Best Show Logs: 2001

Last updated: 01.15.2014

[AE] = Andrew Earles
[JB] = Jon Benjamin
[JG] = Jon Glaser
[JW] = Jon Wurster
[MW] = Matt Walsh
[SS] = Sam Seder

January
01.02.200101.09.200101.16.200101.23.200101.30.2001

February
02.06.200102.13.200102.20.200102.27.2001

March
03.06.200103.13.200103.20.200103.27.2001

April
04.03.200104.10.200104.17.200104.24.2001

May
05.01.200105.08.200105.15.200105.22.200105.29.2001

June
06.05.200106.12.200106.19.200106.26.2001

July
07.03.200107.10.200107.17.200107.24.200107.31.2001

August
08.07.200108.14.200108.21.200108.28.2001

September
09.04.200109.11.200109.18.200109.25.2001

October
10.02.200110.09.200110.16.200110.23.200110.30.2001

November
11.06.200111.13.200111.20.200111.27.2001

December
12.04.200112.11.200112.18.200112.25.2001

01.02.2001

Start: intro, music: The Monkees, “Star Collector”, This Kind of Punishment, “From the Diary of Hermann Doubt”, Hall of Fame, “Waves of Stations”, Rolling Stones, “2000 Light Years from Home”; back announce
0:27: Tom discusses Gimme Shelter and Marty Balin’s punchout therein
0:31: Tom wants to know what The Old Codger said about The Best Show, shares his New Year’s resolution to not play horrible French or alt-country music
0:37: music: Velvet Underground, “Lonesome Cowboy Bill”, Coco, “Coco”, back announce
0:45: award-winning psychic Merlyn Hogan [JW] predicts the future
for Tom and his listeners with the aid of his magic crystal goblet;
when Tom says he can’t pay for his appearance, Merlyn’s predictions for Tom get quite dire

01.09.2000 [no archive: “The Gorch”, Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin]

“A Very Real Interview with the ‘Real-life Fonzie’ Roland Gorchnick.”

01.16.2001

Start: intro, music: Dead Meadow, “Indian Bones”, White Stripes, “Why Can’t You Be Nicer to Me”, Head Shop, “Head Shop”; back announce; Tom’s nervous about his impending apology to David Clayton Thomas
0:23: music: The Chills, “Look for the Good in Others and They’ll See
the Good in You”, Oss, “Don’t Bring Me Down”, Hall of Fame, “Motion Passings”, Volcano Suns, “Balancing Act”
0:38: Tom issues a Shakespeare-filled apology to David Clayton Thomas
0:44: Bradford Lendel, lawyer for David Clayton Thomas [JW], tells
Tom he finds the apology unsatisfactory and wants him to apologize
onstage at a DCT show; turns out to be Hot Rockin’ Ronnie, who spars with callers, blames Tom for the demise of “RM Radio”, and debuts as Dr. Silk on 107.2 Silky FM in Philadelphia
0:56: Dick Halligan Jr. [JB] stands by his book, even though he’s not
Dick Halligan’s son per se; he insists that he “spins tales” and
assumed Tom’s audience would understand Dick Halligan’s death at the hands of a cougar was meant as a metaphor
1:20: music: Wicked Lady, “Run the Night”, The Dogs, “Jon Rock n’ Roll Sinclair”; back announce
1:29: Hot Rockin Ronnie calls back to torment Tom some more and insult NY/NJ
1:55: music: David Clayton Thomas, “Susie’s Got Her Big Hair on Tonight”

01.23.2001 [no archive: “Citizens for True Democracy,” Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin]

“A Chat with Maurice Kern, Head of Citizens For A True Democracy”

01.30.01

No show

02.06.2001

Start: intro, music: Lightning Bolt, “Saint Jacques”, Bryce Glass,
“3:58”, Blue Oyster Cult, “Then Came the Last Days of May”, Fuck,
“Dandelion Ditch”; back announce
0:23: Tom gets telephonic revenge on Rodney, a condescending Book Barn employee [JW]
0:40: music: Pretty Things, “Talking About the Good Times”, Peaches
and Gonzalez, “Double A, Triple X” (live on WFMU), Le Tigre, “Get Off the Internet”, [?], “Death By Chocolate”, Holly Golightly and Dan Melchior, “Directly from My Heart to You”; back announce
1:02: Rick Benson, George Benson’s son [JB], talks about his father and his music; he “sings” “Love Ballad” and “Never Give Up on a Good thing” with George Benson (his performance mostly consists of scatting along to the George Benson record); Rick reveals that he grew up Rick Gorlick and only recently “discovered” that he’s George Benson’s son
1:39: Greg Gorlick, Rick’s real father [?], calls in to dispute Rick’s claims; Rick calls him a “racist” and “bad citizen”
1:50: Rick takes more questions from callers, but refuses to sing “This Masquerade”

02.13.2001

Start: intro, music: Unrest, “Shag”, White Stripes, “Lord Send Me an Angel”, Rolling Stones, “I Am Waiting”, The Frogs, “Whisper”; back announce; more music: Steve Miller, “Jet Airliner”
0:24: Tom reads George Plimpton’s foreword to Ron Garver’s “Upright Positions: Flying the Erotic Skies”
0:28: Tom welcomes author Ron Garver [JB], who discusses his erotic adventures as a flight attendant; tries to read excerpts, but none are suitable for the airwaves; Ron says sex is a major factor in many airplane accidents, plays graphic black box tapes; Ron takes calls
1:21: incensed former pilot [SS] disputes Ron’s claims but is cagey about his own midair sexual activity
1:31: Ron talks about his celebrity encounters
1:38: music: Lightning Bolt, “Saint Jacques”, [?]
1:45: hypnotist PJ Cloth [JG] gets a flat tire and can’t make
it to the studio, but offers to hypnotize Tom over the phone; he’s
successful, but has to get off the phone when his tow truck arrives;
Tom snores for the remainder of the show

02.20.2001

No show

02.27.2001

Start: intro, music: Rolling Stones, “Stray Cat Blues”, Rocket from the Crypt, “This Bad Check is Gonna Stick”, Swell Maps, “Blam”; back announce
0:21: it’s the Best Show XFL Spectacular! Roger Devlin [JW], sportswriter from the Orlando Daily News, promotes the XFL and its many European-based players; denounces the NFL as the No-Fun League; insists the XFL will one day expand to as many as 60 teams
1:10: Buddy Swales, Governor of Alabama [JB], defends the Birmingham Bolts against “the liberal media”; “Governor of Alabama” turns out to be a nickname, not an elected title; Tom feels deceived (“Why don’t I just call myself Tom Scharpling, Governor of Partying?”)
1:47: Gerald Perlmutter [SS or JG?] discusses his horrible experiences as a Hitmen mascot

03.06.2001

Start: intro, music: Tram, “Now We Can Get on with Our Own Lives”,
Love, “A House Is Not a Motel”, Drunk Horse, “Tanning Salon”, Urge
Overkill, “Out on the Airstrip”; back announce
0:26: which album should get an Unfair Record Review: Stephen
Malkmus solo or Tortoise?; what was the deal with that storm that never happened?; phone trouble
31: caller [JW] joins Tom for an Unfair Record Review of Stephen Malkmus’s solo album, wants to hear Monster Magnet
0:40: caller from Portland wants Tom to “tell the truth” about
Sleater Kinney, thinks the Trailblazers threw their playoff series for
market reasons
0:45: Greg Hamilton [JW], head of XFL on-air talent, wants Tom to be an XFL announcer; turns out to be Hot Rockin’ Ronnie,
broadcasting march music from Boise, Idaho as Sgt. John Q. America; insists that more people love HRR than Tom, wants to take callers to prove it
1:17: Tom promotes the annual WFMU Marathon
1:20: Cliff Petterson, weatherman from CN8 [JB], talks about the
storm that didn’t happen; Cliff says he was prevented from “telling the truth” about the storm ahead of time
1:51: Richard Moody [?], Cliff’s friend, AA sponsor, and fellow weatherman, chastises Cliff for drinking; Cliff calls Richard “part of the problem” (“Doppler 4000 isn’t even real!”)

03.13.2001

Start: intro, music: [?], White Stripes, “Party of Special Things to Do”, Rolling Stones, “We Love You”
0:13: Tom introduces Listener Appreciation Week, will call listeners at home
0:18: Tom calls Howard, who wants him to rebroadcast one of Bronwyn’s Storytimes and wants listeners to vote on it
0:21: Jim votes no, appreciates Tom
0:23: Henry, anti-Semitic jerk caller, wants to hear an interview from Chris T’s show (or anything but Tom)
0:25: Dee doesn’t want to hear the Chris T interview but does want to hear Sonic Youth
0:27: Chris T defends his interviewee and appreciates Tom, thinks Henry is jealous
0:31: security guard doesn’t think Listener Appreciation night is going too well
0:32: Danny [JW] wants to talk about Hannibal, having seen it 17 times
0:48: Tom calls Matthew, a phone survey employee who loves the show and does his own radio show
0:57: Howard calls back to apologize and wants to know if anyone’s voted on his story idea yet
0:58: caller wants to know Tom’s opinion of the nine-year-old who was sentenced to life in prison
1:00: DJ Terre T calls in to weigh in on the kid-sentenced-to-life case
1:02: caller is concerned that somebody called WFMU claiming to be Tom’s adopted son
1:07: Tom calls Claude Billups [JW], Todd’s father, who warns Tom to
stay away from his son (“He thinks you guys are going to see Billy Joel and Elton John this summer!”)
1:15: Tom calls Jeff, who’s mad that he gets a two-hour show and Bronwyn is only on for one hour
1:16: Todd [JW] calls in tears, blames Tom for the break-up of his
engagement and getting tossed out of college; Todd says he, his dad,
and his basketball are coming to kill Tom
1:20: Claude [JW] calls again to threaten Tom some more
1:21: Detroit native new to the NY area calls to praise the show
(“Run back to Detroit! And do you have any room for me in your
suitcase?”)
1:22: Guy from Goshen wants to know what the bed music is so he can finally tune to another station
1:25: Tom calls Dave from South Dakota; Tom wants know, “Why are they doing this to me?”
1:29: first time listener George from SI calls in, talks about Hot or Not, the internet, the stock market, and divorces
1:36: caller from Brooklyn thinks Todd and Claude are pulling Tom’s leg
1:39: caller Tom is watching The Andy Dick Show, discusses the sad sacks of Atlantic City
1:47: Chianti-drinking, pierogi-eating caller is very angry about Tom
“not being very honest” about Todd and Claude; Tom is horrified by his lack of ettiquette (“Don’t eat on the phone, you pig!”)
1:48: caller says she loves the show, but her inability to turn down her radio drives Tom insane
1:49: caller Tom wonders if the guy from Goshen really drives a tractor, Tom (the host) has clearly had it with this show
1:49: music, The Soft Boys, “I Wanna Destroy You” played on loop until end of show

