The Best Show on WFMU (INC)
WFMU is an independent, volunteer-run, listener-supported, freeform radio station broadcasting from Jersey City, New Jersey, and every Tuesday night at 8 PM Tom Scharpling takes over the airwaves.
2017 / Jon Wurster / Tom Scharpling / WFMU, USA
WFMU is an independent, volunteer-run, listener-supported, freeform radio station broadcasting from Jersey City, New Jersey, and every Tuesday night at 8 PM Tom Scharpling takes over the airwaves.
The Best Show on WFMU is three hours of music, mirth, and mayhem, wherein Scharpling conducts interviews, plays music, and opens the phone lines to the listening public. Often on the other end of the line is Jon Wurster, best known as the drummer for the indie rock band Superchunk. But Jon Wurster never admits to being Jon Wurster. Wurster usually pretends to be a ridiculously pompous and ill-informed rock critic, or a grown-up member of an 80s pre-teen punk band, or a middle aged loser looking to fill out the roster for his imaginary supergroup, or some other deluded and pathetic human specimen.
You can hear one of Scharpling and Wurster's classic routines, "Mother 13," in the player above. Another, "Gas Station Dogs," (featuring the aforementioned middle-aged loser), is included in the Extras section below.
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Jon Wurster is . . . um . . . the other half of the renowned comedy duo Scharpling & Wurster, who have been . . . ah, forget it. Jon has been the drummer for indie rock pioneers Superchunk since 1991. He has also lent his percussive talents to such artists as Robert Pollard, Ryan Adams, R.E.M., the Mountain Goats, Alejandro Escovedo, Marah, Rocket from the Crypt, and Charlie Daniels. Jon gives voice to all of the characters on the popular Scharpling & Wurster CDs.
Tom Scharpling is the much beloved host of The Best Show on WFMU and is currently a writer and supervising producer on the Emmy award-winning television show Monk, which airs on the esteemed USA Network. He also works on screenplays and TV ideas and is looking to "get some stuff going. Serious stuff."