The Best Show on WFMU

Saw from Tom's feed that Alan Vega died; would kill to have a supercut of all Frankie Teardrop Challenge talk.

good god the woody allen/pokemon riffing at the end of this week's. woody allen watching soon-yi playing pokemon go on a pop tart was all-time hilarious.

glad to hear tom advocate the same "barb from stranger things is overrated" perspective I was pushing on ILX a couple of weeks ago. i feel vindicated.

also it's been nice seeing pretty much every Half Hour of Power regular show up on Difficult People this season

I died at his riff on "that Belle and Sebastian song, 'Rooty Tooty Fresh 'n Fruity'" during the Scottish guy's call in the most recent ep

Last couple of weeks have been great. The Beach Boys flashbacks are hilarious, Sal from Impractical Jokers was a good sport last week, and there were some hilarious "duh" calls this week.

big changes:

best show 24/7 channel soon
no more ads, he's taking donations instead
tom's getting a dog

Whoa, guess I better get caught up if I'm gonna listen all day every day (finally made my way through all of the WFMU shows only to fall a year behind on the new show).

no more ads is exciting for me, tom is terrible at getting through the ads, obviously hates doing it, and i bet he'll make way more money from straight donations anyways

"Best Show: support the show, brah"

the uhh yeah dude guys got like $10,000 a month when they started their patreon, kind of a good model maybe?

― nerd shit (Will M.), Wednesday, 2 December 2015 16:33 (one year ago) Permalink

Best Show is set to pass the El Chapo Trapo chaps on committed donations, proving once again it's the VU of podcasts, only 2,000 listeners, most insanely devoted, and half of them with podcasts of their own.

klausner, davenport, AND clements in studio tonight, should be a good one

I don't understand Patreon, but is Scharpling now earning 19k a fucking month (that's the Patreon tally at present)? Jesus, what a sweet deal that is...

minus the costs of producing the show, but yeah. i consider it back pay for doing the show for about 14 years for essentially nothing.

He's got a staff and costs -- it's still pretty great!

i made this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9c45X1PHm1g

haha nice work, been listening through the 2010/2011 episodes recently and almost every week theres a joke about the ridiculousness of a trump presidency that is now just tragic.

As I noted on I guess the S&W thread, many of Wurster's old characters that were hilarious because they were such outrageous caricatures of awfulness are now kind of depressing because they're fairly accurate renderings of certain American citizens.

What Were Once Caricatures are Now Portraits

I love the Best Show 24/7 streaming station he has now. It's good to hear shows from like 2000-2001, when it was truly bizarre and unexpected

tom scharpling on the first episode of "the podcast for laundry" with brett davis is good if you miss angry/flustered tom from the earlier hollywood handbook episodes

i was wary of james murphy on the best show after some of those post-relaunch interviews of celebrities who tom doesn't know personally, but it was a really good ep. they are obviously simpatico, and having him in the studio instead of on the phone probably helped.

i really really enjoyed that!

book

https://www.vulture.com/2019/01/the-best-show-tom-scharpling-memoir-book.html

Rot

I really like how Tom’s affection for RAtM and Limp Bizkit closely mirrors Ronald Thomas Clontle’s musical evolution in Rock, Rot and Rule.

I thought Tom's assessment of RaTM as either the best bad band or the worst good is rather astute.

'worst GOOD band' rather

And finally the Andrew Dice Clay interview sees it’s standalone light of day. Assuming it coincides with his first unintentional on-air fbomb

Tom accidentally swearing on 7/24 is a real joy

part of the joy of tom going on hollywood handbook is hearing him swear

I really like how Tom’s affection for RAtM and Limp Bizkit closely mirrors Ronald Thomas Clontle’s musical evolution in Rock, Rot and Rule.

― Western® with Bacon Flavor, Friday, August 9, 2019 7:52 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ha true, not to mention "the Music Scholar" bit!

Argh, that’s the one I meant!

Thanks to Rock Rot & Rule I now use 'rotting' as a verb for sorting through records to decide if they're worth selling.

AP Mike's latest song, On Broadway, is unbelievably good, heavy, deep stuff. Go to his bandcamp page if you haven't heard it.

the Greg Cartwright solo set on newest "Best" is so, so good

Agreed, incredible. I had just gone back into the archives to listen to it recently before it popped up on Bests a few days later, funny enough.

yeesh what's going on

not feeling this "slice of life"

what's the deal? i'm months behind

I haven't listened, but Mike and Dudio and someone else have been filling in for Tom while he's busy (up until this week where he did an episode from LA)

tom was on hollywood handbook again this week if you need your scharpling fix

It's with great sadness that we say goodbye to a beloved friend of the show, Robert "Avalanche Bob" Cribbie. It was an honor to be a small part of his life and he will always be a part of Best Show history.

RIP to a true original who never gave up.https://t.co/XDbpQYmsah pic.twitter.com/JJotS239Yg

— The Best Show (@bestshow4life) November 21, 2019

RIP

did i skip every single one of his calls after the first few? yes, i did. but still, RIP

RIP to a true Weirdo

SKIBBLABBLEDIBBADABBADIBBASKABBLABBLABBADACKADIGGASKABBARRRrest in peace, Avalanche.

there was one call where tom actually got him to talk about his past for a while and it was really interesting, i wish they had done more of that

oh no!

I'd like to hear that call

RIP

Probably was the same episode where I remember Pat Byrne thinking out loud on air about figuring out how to reissue his 50s recordings

yeah sorry i have no idea when it was. probably a few years ago.