03.20.2001 [marathon week 1]

Start: intro, Tom is joined by co-host Gaylord; premium: “Blood Sweat & Tears vs. The Best Show”, and Tom’s “Radio Babylon”, where he dishes the dirt on all WFMU DJs
0:08: music: Embarrassment, “Pod Man”
0:11: pledge pleas & thanks
0:23: Best Show flashback: The Gorch’s first appearance
0:28: giveaways, pledge pleas, and thanks
0:33: The Gorch [JW] calls in, says his book got dropped by Harper
Collins, but he did “maximum damage” to their computers with his chain (“They won’t be putting out no more books for six months!”)
0:40: giveaways, pledge pleas, and thanks
0:52: music: Silkworm, “[?]”
0:53: giveaways, pledge pleas, and thanks
0:59: Best Show flashback: Ron Garver, author of “Upright Positions”, discusses his provocative new book
1:03: giveaways, pledge pleas, and thanks
1:08: Ron Garver [JB] calls in; his book has been pulled from the
shelves due to legal action from Jim Belushi; his new business:
providing four-star last meals for death row inmates
1:21: giveaways, pledge pleas, and thanks
1:31: music: Lee Hazlewood, “Six Feet of Chain”
1:34: giveaways, pledge pleas, and thanks

03.27.2001 [marathon week 2]

Start: intro, Tom intros marathon week 2
0:03: music: Flaming Groovies, “[?]”
0:08: Tom is joined by co-host Billzebub; talks up premiums (“Blood
Sweat & Tears vs. The Best Show” and “Radio Babylon”). For $100,
pledgers get a Rick Benson covers CD and get to pick one song on the album
0:14: Best Show flashback: Rick Benson, George Benson’s “son,” “duets” “Never Give Up on a Good Thing” with his “father”
0:19: pledge pleas, giveaways, and thanks
0:26: Theodore Rehnquist [JW] says they love Tom’s show at Rehnquist Manor, will pledge $50K to the station if Tom will move into the Manor with him and live in Theodore’s “chamber”; turns out to be Hot Rockin’ Ronnie, still broadcasting marching band music out of Boise, Idaho as Sgt. John Q. America; bets he can get more pledges on his station than Tom can; Tom asks listeners to vote for him or HRR, if HRR loses, he will never set foot in NJ again
0:42: music: The Creation, “[?]”, [?]
0:49: pledge pleas, giveaways, thanks, and votes for Tom
0:56: HRR calls back to taunt Tom and his listeners
1:02: Tom hangs up on HRR and asks for more pledges/votes to defeat him
1:03: music: Gene Marshall, “Shut Up and Quit Talking”
1:05: pledge pleas, giveaways, thanks, and votes for Tom
1:11: Best Show Flashback: The Star Wars insider
1:15: pledge pleas, giveaways, thanks, and votes for Tom
1:20: HRR calls back to taunt Tom and his listeners some more; Tom hangs up on HRR and asks for more pledges/votes to defeat him
1:30: HRR calls back to say he’s gonna “snuff” Tom if he gets hung
up again, says he wants show that’s a mix of marches, silky R&B,
and new classic power rock
1:32: music: Sugar Fragger, “[?]”
1:34: Tom still trails HRR; pledge pleas, giveaways, thanks, and votes for Tom
1:40: Pablo Cruise track from Great Phonecalls
1:42: pledge pleas, giveaways, thanks, and votes for Tom
1:44: HRR calls back to read a fan email and taunt Tom some more;
Tom hangs up on HRR and thanks pledgers, asks for more pledges/votes to defeat HRR
1:50: HRR calls back to tell Tom he’s “beyond dead”; more thanks
and pledge pleas; HRR calls back in an extremely fake/dumb voice, calls Tom his mortal enemy; does Tom want to concede?; HRR declares victory and wants Tom to carve “loser” in his chest [Tom apparently vanquishes HRR, but after the end of the archived audio]

04.03.2001

Start: intro, music: Polar Goldie Cats, “Super Punchy”, The Melvins,
“Peter Moves an Eyes”, Daniel Johnson, “I Had a Dream”, Neil Michael Hagerty, “Rock the Boat”; back announce
0:20: Tom thanks marathon pledgers
0:21: caller talks about sprinkle pledges, wants to know name of song from Dazed and Confused
0:23: Sara identifies song as Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Tuesday’s Gone” and everyone’s embarrassed
0:27: Tom is worn out from the marathon
0:29: caller does on-air Unfair Record Review of Tortoise with Tom
0:34: Zachary Brimstead [JW] promotes his new endeavor, Anarchy in the Barbershop—barbershop versions of punk tunes—but has a loose grasp of what constitutes punk
1:00: music, The Who, “A Quick One While He’s Away” (live), [?], The Embarrassment, “Pod Man”, Pell Mell, “Some Things We Do for Fun”, back announce
1:18: Tonight Show segment producer Brad Lester [JB]
promotes his “tell-all” book, in which he tells incredibly dull
celebrity tales, like finding a bump razor for Delroy Lindo or getting
a glass of wine for Gena Gershon; he doesn’t understand why Tom would be more interested about doing coke with Jim Belushi and witnessing a rape involving Winona Ryder, or the fact that Jeff Bridges died on the set

04.10.2001

Start: intro, music: Bad Wizard, “Keep High Stay Low”, Drunk Horse,
“Tanning Salon”, Neil Michael Hagerty, “Whiplash in Park”, Chili
Gonzalez, “Prankster Fly”; back announce
0:22: Tom says he could beat up any WFMU DJ
0:24: OJ calls to insist he can take Tom
0:29: Pablo Frigate calls to say he can take Tom, but Tom has no beef with the listeners
0:31: Dan would pay good money to see Tom fight Pseu Braun
0:34: music: Oranges Band, “Sweater Weather”, Bingo Trapper,
“Manual for a Safe Trip”, Soft Boys, “Only the Stones Remain”; back
announce
0:47: Hova says he’s organizing a non-violent protest against Tom’s violence; Belinda refuses to concede to Tom
0:52: caller wants Tom to fight Chris T, because he thinks Chris T will flatten him
0:53: email: if Tom fights Bronwyn and Pseu, “he’ll be a dark stain on a forgotten sidewalk”
0:54: caller wants to know how to join staff so he can fight Tom because he doesn’t like “arrogance”
0:55: Ken from Jersey City wants to know why it’s called The Best Show
0:57: Scott wants to know why Tom is spreading “the hate”
0:59: Pseu Braun says she could beat Tom with her psychotic fury;
Tom says he’ll win because he’s fast and he’s got “the cannons”
1:06: The Gorch
[JW] tells Tom about Gorchasaurus, the dinosaur he forced a scientist to name after him; The Gorch is a daddy again and prides himself on being a “cool” absentee parent; The Gorch admires Tom for bringing back good ol’ fashioned street fighting
1:26: Tom reviews the concessions he’s received; if a staffer doesn’t call by 11pm, Tom will consider it an absentee concession
1:27: OJ calls back to say he hasn’t conceded, schedules to fight Tom the next night
1:28: Brian does not concede, says Tom fights dirty; after Brian hangs up, Tom insists he conceded
1:31: Ken from Jersey City calls back and offers to play music
during Tom’s fight with OJ; Tom wants to hear “Street Fighting Man
1:32: Terre T says she can kick Tom’s ass with the power of Staten Island
1:36: Brad Lester [JB] has more Tonight Show stories; he still can’t understand why people don’t want to hear about stories like “The Brendan Fraser Incident”, doesn’t think people would be interested to find out that Jay Leno had three-quarters of his brain removed

