The Best Show on WFMU

I just find his taste in music so difficult to parse. I don't mind him hating on Steely Dan, but I'm kinda amazed that he seems to like Car Seat Headrest. Like, really?

his appearance on analyze phish was v frustrating and the less i hear him talk about music the better. steely dan shits on billy joel from a great height, i say this as someone who listened to every record by both lol

lol yeah i did a double take when he mentioned car seat headrest too

tbh the thing i miss most from the 'old days' is the music talk, even if his taste is hard to parse and sometimes infuriating i'd rather hear him argue about records with people than talk about oreos or whatever 10 times out of 10

matador probably sponsors the show or at least sends him records to play

yeah ive assumed that since he left fmu he cant afford blanket broadcast licensing with ascap/etc and must have worked out individual deals with merge/matador/whoever else

Fair play and I don't blame him, but even within Matador I feel like there's better stuff to hype than Car Seat Headrest.

first time hearing that band tbqh, can't remember a thing about it other than the name.

my musical taste aligns with his pretty closely but he does have some odd opinions that don't gibe with my own. my problem with "call in and defend steely dan" isn't that i think steely dan is perfect but that it's a boring concept for a show. people have been arguing about steely dan for like 50 years, what else is there to say at this point? but maybe it's funny, i haven't listened yet.

It's not. That's the real problem with it.

i'd rather hear him argue about records with people than talk about oreos or whatever 10 times out of 10

― turn the jawhatthefuckever on (One Eye Open), Wednesday, November 18, 2020 3:58 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

100x otm

or candy bars wgaf?

his musical taste seems to have evolved on a pretty similar path to other aging indie rock/underground dudes from his cohort ive seen, where they end up listening to three basic categories:

-classic rock stuff they liked as a kid but spent their 20s and 30s hating/being embarrassed by
-albums by friends (or friends' labels)
-a random dartboard of new stuff that makes them feel like theyre not totally unplugged from whats happening (Lana Del Rey, etc)

(I'm a bit younger than him but not exempting myself from this eventual path)

i think of this genre as “journalist rock” i.e. when some blogger you really like decides to do a youtube embed because it’s Friday and you’re like..... oh no

I stopped listening to the Best Show a while back because I got tired of Tom's incessant whining about how underappreciated he is. I realize that's at least partially a bit, but it just got too tedious. And I was a big enough fan to have pre-ordered the Scharpling & Wurster box set.

okay, I *finally* got to the end of the show and admit I laughed more than I thought I would at his cover of "Deacon Blues". Wish Drag City would have used Tom's vox on the Callahan/Oldham/MacKay cover from a few days ago.

And also, he's right: Just listen to Can instead.

Yeah that was funny. Easily the best bit of the show.

I'm not sure who but a basic RTC couldn't written RTC... but your revive made me laugh, Al

could've*

I mean, he’s basically evolved into the Wurster “Musical Scholar” character who evolves into repping Limp Bizkit.

Really enjoyed his rant in last week’s episode about how people should be getting less conservative the older they get.

ITT we complain about the Best Show being the Best Show I guess?

Show would be great if Tom would stop complaining and if that one guy would stop calling for half an hour at a stretch pretending to be different people who somehow all have the same voice.

i think of this genre as “journalist rock” i.e. when some blogger you really like decides to do a youtube embed because it’s Friday and you’re like..... oh no

rude to call out Drew Magary like that

social media suggests tom and terre aren't together anymore and he's with a different woman now? i haven't listened to the best show in a long time, has he discussed this at all?

no. he went out of his way to avoid ever referring to his marriage before, i would doubt he would discuss it now

kinda figured as much since he's been in LA for over a year now and hasn't mentioned Terre or Dogmo even in passing in about as long or longer, but yeah, it would be out of character for him to mention anything about it directly on the show since he had (has?) that running gag about being married to Jillian Barbarie for so long to shield against personal talk.

I also just assumed this was the case because of the move

His new squeeze posts a fair deal of him/them on her IG.

His new squeeze is the creator of Netflix's "Twelve Forever" and was an animator on Powerpuff Girls.

Not being in New Jersey anymore is an even bigger shock to me.

