April 01, 2003

 
Secret Origins

I'm currently working on putting together a feature article about The Best Show On WMFU, and so I'm going to be posting some excerpts from the interviews that I conducted with Tom Scharpling, Jon Wurster, and Andrew Earles over the course of the week. The article is being geared towards an audience who probably aren't familiar with the show, but a lot of the questions that I asked in the interviews are mainly of interest to hardcore Best Show fans. I'd like for that sort of information to be available to those who would be interested.

I'm going to start at the beginning, with Tom Scharpling telling the story of how the Best Show started out.


Matthew Perpetua: How did the show start?

Tom Scharpling: I got involved with WFMU back in '94 when I first started doing a show, and it was a straight music show at that point.

MP Late at night?

TS Yeah, everyone at the station kinda does the overnight first, so I did an overnight, and then I worked my way up to 11-2 AM, then I got to an 8-11 PM show, but it was still music. Then I starting talking a little more, and got comfortable with that. I was always kinda comfortable talking, but I started spreading the music out a little bit and talking about stuff and not feeling like I had to be chained to the music as much.

MP At that point, what were you talking about?

TS Oh, just kinda taking calls and random stuff, sorta like the more unstructured parts of the show now.

MP Open call Tuesday?

TS Yeah, stuff like that. I guess it would all dovetail at "Rock, Rot, and Rule." I was friends with Jon Wurster of Superchunk. I was always friends with the band, I was friends with them before he was in the band. I remember meeting him at the first show they did in this area and we kinda hit it off. We were interested in similar things. And then we just decided to do something on the radio which would be this kinda fake show, a fake guest that was kinda based on something Oprah Winfrey said when she was getting sued by the cattle industry in 1997. When she won her case, she said "freedom doesn't only rule, freedom rocks." And it became this thing, rule and rock, and we started going back and forth on the phone, just goofing around. It's the weirdest friendship in a way, because he's got to be my best friend, and I'm here and he's in North Carolina. I don't think I ever really call him anymore, the conversations just start. We almost just go through twenty minutes of just running stuff when either one calls the other one. I'll call him as a character, and that'll often turn into something.

MP I'm curious what your characters are like, because you always play the straight man on the show.

TS That's a funny thing because a lot of the time, with Jon Wurster, it's a 50/50 thing. The characters half the time start with me starting them and doing them for him, and then he'll become the character when it is time for the show. And we'll take turns on who is the character on the calls. You've just got to keep it open for the ideas, the ideas are the most important part of it. You can tell when something's building towards something that's going to work.

So, with "Rock, Rot, and Rule," we were just kicking this guy around, this rock critic. And we thought, "let's just do it on the show," and we did it on the show. Before I did it on the show, a couple people who I told what we were doing to do were just like "that's not gonna work, that's funny for two minutes, that's going to be a disaster." But then we started getting real calls, which we never could have counted on in a million years, getting really angry. We never could have counted on getting that kind of anger out of the audience. It was just like the biggest high ever, I just remember calling Jon as soon as the show was over, and it was like being on crack or something. It's like a dream come true to just trick people. I don't know about you, but all the stuff I like, that seems to be a component of it. Whether it's like Andy Kaufman or Bob & Ray, you know, anything that plays with reality like that. Being able to fool a lot of people in one fell swoop, it was just the greatest feeling ever.

We did it one more time, we did another one, this conventions thing. It was called "Conventions Inc.", about this guy who puts together conventions. We're going to put it out soon, we're going to do these limited edition cd-r things on the website. We're doing a new Stereolaffs website, it's going to be completely retooled. It'll be new and improved and will actually make sense to people as opposed to the last site which made sense to about 14 people who were hooked on it and terrifying obsessed with this world we created.

Then I had a bunch of stuff going on in my life when I quit the station, and I wanted to get my career going a little bit. I had a retail job, and I was writing as a second job at night. I would go home from running this music store to writing at night knowing that I was trying to pave a way for the future. I was writing screenplays, I've written screenplays with a couple of other people, but nothing's been made yet. We had one thing optioned a few times, it was just optioned again a few weeks ago. We got hired to write a studio job, and that crashed and burned.

MP How did you get into comedy writing?

TS It was just kinda like something that, I felt it was something I was meant to do. It's like, I found this stuff I did when I was six, and it was just insane how the only difference is now, my penmanship is better. It's the same path, it's the path I was always on. I didn't realize, but it's the path I'm on. It's kinda nice to be on the path that I guess you were kinda meant to be on.

I never thought I'd come back to WFMU, you know, I thought "I'm not gonna come back and do records," it just wasn't the most interesting thing to me, to come back and play records and talk a little bit. It was the fall of 2000 when the show started. One of the DJs said to me, "when are you gonna come back, when come back", and I said that I didn't know, and he said "you should just do the show you wanna do." And that made sense all of a sudden. I was at the UCB Theatre, and just seeing them do their thing the way they want, their theatre was the way they wanted it to be. And I just thought, why can't I just do a radio show that's on my terms, and it's the show that I want to show up and do every week? And then I ran it by Brian Turner, who is a great guy, the program director, and he got what it was going to be. It was like, we're going to do "Rock, Rot And Rule" every night, that was the goal. That cd is the show now, with music there to give a breather for 15 minutes. We started the show, and Jon was completely on board, and by that point the cd had been released and it made the rounds, and a lot of people liked it.


Wicker Basket For Bread

The Malkmus media watch continues!

In the new issue of SPIN, there is a feature article in which ten celebrities are asked to create an online personal ad for Nerve.com just to see what kind of responses the ads would get. Stephen Malkmus was one of the celebrities who participated in this experiment, and here is his ad, along with a few responses.


Musician
Portland, Oregon

Profile nickname: stevie_stevie
age: 35
I am interested in: dating
Last great book I read: Independent People by Haldor Laxness
Favorite on-screen sex scene: Anything in Todd Solondz's Happiness
Celebrity I most resemble: Richard Ashcroft
Best (or worst) lie I ever told: "You're so normal."
Music that puts me in the mood: "TV Party," Black Flag
I can't live without: Hormones, ice cream, wicker basket for bread, tonic water, stereo
In my bedroom you'll find: bed, dresser, computer, homework
Why you should get to know me: I've got so much to give you
Who I'm looking for: The best of the rest

----

To: stevie_stevie
From: chairmanmeowww
I Googled Richard Ashcroft and saw what he looked like. You don't look like him at al. He seems like a cheeseball.

To: stevie_stevie
From: mediumbrow
Hot damn! I like your adorable haircut! But I'm a little nervous about your occupation. Most people who say they're musicians actually work at Kinko's and live in someone's basement.

To: stevie_stevie
From: intotheswim
I wanted to tell you that you are the first person I have seen that had Happiness as their favorite sex scene! P.S.: Is that Steven with a "V" or Stephen with a "P-H"? I'm wary of the "V" kind. Please advise.

Malkmus Says: Props to these ladies for even responding at all. Sure, I'd date you all, but Elimidate style, so I can do it all in one night and on national TV. You can tell a lot about a person by how they act on national TV.