04.17.2001

Start: intro, music: Grandaddy, “Our Dying Brains”, The Beach Boys,
“Time to Get Alone”, The Clientele, “I Had to Say This”, The Smiths,
“Bigmouth Strikes Again”; back announce
0:20: caller wants to hear more about the WFMU Record Fair; caller is a bartender in DC and has served many famous politicians
0:25: Tom continues to receive concessions from other DJs that yes, he can beat them up
0:26: who is the worst recording artist of all time? Tom thinks it’s Al Green, and he wants to know why Green’s music makes him cringe when the rest of the world loves it
0:29: caller tries to pin down why Tom doesn’t like Al Green
0:34: caller says Englebert Humperdinck drives him nuts
0:34: caller [JW] wants to know if Tom’s ever made love while listening to Al Green, and also wants to hear Tom say “make love”
0:38: caller says Al Green made it because he sold his soul to the devil, can’t stand Barbara Streisand
0:39: caller likes Al Green and NRBQ; Tom thinks NRBQ is the worst band in the history of time
0:42: caller can’t stand Al Green but wants some romantic music advice; Tom suggests The King Brothers or Weird Paul
0:44: caller agrees with Tom on NRBQ
0:48: caller thinks Al Green’s “the bomb” and wants to hear some Depeche Mode
0:51: King Brothers, “Track #4”, The Hives, “Outsmarted” Rondelles, “Please Shut Up”; back announce
1:00: caller has list of bands he hates: Phish, Guided by Voices, and Pavement
1:04: caller hates Britney Spears and Jerry Garcia, thinks Tom should give Al Green another shot
1:10: caller wants Tom to shut up and play the Ramones
1:11: Ken needs Tom to open the door for him
1:12: Small Change thinks Tom should change his challenge to “I can kick anyone at WFMU’s ass at Asteroids”
1:15: caller says he hated J. Mascis’ last tour with Mike Watt and members of the Stooges; Tom didn’t like the last Soft Boys show
1:17: caller doesn’t like Sting
1:19: Kathleen talks about serving drinks to Cuba Gooding Sr.
1:23: Joe from Indiana has no clue about Blues Traveler
1:26: Tom reads email submissions of overrated artists: Frank
Sinatra; Howard the Yoyo Man recalls a terrible NRBQ show and hates reggae; Michael wants Tom to give Al Green another listen
1:27: Tom spins some NRBQ songs to gauge their hideousness
1:30: caller can’t stand Elton John and U2; Tom wants permission to melt down all the NRBQ records in the station
1:32: caller thinks Tom’s fave music is repetitive and does a very bad rendition of “Rock n’ Roll High School”, gets GOMPed [first “Get Off My Phone!”?]
1:35: caller wants to know why he can’t get WFMU in the Holland
Tunnel; Tom asks if caller has ever seen the little track cars that run
the length of the tunnel
1:37: caller defends U2
1:40: caller defends NRBQ
1:42: Tom’s still looking for concessions from his fellow WFMU DJs
1:44: Chris T and Tom discuss the horror of KISS
1:50: Tom reads more email and makes station announcements
1:52: caller has a boss who’s obsessed with NRBQ; Tom wants his
phone number so he can confront the boss about his unsavory obsession; outro

04.24.2001

Start: intro, music: Scorn, “Can But Try”, Rolling Stones, “Live With Me”, Ludacris, “Game Got Switched”, Black Flag, “Southern Rise”; partial back announce
0:21: Tom wants listeners to guess the band that played the last song
0:22: caller begs Tom to turn the song off, guesses the Rolling Stones and Patsy Cline
0:23: caller thanks Tom for turning song off, but Tom plays it again until someone guesses the band
0:24: caller correctly guesses Black Flag; Tom tries to make him sing along with the instrumental like Henry Rollins
0:26: caller wants to talk to Hot Rockin’ Ronnie; Tom says that HRR has been vanquished
0:31: Tom will use tonight’s show to “tie up loose ends” because
he’s exhausted; all but 3 WFMU DJs have conceded that he could beat him up; one unnamed DJ challenged him to a fight and didn’t show up as scheduled, and thus winds up in Tom’s Hall of Shame (with Jerry Reed, General Rommel, and Placido Domingo); does anyone know what’s coming up?
0:34: Dave (on steroids) knows what’s coming up: the WFMU Record Fair; Tom says he’ll be there–he’ll be the guy at the pizza stand, wearing a t-shirt that says Pizza Boy
0:40: caller says there’s a lot of “honeys” at the Record Fair; Tom thinks he sounds creepy but helps him with his pick-up lines
0:42: another creepy caller thinks Tom’s trouble sleeping could be cured with a good spanking, gets GOMPed
0:44: Hot Rockin’ Ronnie is declared not a loose end, because he will never be heard on WFMU ever again
0:45: an amped-up Dave clarifies that HRR is in Iowa now; Tom tells him to go paint his house
0:47: Jack, who called in to first Best Show as a “French guy”, hates That’s My Bush
0:51: Tom just saw possibly the worst movie ever made; does anyone know what it is?
0:51: caller correctly guesses Freddy Got Fingered;
Tom calls it “one of the most troubling movies ever made”; caller
agrees to call Tom back with his truck’s EZPass account # because he’s mad at his employer
0:55: caller has a modern Fonzie feel (his “ehhh” is “full of self
doubt”), wonders if Tom included station engineers in his Fight
Challenge
0:59: music: Afrikaa Bambaata, “Zulu Nation Throwdown”, DJ Eddie
Def, “Crybaby”, Red Kross, “Play My Song”, Gorillaz, “Tomorrow Comes Today”; back announce
1:19: Tom is still looking to tie up loose ends, dizzy with exhaustion
1:20: caller wants to know bed music; Tom says he wrote it and
conducted it with the Baltimore Philharmonic; they discuss Victor Kiam and the worst film ever made
1:25: caller discusses The Weakest Link; Tom predicts it will flame out very soon; caller wants to wager on it
1:32: lethargic caller wants to know why Tom’s so tired, wanted to
be a caddy; Tom hangs up on him for answering his questions too quickly
1:36: Gabriel from Hallworth discusses DJ Eddie Def
1:44: music: Grandaddy, “Our Dying Brains”, The Clientele, “I Had
to Say This”, Bingo Trappers, “Manual for a Safe Trip”; back announce
and outro

05.01.2001

no show

05.08.2001

Start: intro, music: Dead Meadow, “Sleep Silver Door”, Mine Disaster, “Communal Storybook”, The Aardvarks, “Subconscious Train of Thought”, White Stripes, “Death Letter”
0:27: back announce; Tom thanks WFMU Record Fair volunteers and attendees; other station announcements
0:34: Tom wants to give tickets away to the first caller who can identify what’s different about the show this evening
0:35: caller doesn’t know what the tickets are for, but wants them
0:36: Robin, a record fair volunteer, correctly guesses it’s Tom’s pronounced cold; Tom admits he has no tickets, he just wanted callers
0:37: El blames Tom’s cold on sushi he ate at the Record Fair, wants to add Janet Jackson to list of overrated artists; Tom makes him honk his truck horn
0:41: music: Thane Russell and Three, “Security”, Mooney Suzuki,
“My Dear Persephone”, Alien Communication, “White Room”, Peaches and Gonzalez, “Double A, Triple X” (live on WFMU), The Rondelles, “Please Shut Up”; back announce
1:02: famous record collector Giles Palermo [AE] plays some of his
most prized collectibles, but he has a loose grasp of what constitutes “collectible”, and music in general; outro

05.15.2001

No show

05.22.2001

Start: intro, music: The Monkees, “Star Collector”, [?]
0:23: Tom laments the passing of the XFL
0:30: caller wished the XFL had been more like Running Man or Smash TV; never got into football because he was too busy spying on his neighbors
0:36: Mike Ruggles, depressed XFL fan [JW], says his “whole reason
for living” has been pulled away, spent a ridiculous amount of money on XFL merchandise
0:52: music: Portastatic, “Looking for Leonard”, The Hives, “Hate to Say I Told You So”
1:01: back announce, Tom reads email: David wants to see football players get hurt; Sponge wants to hear about killer giraffes in Malaysia; Tom announces Glenn Jones’ impending record-breaking attempt
to DJ non-stop for 100 hours; other station announcements
1:08: Tom reads Daily News article about Bill Clinton “having the hots” for Jennifer Lopez and letter from angry XFL fan
1:10: caller tries to compare the XFL’s business model to the movie The Producers; Tom gets confused “It’s a play–why would you say it’s a movie?”; subsequent callers try to correct Tom, but he’s adamant that The Producers is a Broadway show, not a movie; many alternate movies with alternate casts are mentioned, like “The Grips”
1:29: music: The Pagans, “Haven’t Got the Time”, The Fallouts, “About You”, Wild Billy Childish and the Friends of the Buff Medway, “Archived from 1959”, Dan Melchior’s Broke Review, “Bad for My Soul”; back announce
1:42: Tom gets to the bottom of The Producers controversy, reads supporting emails
1:46: Tom delivers a stirring XFL eulogy
1:51: Jack/Jacques says his favorite memory of the XFL is when it ended; Tom discusses Street Smarts, wants Jacques to call in sick to work so he can stay up until 2am and watch it; outro

05.29.2001

No show

06.05.2001 [first 3 hour show]

Start: intro, music: Holy Modal Rounders, “Indian War Whoop”, Medeski Martin and Wood, “Bone Digger”, Oneida, “Guest for Two”, The Seeds, “Evil Hoodoo”, Clinic, “Internal Wrangler”, Crime, “San Francisco’s Doomed”
0:22: back announce; Tom intros the new 3-hour version of The Best Show (“Consider the first hour to be a pregame”)
0:29: The Creature from Pout
[JW] calls from his corporate jet to chide WFMU for having Gene Simmons as a guest; The Creature thinks KISS stole its whole act from Pout, seems unaware that KISS debuted in the 1970s and used to wear makeup; Tom plays “Secret Dancer” and The Creature takes calls
1:07: Pout’s power ballad, “Life Goes on for Some of Us”
1:12: Tom debuts 2-for-Tuesday
1:14: music: White Stripes, “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”,
White Stripes, “The Big 3 Killed My Baby”, Ex-Models, “The Birth of
Disneyland”, The Pagans, “Haven’t Got the Time”, The Hives, “Hate to Say I Told You So”, Richmond Sluts, “Take You Home”; back announce
1:40: Tom reads through Rolling Stone’s summer concert listings; caller fights with Tom over the merits of Plug Spark Sanjay
1:47: talent agent Brian McDermott [JW] wants to hire Tom to write Cameron Diaz’s autobiography; turns out to be Hot Rockin’ Ronnie, working as Kid Midnight at KMMD-FM (40s, 50s, and The Guess Who); vows to break Glenn Jones’ on-air DJing record
2:07: music: Cherry Valence, “The Clap”, Wild Billy Childish and
the Friends of the Buff Medway, “Archived from 1959”, Thee Headcoats, “The Killing Hold”, The Loners, “I Can’t”, The McTells, “[?]”; back announce, announcements
2:31: Tom discusses tours by Ringo Starr’s All Star Band and Madonna
2:34: Tom declares the Moulin Rouge soundtrack the worst thing put together in the history of entertainment, plays choice cuts
2:43: angry caller wants the makers of Moulin Rouge rounded up and killed
2:45: caller says Pearl Harbor is worse than Moulin Rouge
2:47: music: Ladybug Transistor, “Wooden Bars”, The Beach Boys, “Time to Get Alone”; back announce
2:56: Tom wants to hear from one person who saw Moulin Rouge
2:57: Edward X. Murphy calls in about The Monster from the Moulin Rouge
2:59: music: The Zombies, “Changes”