I was truly sad to hear, at the end of this week's show, that regular caller "Kat from Raleigh" had passed away. Kat always seemed liked a genuinely sweet person, and I was always happy when they showed up on the program. RIP.

As an update to my post from yesterday, Cat's family (I had the spelling wrong yesterday) has set up a Go Fund Me for a memorial scholarship at North Carolina State University: https://gofund.me/41c5f0cc

the fb group had some very nice remembrances of them in the comments

i didn't preorder tom's book and now it appears to be backordered everywhere except amazon :/

I ordered mine from Amazon due to a gift card I got for my birthday (and my being out of work til the Fall). Hasn't shipped yet.

Yeah, I saw the same thing when I checked a couple of independent stores so I bit the bullet and ordered from Amazon. Mine showed up in less than 24 hours, so there is that...

Didn't realize the preorder was shipping a full week before the release date! Started reading before the holidays and just picked it back up. Some dark and revelatory stuff in there.

nabbed mine off the shelf at an indie store, guess i got lucky. no spoilers but two distinct "holy shit" revelations for me (both within the fist 100pgs iirc?)

My biggest “holy shit” moment came exactly 104 pgs in.

Yes, although that bomb was softened somewhat by the ones he dropped in earlier pages.

I've started relistening to the earliest episodes this week after I finished reading Tom's book. The first episode is indeed very rough but I wish he wasn't so insistent about it never being heard again because it features the first Todd Billups call, which is an all-time Wurster character imo. Not sure how far I'm going with this (having already heard all of the WFMU episodes) but it's interesting to hear some of this stuff with hindsight.

Just an aside: it's, uh, pretty impressive that in 2001, when people were fishing for info on the as-yet-unnamed second Star Wars prequel, Wurster (in the guise of a psychic) got the name of the third prequel exactly right, four years ahead of its release.

(He also predicts that Dick Cheney would refuse treatment for typhoid and start intentionally spreading it. So he may in fact have access to some hazy window into the future.)

Got about 65-70 pages into it last night, really enjoying it.

Wish a verified purchase of the book could earn me an unblock from Tom on Twitter tho :/

Finished this Sunday night, absolutely loved it and I cannot recommend it highly enough, even to folks who aren't already Friends of Tom. Just as funny as you'd expect, but more touching and affecting that I'd ever have imagined.

So Tom is following Neil's lead and yanked the show from Spotify. Glad to see it.

has anyone kept pace with this as of late? I’ve completely fallen behind by 6 months and even on catch-up I’m not that engaged as I once was. Don’t know if it’s because his material is getting diluted between this and Double Threat. Are there recent wurstsr calls to seek out?

i listen to the “bests” on the podcast but i don’t really know when they’re from

wurster remains one of the funniest motherfuckers alive to me. like i CANNOT listen in the gym, i would injure myself.

i'm still listening out of habit but youre not missing a ton, it definitely feels to be in a bit of a lull funniness-wise. the hardest i've laughed at it in recent years remains the episode a couple years ago(?) where tom switched gears mid-show and spent the whole show talking about peoples favorite nu-metal bands.

the wurster calls remain amazing though, he's been on a very good run lately with a recurring bit where he calls in as bruce springsteen.

I'm about a month behind, just listened to Wurster's second call as Springsteen. It's fine, has its decent moments. The gag of awarding points to Mike, Pat and Dudio has been kind of funny.

i essentially stopped listening several years ago, but that's more about not having time to keep up with multiple podcasts (especially 3-hour podcasts) than with the quality of the best show. i lost touch with most of my podcasts in quarantine when i didn't have a commute any more. i listen to double threat occasionally, when they have a guest or theme that sounds interesting, and tom seems energized on there by having a cohost to bounce off of - especially because he and julie klausner are obviously so simpatico.

I usually end up listening to it in 10-20 minute chunks before bed, which is why I'm behind.

I think the show is still funny, and the running Springsteen gag has had more range than I would have expected; I love when "Bruce" aired his grievances against Prefab Sprout for "Cars and Girls."

Fletchshack: A New Beginin-n-n-n-n-n-n-n