

Fuck, really? He tweeted about a Brooklyn post office last week

asking if anyone had a connection

Where did you hear that?

A since-deleted Tweet, 'bout 4 am East Coast time.

That fucking sucks

Someone should start a Kickstarter

poor dude can't catch a break. any details?

I think people have suggested crowdfunding to him a million times, he hasn't seemed interested in that option so far.

The tweet went down really quickly, but if I remember it correctly, he was going to do the show completely DIY, and the fancy computer and network equipment he needed and had just purchased is what got disappeared.

There's got to be a way to track that through USPS though

anyone know if there's been any kind of falling out or tension w/ wfmu? i know terre t is 'taking a break' from the show.

If you listened to her last few shows, she talked about wanting to come back repeatedly, and she did her last show at the record fair. The Scharplings still say nice things about 'FMU all the time. I think (and this is pure speculation) that Tom wasn't setting up a Best Show II podcast as much as a new podcast network in which Terre will be involved, and that's why he needed so much equipment and why the crash hurts so bad.

ok, i was hoping not

OK, Tom just posted on Facebook:

It's fine. I appreciate people caring and wanting me to go forward. But so that there's not a ton of speculation about it, the house in which I was planning to resume The Best Show got broken into and all my equipment was stolen. I'm back at square one in so many ways. Really dispiriting. It feels like the wind is out of my sails and I'm just exhausted.

No crowdsourcing, no Kickstarter. It's not about the money right now.
32 mins · Like · 1

Tom Scharpling Seriously, I won't accept one cent. So please don't organize anything. I'll let you all know when it's time for money.
31 mins · Like · 10

....and a much more encouraging note from the FOT board a little later:

Here it is in a nutshell.

The house that I was hoping to do The Best Show out of - which has been a completely safe and secure place for ages - was broken into over the weekend. All the equipment I had for the show - which was not everything, but was a lot of stuff - got taken.

I am pretty dispirited right now. Trying to figure out where I'm gonna do the show from. Not sure whether I can trust this location anymore. So yeah, I'm back at square one. It really sucks and I'm mentally and physically exhausted from dealing with all this shitty stupidity.

But I'll be damned if I'm gonna let some shitty thief derail The Best Show. Fuck that. We might be back at square one but we'll just start over.

And this isn't an issue of money right now. So please - PLEASE! - nobody start anything to generate money. It won't make the show come back any faster. It's a question of security and safety and picking up the pieces. And don't worry; there will be plenty of chances to throw your money at Best Show 2014.

Thanks for all the kind words I've gotten. It lets me know that I'm doing the right thing by getting up off the mat and getting this thing back on track and any other cliches I can think of.

Onward and upward --

Tom.

that sucks :(

We're down now. To remove any sense of vagueness or concern from everyone's lives who have seen my cryptic writings and aren't sure what's going on, the house I had been hoping to use as the future home of The Best Show was broken into a week ago and all the equipment got stolen. We didn't have a full studio built but it was still thousands of dollars of stuff.
At this point it's not even about the stuff, even though that blows royally. It's about not having a location. So you could say we're not even at square one anymore.
And we don't need any help and there are no plans to do any sort of kickstarting/crowdsourcing. Trust me - there will be stuff for sale, and when we need you to buy it, you won't miss the messages. I'm just suffering from exhaustion from 13 years of asking people to donate, and it's time for me to try a different model for now.
Yeah, we're down. But we're not out. The Best Show IS COMING BACK. There's no way some lowly creep knocks us out of the box. We're coming back and we are going to take the whole thing over.
One way you CAN help is to keep your eyes on my Facebook and see if I ask for any insight or help with something specific.
Hang tight. We're gonna do this. Nothing can stop The Best Show.

why the hell did he stop doing it in the first place?

he wasn't getting paid

Not only not getting paid but putting a lot of his own money into. I'm sure it's been frustrating to see podcasters starting to make a living doing something roughly similar to the thing that you're shelling out cash to do.