06.12.2001

Start: music: Badfinger, “Take it All”, Discotheque, “Somebody Somewhere’s Got Something Against Me”, Lloyd’s World, “Brass Bird”, David Bowie, “Nature Boy”; ‘front’ announce
00:18: Tom has reversed his opinion on Moulin Rouge–now it’s the best movie ever! If you don’t love it, you don’t love love!
00:24: caller loves Tom’s show but has yet to see Moulin Rouge; Tom says she must see it if she loves her husband
00:28: caller loved Moulin Rouge for John Leguizamo, did not think it was too sappy or mushy
00:33: caller doesn’t know what to think of Moulin Rouge;
Tom wonders if Kurt Cobain invented a time machine, traveled to the future, saw the movie, then killed himself; also thinks someone wanted to get fired by making/greenlighting this movie
0:45: caller is freaked out by Nicole Kidman; Tom urges him to see the movie anyway because he’ll fall in love with love
0:48: caller is now convinced he should see Moulin Rouge
0:52: music: Black Sabbath, “Black Sabbath”, Mainliner,
“Imaginative Plane”, Cul de Sac, “Milk Devil”, Wimple Winch, “Marmalade Hair”; back announce
1:14: Tom breaks the spell of Moulin Rouge and wants to hear from the most violent Best Show listener
1:19: caller talks about his experiences with boxing and judo
1:24: caller talks about killing a guy with a carnival water pistol; Tom feels duty bound to report him to the authorities
1:26: President Bush [JW] calls to offer Tom the position of Secretary of Radio; turns out to be Hot Rockin’ Ronnie; he claims to have shattered Glenn Jones’ consecutive DJing record, but is clearly delusional from lack of sleep
1:39: Tom can’t decide if Moulin Rouge is the best movie ever, or if it wasn’t even better than The Animal
1:41: music: The Beach Boys, “Let the Wind Blow”, Ladybug Transistor, “Wooden Bars”, The Premiers, “Get on this Plane”, The Persons, “Bag”, The Wellwater Conspiracy, “What Becomes of the Clock”
2:00: caller talks about her encounter with Bernard Goetz at an East
Village vegetarian restaurant, and previous encounters with the Pet
Shop Boys and Howard Jones
2:06: caller has a Bernard Goetz story of her own, more tales of Howard Jones
2:16: Tom announces he will make his own shot at Guinness “famy” and will have a guest from VH1’s Bands on the Run; back announce, station announcements
2:22: music: West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, “I Won’t Hurt
You”, Blue Oyster Cult, “Then Came the Last Days of May”, Monkey 101, “French Feelings”; back announce, email
2:33: caller wants to know what the bed music is (“Sporting Highlights”); Tom declares himself foosball champ of WFMU
2:35: Reverend Dr. Tor calls to advise Tom’s listeners to add lime
juice to their lemonade; Tom hangs up on him but begs him to call back
2:37: Hot Rockin’ Ronnie [JW] wonders if he called Tom earlier, has no memory of calling earlier mid-marathon
2:56: music: Modey Lemon, “You Bug Me”; outro

06.19.2001

Start: intro, music: The Who, “Pinball Wizard”, The Wellwater Conspiracy, “Brotherhood of Electric”, Ex-Models, “The Birth of Disneyland”, Mainliner, “Imaginative Plane”; back announce
0:18: Tor calls in with a very bad Yogi Bear/Barney impression
0:18: young caller/aspiring musician wants to know who’s playing at the Montville Raceway this summer
0:26: Tom is looking for some heavy foosball competition; caller wants Tom to stop by his office to play foosball with him
0:27: Tom declares himself a foosball prodigy; caller thinks Tom might need to be schooled
0:32: music: Dead Moon, “Ricochet”, The White Stripes, “Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground”, Cherry Valence, “The Clap”, Morrissey, “Suedehead”; back announce
0:56: caller wants to hear a Zen Gorilla song about a clown whose title escapes him
0:58: Tor calls back to expound on his Ed Wood religious theories
1:07: Tom laments the lack of foosball competition at WFMU
1:08: caller doesn’t want to be on the air but does want free tickets to see Archer Pruitt
1:11: music: De Artsen, “Horrid Kitchen”, Tripod Jimmy, “Autumn Leaves”, Peter Laughner, “Sylvia Plath”; back announce, email
1:27: Tor calls back yet again to insist his site has no child pornography; Tom tells him to call back at 11:02
1:29: Tony Torgvort, aka Mr. Loophole [JW], promotes his book “The System”, which purports to tell readers how to get paid by the government for virtually everything [Best Show Gems, 9.20.10]
2:27: music: The Henchmen, “[?]”, Rolling Stones, “Monkey Man”, Mooney Suzuki, “Your Love Is a Gentle Whip”, Modey Lemon, “You Bug Me”, The Soft Boys, “Positive Vibrations”, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, “Layla”
2:51: is anyone waiting to challenge Tom at foosball once the show’s over?; email; caller wants Tom to stop talking and play music even though he just played like seven songs; caller wants to hear Moldy Peaches, which Tom has cued up; Tom pledges to keep on talking thanks to that one loudmouth
2:57: Tor calls back slightly earlier than scheduled
2:57: music: The Moldy Peaches, “Goodbye Song”

06.26.2001

Start: intro, music: Vermonster, “Children of the Sun”; back announce; Tom promises to play the blank out of the just-released Nuggets 2 boxed set, though he questions some of the compilers’ choices
0:22: Tom discusses Mick Jagger’s revenge song against Jerry Hall, “Gun”
0:27: Wes feels sorry for all the saps who will hear this crappy Mick Jagger song; Tom doesn’t think anyone will play it; they discuss how stations like K-ROCK have caught up to CBS in nostalgia; Tom wants everyone to start calling him “Wesson Oil” or “Wessonality” to stir up childhood trauma; Wes plays with a Frank Zappa cover band; Tom does not “get” Zappa, wants to know what song will convert him
0:35: caller thinks Tom should listen to “Excentrifugal Forz”; Tom asks, “Did he ever record anything he didn’t release?”
0:38: music: Sorry, “That’s Fine with Me”, The Nerves, “Show Your
Love”, The Wellwater Conspiracy, “Of Dreams”, The Monkees, “Daily
Nightly”
0:50: back announce; Tom questions the inclusion of a Monkees song on Nuggets 2 and plays another track from the boxed set
0:55: music: The Beatles, “She Said She Said”
0:58: Tom wonders why there are two Beatles songs on Nuggets 2
1:01: music: Portastatic, “Looking for Leonard”, The Frogs, “Buried Me Alive”
1:06: email; Tom rips Mick Jagger some more; Tom rates the Beatles
and puts John Lennon on the bottom; Tom gives the thumbs down to John Lennon, Mick Jagger, jazz, Frank Zappa, people named Wes, and Nuggets 2
1:14: Augie Richards [JW], proprieter of Ye Olde Burger Barn, wants Tom to do a remote from his bar/restaurant; his establishment features the fearsome Batter Butler, whose expense has prompted Augie to charge some exorbitant and creative fees; as Tom grows reluctant, Augie threatens to ask Hot Rockin’ Ronnie to do a remote there instead
2:01: music: T. Lance, “Why”, The Buzzards, “High Class”, The Pattern, “No Bacon [?]” Wild Billy Childish and the Friends of the Buff Medway, “Archived from 1959”, North of America, “Revolt on Revolution”, Peter Sellers, “I’m So Ashamed”; back announce
2:25: Tom reads a Burger Barn-related update via email; Tom has received several unwanted photos of Hot Rockin’ Ronnie via email; veiled foosball-related threats; station announcements
2:31: music: Dead Moon, “40 Miles of Bad Road”, The Eat, “Hialea”, Robert Pollard, “Submarine Team”, The 13th Floor Elevators, “Fire Engine”, The Panics, “Drugs Are for Thugs”, Christman, “Big Plans”;
back announce
2:52: Tom promises uninterrupted 30-seconds of airtime for all callers until the end of the show; Tom predicts that A.I. stinks and Pootie Tang will be better; promises an in-studio fireworks show for July 3; a worker at the NJ Board of Health promises to Tom (via email) that he will check out Ye Olde Burger Barn; outro

07.03.2001

Start: intro, music: Toshiko Noriko, “Aw Yeah”, The Shins, “Caring Is Creepy”, Flin Flon, “Upper Ferry”, Grauzone, “Traume mit Mir”; back announce; Tom wishes Petey the worst Fourth of July ever, gives a brief history lesson, reads email
0:23: Tom challenges his listeners to identify one Frank Zappa
song that doesn’t suck; wonders who would win in a “tool shed” fight
between Petey and Tor
0:26: caller suggests instrumental Frank Zappa like Shut Up and Play Your Guitar
0:28: Zappa fan since 1965 suggests “Rudy Wants to Buy Yez a Drink” and “Sharleena” from Chunga’s Revenge; Tom plays the songs and is thoroughly unconvinced
0:32: caller recommends Joe’s Garage but somehow doesn’t know about Captain Beefheart
0:36: caller recommends “Black Napkins” on Zoot Allures; Tom is still unconvinced
0:38: Doug (Monday morning WFMU DJ) doesn’t like Zappa much but recommends Hot Rats
as a ‘necessary evil’; Tom derides him for growing up with the Iron
City Rockers, though he thinks Donnie Iris has contributed more to
humanity than Zappa (as have the Monkees)
0:47: caller finds it ironic that Zappa died of prostate cancer
0:48: Dave wants to hear more about foosball tilts and the
Asteroids machine at WFMU, which Tom has officially conquered; Tom denounces improper foosball technique; they discuss the presence of Petey and Tor on the message board, and Tor’s intensely polarizing calls; Tom “thanks” Zappa for discovering Warren Cucurrulo; Dave recommends “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama”
0:56: caller appreciates Zappa as a “gateway” artist; Tom likes the idea of Zappa better than the reality
0:58: caller wants to know if Tom would rather listen to Billy Joel
than Zappa; Tom appreciates Billy Joel’s transcendent badness; caller recommends “Dyna-Moe-Humm”
1:00: music: Come, “I Got the Blues”, Rolling Stones, “Going
Home”, Radio Birdman, “Love Kills”, Todd Rundgren, “Long Flowing Robe”, back announce; Tom says “Going Home” has been optioned for a movie starring Nicolas Cage; Tom reads from the NY Post about Courtney Love blocking the release of an unreleased Nirvana song
1:32: blitzed caller says he loves WFMU and shares his Fourth of July plans; caller makes CDs for a living; Tom wants some free albums; caller gets GOMPed when he won’t give his real name
1:37: Tom continues with the Courtney Love story and praises her
murdering/coverup talents; Tom reads of Sylvester Stallone
contemplating a Rocky musical
1:45: Chris T wants ideas of what to do on the Fourth of July,
other than going to see A.I.; Chris T also has no idea what to do on
his show this week; Tom discusses his hatred of alt-country
1:55: caller tries to heartily discourage Chris T from seeing A.I.; Tom reaffirms his love for Moulin Rouge and his hatred of Eyes Wide Shut and Hollow Man (aka “Kevin Bacon: Invisible Rapist”); Stephen King and scary movies are discussed; Tom thinks HOW DARE YOU! will be his catchphrase
2:05: caller wants to know if Stallone will sing the way Rocky
talks in the musical; the appropriateness of the term midget is debated
2:08: caller shares a found 1964 newspaper clip about one of his
neighbors in Jersey City, as well as his adventures finding stuff in
the street
2:12: Augie Richards [JW] calls back; Ye Olde Burger Barn has been shut down by the Health Department, and he blames Tom; Augie plans to start a fleet of extremely dangerous Batter-mobiles, with even higher prices/fees than before [Best Show Gems, 3/7/11]
2:56: outro, music: Dead Moon, “40 Miles of Bad Road”

07.10.01

Start: intro, music: The Moving Sidewalks, “[?]” [no back announce]; Tom begins his White Knight crusade against the creeps on the WFMU message board, singling out Jasper Yoinks and Petey’s “boring stories”
0:24: caller thinks this is revenge for Tom’s anti-NRBQ rant; Tom compares himself to the movie Ransom
0:26: caller thinks Chris T’s show is terrible and hangs up; Tom screams FACE ME, YOU COWARD!
0:28: caller chimes in “Bo-ring!”; Tom composes email to Jasper Yoinks with subject line HOW DARE YOU
0:32: Music: The Briefs, “C’mon Squash Me Like a Bug”, The Lonely
Moans, “Shocker”, Mooney Suzuki, “Your Love Is a Gentle Whip”, The
Calabros, “Problems”, The Hives, “Hate to Say I Told You So”; back
announce
0:51: Tom challenges message board bullies to call in, also wants to hear from victims of internet harassment
0:55: an Ed Wood clip prefaces a call from Tor; Tom says Tor’s not
evil, just misguided; Tom lets Tor put on his “little boy Dougie” on
the phone, a decision he immediately regrets; Tom reads some of Tor’s message board posts to prove their un-worth; Tor hangs up, infuriating Tom
1:02: caller thinks Tor’s just got a screw loose and wants Tom to send a computer virus to Jasper Yoinks; Tom declares himself the bodyguard of WFMU, the Matt Dillon to its Chris Makepeace; Tom’s harangue has scared away both callers and emailers; he offers his bodyguard services to anyone who’s having a problem
1:09: Scott wants Tom to go after AC repairmen who are giving him the runaround; Tom promises he’ll put the hurt on ’em; Tom declares himself the Bridge Over Troubled Water
1:13: Music: Clay, “Til We Have Faces”, The Von Bondies, “Night
Train”, King Brothers, “Dead Soul”, Mainliner, “Imaginative Plane”, The Lost Kids, “Alive in the Snow”, MC5, “Come Together”
1:36: Tom continues his crusade and offers his bodyguard services
to the public at large; on the message board, Tor calls Tom “The White Nut”; Tom promises more fun in the coming weeks, including at least one show on Bands on the Run and maybe the host of Street Smarts; compares this show to the work of an exterminator; back announce; Tom reads encouraging emails, compares WFMU to a family and yells at Jasper Yoinks some more
1:53: Tor calls back to say he’s never been deleted from the WFMU
message board; Tom quickly hangs up on him; email: Tom has “fueled a holy battle”
1:55: Moose has used his last NY phone card to say Tom has the
best show on WFMU and declare himself Tom’s biggest fan, has never posted to the message board but is “honored” to be in the presence of a New Jersey folk hero
1:59: Tor calls back with a dolphin SFX and hangs up; more encouraging email; Tom calls for the cowards to reveal themselves
2:01: Tom discusses the movie A.I.: the worst elements of
both Spielberg and Kubrick; Tom differentiates his criticisms from
those of message board cranks; Tom plays with the echo effect for a
while
2:08: caller sent his wife and seven- and ten-year-old to see A.I. and thinks he may have scarred them all
2:10: Tom calls A.I. “an emotional snuff film”, declares it worse than Scary Movie
2:12: Tor calls yet again, Tom declares a lifetime ban against him,
he must email ahead of time and expressly tell Tom what he wants to
talk about; Tom declares himself a White Knight yet again but professes no connection to the KKK
2:16: Outrageous Cherry, “Shadow of My Universe”, The Summer
Hymns, “One More Teardrop”, The Summer Hymns, “New Underdressment”, Boyce and Hart, “I Should Be Going Home”; back announce
2:39: Tom gets an email lead about Jasper Yoinks
2:41: Moose calls back to insist that Tom continue his crusade
2:43: caller wants to hear No Doubt and is quickly hung up on; station announcements
2:44: “No Doubt” Guy calls back, would rather hear John Glenn; more station announcements; Tom lobs more threats toward Jasper Yoinks; “No Doubt” Guy calls back yet again
2:48: caller who has to slim down for the fire department wants to know what Tom’s last feast would be before a big diet; Tom critiques his current eating habits and recommends a fool-proof diet
2:53: Tom declares this the ugliest and most important show he’s ever done
2:54: music: North of America, “[?]”; outro

07.17.2001

Start: intro, music: Children’s Crusade, “Blue Venus Aflame”, Ocean
Color Scene, “100 Mile High City”, GG Allin and the Jabbers, “1980s
Rock n’ Roll”, Radio Birdman, “Descent into Maelstrom”; back announce; Tom wants listeners to guess the artist responsible for “1980s Rock n’ Roll” (hint: he eventually got much more aggressive)
0:23: Tom takes several incorrect guesses (Flaming Lips, Ministry,
and Marilyn Manson, among others) until a caller guesses GG Allin; Tom continues to back announce and rifles through incorrect guesses via email
0:31: Tom recounts his battle against the chowderheads on the WFMU message board; Petey insists he will be back; Tom declares that Jasper Yoinks has been vanquished; Tom previews a Bands on the Run spectacular and wants to hear from fans of the show
0:38: music: Robert Pollard, “Submarine Teams”, Peter Jeffries,
“Electricity”, The Zombies, “Indication”, The Feelies, “The Boy with
the Perpetual Nervousness”; back announce
0:57: Brad Lester [JB] calls in from a rooftop party with other segment producers; he tells some more “behind the scenes” celebrity tales from The Tonight Show that Tom finds thoroughly uninteresting
1:31: Brad shares the phone with Billy Paltz, segment producer on The Craig Kilborn Show [JG], who loves Brad’s stories and has similarly dull tales of his own
1:38: Brad insists on the inherent fascination of his celebrity
stories, and has no idea why people would want to hear about Jay Leno accidentally hitting a boy with one of his vintage cars and Brad’s complicity in the murder of Robert Wuhl’s assistant
1:52: Brad passes the phone to Danny Rosen, segment producer for The Rosie O’Donnell Show [MW], who strongly disagrees that Brad’s stories are boring, tells go-nowhere stories about a cancelled appearance by Fran Drescher and a crazy sweater
2:00: Brad takes some calls from listeners
2:05: music: TNT, “Please Let Me Into Your Secrets”, Governor,
“Baby’s Way Cruel”, Glass Candy, “Be a Dolly”, King Brothers, “Dead
Soul”; back announce
2:22: caller wants to hear “The Clap” by Cherry Valence, accuses Tom of being a fair-weather fan of the band
2:23: Tom previews the Bands on the Run spectacular; email
2:24: Mike Healey [JW] requests a song for his newborn daughter,
born two weeks premature; Tom questions whether two weeks truly
qualifies as premature; Mike “had no idea I was calling into The Baby
Doctor” and sarcastically peppers Tom with a barrage of child-rearing questions, even though his own parenting/spousal skills are suspect [“Mike Healey, Part 1”, Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin]
2:53: caller wants to end it all in a bathtub full of Vaseline
2:55: music: The Lost Kids, “Alive in the Snow”

07.24.2001

Start: intro, music: Aviary, “Anthem for the U.S.A.”, Glass Candy, “Be
a Dolly”, Tommy James and the Shondells, “Sugar on Sunday”, The
Rondelles, “Safety in Numbers”; preview of the Bands on the Run Spectacular; Tom wants a volunteer to test the phones with him
0:21: Tom reports on the first Siren Festival–could it possibly have been less enjoyable?; Tom wants callers to vent about their miserable experiences there
0:26: Tom tests phones with the aid of a caller, discusses more Siren Festival experiences and carnival games; back announce
0:35: music: Outrageous Cherry, “Through Parallel Dimensions”, West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, “Smell of Incense”, The Clocks, “Confidentially Renee”, The Strapping Fieldhands, “Future Pastoral”, Truman’s Water, “Rinsed in Ashes”; back announce
0:58: caller wants to hear some Ex-Models
0:59: music: Von Bondies, “Night Train”
1:02: Tom interviews Dan Cutforth, producer of Bands on the Run, takes calls
1:49: caller [AE] wants the next Bands on the Run to feature music more like Dread Zeppelin or a riot grrl revivalist group
1:51: Dan takes some more calls and the interview concludes
1:59: music: The Lost Kids, “Alive in the Snow”, Radio Birdman, “Descent into the Maelstrom”; back announce
2:07: Tom interviews Beastie from Soulcracker, takes calls
2:30: caller from Memphis who plays in a band called Sweetbox Nubbins [AE] wants to know if Beastie has a tat of his band’s name
2:33: Beastie takes more calls, is amazed that he gets not one death threats; outro

07.31.2001

Start: intro, music: Status Quo, “Mr. Mind Detector”, Girl Trouble, “I’m Wise”, The Screws, “Flip Your Face”, The Mooch, “Hot Smoke and Sassafrass”, Fuse, “Mystery Ship”; station announcements; Tom waits for an exciting mystery guest to call in, who’s currently doing an in-store appearance; Tom makes several aborted attempts to introduce a song by The Greenhornes, interrupts the song to back announce the first set
0:33: music: The Greenhornes, “Shadow of Grief”, The Yardbirds,
“Wrap My Mind”, The Lost Kids, “Alive in the Snow”, The White Stripes, “Why Can’t You Be Nicer to Me”, The Cuts, “Don’t Look Behind the Mirror”; mystery guest update; back announce; Tom wonders if listeners can guess who the mystery guest is from the clue on the WFMU message board
0:58: girl with very thick accent wants to know about an upcoming concert
0:59: Nice Petey from Nice Land wants to know if he’s the mystery guest; Tom has phone trouble with an exec from Virgin Records; the mystery guest’s appearance has been pushed back further
1:02: music: The Loners, “I Can’t”, TNT, “Please Let Me Into Your
Secrets”, Aviary, “Anthem for the U.S.A.”, Radio Birdman, “Hand of Law”, MC5, “Human Being Lawnmower”; back announce; Tom has been guaranteed that his mystery guest will call but declares Open Phone Tuesday in the meantime
1:26: Chris wants to hear a song by the Anderson Council
1:26: Tom announces Scharpling’s Army, who wants to join?
1:30: Bottled Water Man (who sounds suspiciously like Tor) declares himself the mystery guest
1:30: caller wants to know if Scharpling’s Army will kill people; Tom insists it’s an army for peace, unless a rival DJ forms their own navy
1:31: PO from Hollywood, Pennsylvania says he talked the suicidal caller from a previous show off the ledge
1:32: caller wants to know about the army’s uniforms
1:33: Belinda from Greasy Kids Stuff wants to know about family
memberships for the army; Tom and Belinda coyly discuss something Tom wants from Greasy Kids Stuff, Belinda wants some unnamed concessions/assurances
1:39: caller felt very alienated from Tom’s negotiations with Belinda; Tom assures her that Army members will be included in his plans
1:40: douche wants to give a shout-out; Tom apologizes for his douchery, takes some off-air calls
1:42: Doug is worried that the mystery guest may flake out; Tom will scrap his army for a militia if that happens; more off-air phone calls; Tom declares The Best Show a Shout-Out-Free Zone
1:45: music: Falco, “The Sound of Music”, Family Fodder, “Der Leerman”, Helen Love, “We Love You”, Clinic, “IPC Subeditors Dictate Our Youth”, The Rondelles, “TV Zombie”; back announce; Tom says the mystery guest will call in around 10:30, isn’t happy about tailoring his show around it
2:08: music: King Brothers, “Super X”, Outrageous Cherry,
“Everything’s Back to Normal”, Unrest, “I Do Believe You Are Blushing”, The Summer Hymns, “Something’s Going On”, The Wildebeasts, “One Plus One”, [song Tom cuts off because The Best Show is a No Flute Zone], New Formula, “Stay Indoors”; back announce; Tom feels the mystery guest—and the show-—slipping away; Tom promotes Scharpling’s Army
2:42: Tyson tells Tom that Perry Farrell (the mystery guest) can’t make it on the show; Tom immediately declares war on him and his “new crummy album”
2:44: caller [AE] wanted to talk to Perry Farrell about getting reparations for having to sit through Living Colour during the first Lollapalooza; hangups and a scary call follow
2:46: caller can’t believe Tom would have Perry Farrell on the show to begin with
2:47: Tom plays three seconds of Perry Farrell’s new album and tosses it in the trash
2:48: two callers want Tom to smash the CD, which he does; DJ Terre T thinks Tom should have sold it to Vintage Vinyl; “YOU DON’T WIN, PERRY FARRELL! I WIN!!”
2:50: unnamed 8mm filmmaker [JW] wanted to talk to Perry Farrell about The Gift and use a Jane’s Addiction song in his movie Surfboard Love
2:59: Tom declares war on Virgin Records and Perry Farrell; outro

08.07.2001

Start: intro, music: X, “The Hungry Wolf”, Mooney Suzuki, “Make My Way”, The Yardbirds, “Honey in Your Hips”, The Lost Kids, “Whirling Dervish”, The Raspberries, “I Don’t Know What I Want”; back announce; hang-ups, non-calls, and phone trouble give Tom a bad feeling about this show
0:30: music: Television Personalities, “King and Country”, Clinic,
“Cement Mixer”, The Remains, “Don’t Look Back”, Pet Shop Boys, “Losing My Mind”, The Last Band, “Cha Cha Cha”; Tom needs someone to test the phones
0:50: Patty wants to hear “Oysters” by The [newfangled] Liars
0:51: Tom hangs up on Petey and erupts into maniacal laughter
0:51: G wants to know about the bed music because he thinks David Lynch sampled it in Wild at Heart; back announce
0:58: emailer thinks Tom should forget about the Perry Farrell incident; should Tom have him back on the show?
1:01: Dee, a Scharpling Army officer, says hell no to a Perry Farrell appearance unless he agrees to be “the submissive party”
1:04: Tor (in Yogi Bear-esque fake voice) thinks Tom should get revenge on Perry Farrell via double-booking another artist and bumping him
1:06: Tom promotes Scharpling’s Army; what kind of fun outings
could they do?; emailer Greg wants to know why Perry Farrell appeared on VH1 Doors cover show but didn’t sing; WFMU’s own Ken wants to join the Army; email on Perry Farrell (one thinks Tom should have him on and just ask him about the song “Pets”)
1:12: caller on his way to a TSOL show in Long Branch wants to hear True Sounds of Liberty
1:13: Chris saw Perry Farrell spinning at Lotus and thought he
sucked; emailer wants Scharpling’s Army to take out all rich LA
musicians except Lou Barlow
1:16: Tor tries to call back in same fake voice and is quickly
unmasked; emailer thinks Scharpling’s Army should declare war on the Tor’s and Petey’s of the world
1:17: Dave thinks Tom should interview Perry Farrell only about The Gift
1:19: suspicious caller wants to know more about the Meatpacking District; Tor makes another unsuccessful call
1:22: caller thinks Tom should steal Perry Farrell’s woman; Tom is now extremely suspicious of all callers
1:23: Tom reports his sleep-filled viewing of America’s Sweethearts
1:24: caller is furious that Tom revealed the ending of America’s Sweethearts; Tom has no idea how the caller could not know how it ended
1:27: Craig Rockman [JW] wants to know if Tom is interested in hosting a VH1 Disco Divas show; turns out to be Hot Rockin’ Ronnie, back to torture Tom; HRR is now making PA announcements at the Kearn Pharmaceutical Plant, deluding himself into thinking it’s an actual DJ gig [Best Show Gems, 9/30/13]
1:57: music: The Cuts, “Get Rid of Him”, The Bent Wind, “The
Lions”, Rick Rizzo and Tara Key, “Good Evening Mr. Peckinpaugh”, Maher Shalal Hash-Baz, ” Summer”, The Liars, “You Know I Hate Stupid Phone” (live on WFMU), Aviary, “Anthem for the U.S.A.”, King Brothers, “Drum Rock Part 2”; back announce
2:28: Mike Healey [JW] wants a copy of the “meat packing district” guy’s comedy album because he swears he’s “heard him on Howard”; Tom doesn’t think it was very funny, prompting Mike to hammer him with sarcastic questions about his comedy expertise; Mike updates his rapidly deteriorating family situation
2:41: music: Computer Cougar, “Too Much”, [?], [?], Glass Candy, “Hang on to Yourself”, [?], Rondelles, “TV Zombie”; outro

08.14.2001

Start: intro, music: Sunset Strip, “The Rising Wind”, Blue Oyster Cult, “Stairway to the Stars”, Bad Wizard, “Keep High Stay Low”, Fuse, “Mystery Ship”; back announce
0:29: Tom declares American Pie 2 the worst movie of the year, even though his fellow moviegoers loved it
0:31: caller and Tom discuss feeling left out when surrounded by an audience that loves a horrible movie
0:39: Tom updates the progress of Scharpling’s Army and details the racist horror of Rush Hour 2 and its interminable blooper reel; email
0:46: Liz wants Tom to cut Chris Tucker some slack; Tom admits he’s the odd man out in re Chris Tucker’s charms
0:51: music: The Clean, “Stars”, Radiohead, “Pyramid Song”, Todd Rundgren, “The Ballad”; back announce
1:08: WFMU’s Rich wants to know the worst and best movies Tom’s
ever seen; also wants to know who will be the Scharpling Army stooge;
Tom declares it’s him; they discuss cabdrivers’ love of Gyorgi Ligeti
1:16: Tom hangs up on caller who tries to eat spaghetti while talking
1:17: music: The Feelies, “Slipping into Something”, The Searchers, “Don’t Hide it Away”; back announce
1:28: Troy Dershman, Tom’s high school bully [JW], calls in to
torment Tom and still sees himself as the enforcer of Newbridge, even though his life has spiraled into a completely pathetic abyss [Best Show Gems, 6/27/11]
2:06: Julian from the Strokes [AE] wants to hear Archers of Loaf or Throneberry because he’s in The Strokes
2:07: caller has newfound respect for Tom after hearing Troy
2:09: caller wants to know if Maurice Kearn will ever be on the show again
2:10: new listener hopes Troy isn’t corrupting today’s high school students
2:12: A Very Depressed Office Worker [AE] wants Tom’s advice; after a promotion at his job, he has been thoroughly abused by his former colleagues, who drop crickets into the laserjet printer and microwave entire birthday cakes in the break room
2:25: caller is suspicious of the last caller
2:27: caller wonders if bullies still exist and WFMU’s role therein
2:32: caller wonders if Tom gets hurt when people think his show is a put-on; Tom suspects he is “a long time offender”
2:34: music: Slade, “Goodbye to Jane”, The Gibson Brothers, “My Huckleberry Friend”, The Von Bondies, “Lack of Communication”, The Redcoats, “Words of Wisdom”, Sammy Davis Jr., “I’m Over 25 (But You Can Trust Me)”, Guitar Wolf, “Somethin Else”; back announce; Tom plays a few moments of the new Iggy Pop record for the guy who wanted to hear that instead of Radiohead
2:55: caller wants to know who would win in a random fight between two random people; outro

08.21.2001

Start: intro, music: Echo and the Bunnymen, “The Killing Moon”, Radiohead, “Let Down”, The Cuts, “Salt in My Wounds,” The Last Band, “Coke Stroke” The Folk Implosion, “Start Again”, Mixmaster Mike, “Board Burner”, The Beta Band, “One”; back announce
0:36: Uchenna wants to talk about her first acupuncture treatment; Tom teases her about “herbal” remedies; Tom promotes Scharpling’s Army; emailer wants to know who the acupuncture girl is
0:43: Uchenna calls back to give her email address; Tom warns creeps not to contact her
0:44: email: will Scharpling’s Army have uniforms?; Tom accidentally reveals his plan to march on the mayor’s office
0:45: caller talks about the Newark light rail vs. the old trolleys; they discuss Good Newark vs. Bombed-Out Newark; Tom wonders what city is the next one to fade; The Beta Band’s live performance is critiqued; he gets a Bob Grant-esque GOMP for accusing Tom of “stretching the truth” on his show; email on acupuncture and Scharpling’s Army; Tom details the horror of the
Twisted Sister episode of Behind the Music
0:56: caller annoys Tom with a fake shark bite tale
0:57: caller responds to an anti-acupuncture email, but gets a little too graphic for Tom’s taste
0:59: Dee shares her tale of spotting Dee Snider and his wife and kids at a Nine Inch Nails show
1:03: Tom is thoroughly sickened by Hova trying to start his own army
1:05: caller wants more details on Twisted Sister Behind the Music; Tom thinks he sounds a little blown-out, but he insists he’s naturally mellow
1:07: another caller wants more details on the poo-flinging scene from the Twisted Sister Behind the Music
1:09: caller wants more details on Scharpling’s Army, and wants to know where he can satisfy his desire for vengeance
1:11: man with cell phone [JW] accidentally dials the station, thus
chronicling an extremely embarrassing monologue involving REO
Speedwagon
1:17: caller is thoroughly disturbed by the last call; Tom wonders
if broadcasting the call was immoral, demands that Hova call in;
emailer Chris wants war between Scharpling’s Army and Hova’s Hoagies
1:19: caller thinks the accidental call was a joke, wants to take a bong hit on the air
1:21: Jason [JW] wants to know if he accidentally called WFMU; Tom tries to reassure him he didn’t say anything too embarrassing
1:25: Scharpling’s Army updates, Tom gets email from Hova asking him to “call off his goons”
1:29: caller wants to know why The Best Show is a mecca for potheads; Tom thinks he’s high; more Army-related email
1:31: caller wants to know why she hasn’t gotten any Scharpling’s Army material, Tom assures her it’s coming
1:35: music: Bad Wizard, “Natural High”, Radio Birdman, “Hand of
Law”, Woody Kern, “Biography”, The Von Bondies, “Lack of
Communication”, The Redcoats, “You Had No Right”, The Yardbirds, “Turn into Earth”, The Challenge, “The Crunch”; back announce
2:04: caller gets bullied into charity over the air; more Army email
2:07: caller wants Tom to play “Witchitaito” by Jim Pepper, swears he’s not high nor has ever been a drug dealer
2:11: Todd wants to one-up the bong hit guy by doing an on-air pipe hit from his car; Tom says his call has been traced and he can expect to be pulled over any second; a state trooper does show up; Tom relishes his impending loss of freedom
2:14: caller posits a theory as to why so many potheads listen/call in
2:16: Tom will stock his Army with Bill-Murray-in-Stripes types; Tom discusses The Barenaked Ladies episode of Behind the Music and its complete lack of drama
2:20: caller talks about meeting Dee Snider three times in three
different decades; caller met Tom previously in a UCB-related endeavor
2:29: caller credits The Best Show with curtailing his pot usage
2:31: Tom reports on his call from Hova
2:32: Mike Healey [JW] requests “Feelin’ Groovy” by Simon and Garfunkel because he found a rare “first pressing” of a book; Tom corrects him that books get first printings, not pressings; Mike sarcastically asks him
publishing/printing questions because Tom is obviously such a publishing expert
2:41: music, Glass Candy, “Hang Onto Yourself”, Glass Candy, “Be a
Dolly”, King Brothers, “Dead Soul”, The Powers of Purple, “Miss Dove”, The Clean, “Stars”; back announce, outro

08.28.2001

Start: intro, music: The dbs, “I’m in Love”, The SF Seals, “SF Sorrow”, The Pretty Things, “Summertime”, Big Dipper, “The Bells of Love”, Nation of Ulysses, “Today I Met the Girl I’m Gonna Marry”; back announce; Tom previews interview with voice artist Kendrick Martin, author of “My Life in the Booth”
0:23: emailer Cindy informs Tom about a planned action movie with Shaq and Gene Simmons; Sharpling’s Army updates; Tom thinks Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back might be the worst film of 2001; who’s overrated, who’s underrated?, Tom weighs in with his thoughts; Tom speaks of Hova’s underhandedness
0:35: caller says NY Times overrated, Jim Watkins underrated
0:36: caller says Kirsten Dunst overrated, pit bulls underrated; Tom declares pit bulls best dogs ever
0:38: music, The Cuts, “Say My Name”, Montgolfier Brothers, “Even
if My Mind Can’t Tell You”, The Clean, “Jolla”, Graham Downs, “Cattle, Cars, and Chainsaws”; overrated/underrated emails and possibly incorrect grammar advice; back announce
1:02: caller says Tom received incorrect grammar advice; more overrated/underrated email and Tom’s O/U declarations
1:08: WFMU’s Doug weighs in with his O/U opinions
1:11: caller gets GOMPed for bad mouthing talk radio; more grammar-related email, which (almost) makes Tom long for the pot-related calls of the previous week; more O/U from Tom
1:17: young caller who says she’s 15 thinks porn is underrated, disturbing Tom
1:19: caller thinks Ho-Hos overrated, Twinkies underrated
1:20: Tom gets a call from sound engineer Tony DiBenedetto [JG], wants to know about the ISDN set up for impending interview with Kendrick Martin, seems disturbed that WFMU doesn’t have an ISDN set up, will call back when he gets things set up on his end
1:25: yet more grammar-related email
1:27: Tony calls back, much prep work and dead air ensues while Kendrick gets ready; Tony hangs up to take care of some issues
1:34: Tony calls back, with Kendrick [JB] on the line, but he is still extremely unhappy with the audio; Tony stays on the line to deal with Kendrick’s audio demands, to no avail; Tom thinks the audio sounds perfectly fine, but Kendrick remains unconvinced; unable to get his desired sound, Kendrick gives up on the interview before it can get started
2:02: music: The Von Bondies, “Lack of Communication”, The
Witches, “Universal Mall”, The Resonators, “Happy”, The Four Corners, “The Pastel Queen”, Cooper, “Vertigo”; back announce
2:25: The Very Depressed Office Worker [AE] calls back to update Tom on his horrific situation, which gotten worse (“They’re still showing up to work half-naked.”); the work situation has gotten him kicked out of his house, but he hangs on because he might get a raise to $21.5K
2:42: Tom reads O/U email, is thoroughly bummed out by the Depressed Office Worker
2:44: caller says sports are overrated and weirdly accuses all coaches of being pedophiles; more O/U email
2:52: Pornography Girl calls back to apologize, says she’s actually 20; one last O/U email
2:55: music: Federation X, “[?]”

09.04.2001 [no archive: “The Music Scholar”, Chain Fights, Beer Busts, and Service with a Grin]

“Tom Talks To The Coolest Guy On Earth, And Tom Talks To Roger Tamblyn, Manager Of Bands Like The Inspiral Carpets And Gaye Bikers On Acid. Also, Tom Talks To Today’s Youth About Returning To School.”

09.11.2001

No show

09.18.2001

Start: intro, music: The Beach Boys, “This Whole World”, Sonic Boom, “Octaves”, Velvet Underground, “Candy Says”, Medeski Martin and Wood, “Bonedigger”, Mogwai, “Christmas Song”, Belle and Sebastian, “Don’t Leave the Light on Baby”; back announce
0:26: Tom details where he was on 9/11; when can we be funny again?
0:35: caller thinks we all need The Funny; Tom is afraid of coming back “too soon”, feels all talked out
0:46: Tom reads encouraging email; Tom says he’s been “on a quest for entertainment” his entire life
0:49: music: Flying Saucer Attack, “Rainstorm Blues”, The Small
Faces, “Afterglow of Your Love”, Rick Rizzo and Tara Key, “Good Evening Mr. Peckinpaugh”, Velvet Underground, “Jesus”, Chad and Jeremy, “A Summer Song”, Silkwork, “Quicksand”; Tom plays with reverb; back announce; caller wants to hear Sigur Ros
1:14: Chris wants to know about the echo machine; Tom says it belongs to Rex, gets him to talk through it with his radio turned up; the weirdness of furniture refinishers is discussed; Tom encourages Chris to hijack his boss’s computer so Chris’s boss can hear his call
1:19: Another Chris wants suggestions on starting up a pirate
radio station; Tom tries to convince him he’s a big Z100 fan; Tom wants to help him with his homework; Tom asks him if he should rename Scharpling’s Army to Friends of Tom
1:24: caller wants to know if he can hold up one of his friends to ridicule on the air
1:25: Just A Guy wants to know if Tom saw Before Night Falls; Tom says he rented Saving Silverman instead
1:28: WFMU’s Doug thanks Tom for the Chad and Jeremy song; Tom
wants to know which one Doug likes better, thinks he should change his name to Mozerock; Doug talks about Survivor Guilt and the differences between New York and Pittsburgh’s reactions; Weird Paul is discussed at far too much length for Tom’s comfort
1:46: Tom talks about volunteering at the Jersey City waterfront, some DJ playing “Killing an Arab”
1:52: caller talks about discrimination experienced by her friends
1:56: “artist who drives tanks” thinks folks who are so gung-ho about America should join the army
1:58: John in California discusses differences between East Coast and West Coast reactions
2:06: Steve wonders if Bush declared a state of war for insurance purposes
2:09: caller tries to clarify the “act of war” issue
2:10: another caller also tries to clarify the “act of war” issue
2:13: caller encourages Tom to be funny again; Tom insists he will not duel any other DJs over the “Killing an Arab” controversy
2:19: music: Blue Oyster Cult, “Stairway to the Stars”, Angus
MacClise, “The Drum Solo”, Bob Dylan, “Shelter from the Storm”, Galaxy 500, “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste”, Christmas, “God Bless the Firemen”; back announce
2:45: caller was upset by Howard Stern’s insane post-9/11 show
2:50: Tom says he’ll try to get back to normal next week, is accused of receiving payola from Matador via email
2:52: caller wants to hear Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner”
2:53: music: David Bowie, “Hang on to Yourself”, [?]; outro

09.25.2001

Start: intro (with extended “dialogue” with the scratchy record),
music: Job’s Daughters, “The Prophecy of Daniel and John the Divine”, Oneida, “All Around Her”, The Monkees, “Love Is Only Sleeping”, The Clone Defects, “Not as Good as Gold”, Johnny Vomit and the Dry Heaves, “Chokin on a Lude Part 1”; Tom compares The Best Show to The Last Castle, despite not having seen the movie; back announce
0:24: Gavin [AE] agrees with Tom that Frank Zappa’s not for everyone and suggests Mr. Bungle, who Tom doesn’t like at all; Gavin is incredulous and insists Tom “has to respect what they’re doing”, names dozens of other bands he must also respect; since Tom doesn’t like these bands either, Gavin assumes he doesn’t like “intelligence” in his music
0:44: Tom discusses the sadness of Michael Jordan’s return to the NBA; who has outstayed their welcome, and who’s still got it?
0:48: caller recalls trying to convert people over to his prog rock tastes, thinks The Who has hung on too long, but Tito Puente’s still got it
0:53: caller thinks Tricky outstayed his welcome; Tom officially announces the renaming of Scharpling’s Army to Friends of Tom, which is both less militaristic and sounds ridiculous as an acronym (FOT)
0:57: caller thinks Pink Floyd hung on way too long; Tom discusses Floyd’s ridiculous album artwork
1:03: caller defends Henry Rollins and his new band(s); Tom says Rollins is a stand-up comedian without jokes; Get in the Van is discussed; could caller take Henry Rollins in a fight?
1:11: music: The Neat, “Resurrection”, The Four Corners, “The Pastel Queen”, The Soft Boys, “Insanely Jealous”, Noise Toys, “I Am a Bug”, The Dream Syndicate, “When You Smile”, Pink Floyd, “Lucifer Sam”; back announce
1:36: Teeny thinks Michael Jackson is over the hill, talks about
getting picked on by her entire gym class and how she has no friends; Tom grills her on her non-friend-dom
1:42: caller thinks The Three Stooges went on too long; Tom vents his hatred of the Stooges
1:46: Kate 1 doesn’t think Teeny should feel too bad because she only has one friend, too; Tom grills her on her own non-friend-dom and her apparently very cheap school; she gets very sarcastic (“Now I understand why you only have one friend.”), but Tom promises to “unleash hell” on anyone who messes with her
2:05: caller purporting to be Larry Fine’s grandson takes offense at Tom’s hatred of the Stooges; caller admits that he didn’t really like his Stooge relatives, then tells some slanderous Stooge stories
2:09: “Stacey Fine” compares the Stooges to jazz
2:12: Julian from the Strokes [AE] wants to hear some late period
Iggy Pop; Tom talks about the yanked Strokes record that features “NYC Cops”
2:15: Officer Tom [first call?] likes late-period Iggy Pop; even though he’s a policeman he doesn’t mind “NYC Cops”; station announcements
2:20: caller compares Michael Jordan and KISS; Tom hates the production on the “classic” KISS albums
2:28: Mark from Sparklehorse calls in because the band can’t make it to WFMU for a live in-studio performance, requests “Shake Appeal”; email on The Three Stooges and folks who have overstayed their welcome
2:37: music: The Nerves, “10 Feet Tall”, The Stooges, “Shake Appeal”, The Resonators, “Happy”, Mink Lungs, “[?]”; back announce; Tom expounds further on Michael Jordan’s sad return to the NBA; more FOT promotion
2:54: caller: has Alice Cooper outstayed his welcome?; Tom thinks he didn’t outstay his welcome so much as get removed from the stage; what about Ozzy? (“He’s like the heavy metal Foster Brooks”); outro

10.02.2001

Start: Tom laments the lack of scratchy record to start the program, declares the listeners demanded his program be called The Best Show; music: The Nerves, “10 Feet Tall”, Fireballs of Freedom, “Fryin Up”, The Clone Defects, “Little Ms. Laurie”, Holly Golightly, “No Big Thing”, The Beach Boys, “Busy Doing Nothing”; back announce
0:23: Tom says he’s “at 85%” and is turning this show over to the listeners, recounts his foosball triumph
0:26: caller wants to know how The Best Show got its name, Tom says “the people spoke”
0:29: David blames Tom for making him watch Moulin Rouge; Tom refuses to believe him; the horror of A.I. and Band of Brothers is discussed
0:36: caller thought the singing in Moulin Rouge was the
worst he ever heard; what about building a memorial stadium on the WTC site?; the weird absence of the Twin Towers is discussed; Tom switches topic to A.I. but thinks talking about the Twin Towers might actually be less depressing
0:42: Tom continues his triumphant foosball story
0:46: Chris doesn’t think Tom is at 85%; Tom thinks he might have left it all out on the foosball table; what’s wrong with helping Tom out for a while?; Chris’s pizza arrives during the call; Tom talks to the
delivery guy in an extremely DJ-esque voice and says he’ll play “Alive” by P.O.D. for him
0:51: Carlo is GOMPed for stealing Tom’s “how dare you!”; Tom
pleas for help from the listeners and gives a facetious description of
himself (“I look like Paul Williams, but not as attractive”)
0:54: music: Oneida, “Still Remember Hiding in the Stones”, Blue
Oyster Cult, “Stairway to the Stars”, The Redcoats, “Words of Wisdom”, The Redcoats, “Opportunity”, Graham Downs, “Cattle, Cars, and Chainsaws”; back announce; Tom will not accept callers in character; Tom’s WFMU Record Fair promo degenerates into an odd ventriloquist routine featuring “Senor Billy”
1:21: Timmy the Wrench suggests a topic: arresting Henry Kissinger for war crimes; Dave let Senor Billy out of his case; Tom converses with the voice in his head
1:27: caller disagrees with prosecuting Kissinger, shuts off radio when his girlfriend gets home
1:28: caller goes WOOOO, hangs up
1:29: caller wants to be strong for Tom; Tom compares her to a mother lifting a car off her child, until the Mom metaphor gets disturbing; caller thinks men want rocky road ice cream, women want lobsters with drawn butter
1:32: Bob in Park Slope wants to know if it’s okay to have fun, hates the idea that shopping = patriotic; as a bartender, he notices a huge amount of people getting monstrously drunk lately; gets hung up on for a dirty drink suggestions
1:36: caller appreciates Tom’s willingness to talk about stupid stuff (though Tom objects to calling foosball “stupid”), compares classic Michael Jackson to his new video
1:43: Teeny updates her school situation: she was accused of plagiarism by her English teacher because she used too many big words; she thinks Kate 1 was trying to out-geek in her call last week, says she beat Tom in foosball, which Tom disputes; Tom wants Teeny and Kate 1 to host the show together
1:50: Kate 1 calls; Tom asks her about co-hosting the show; Kate 1 confuses the issue by revealing the existence of a Kate 2; Tom is delighted when she says she doesn’t like Greasy Kid Stuff
2:02: Brian in Brooklyn recommends bootleg CDs for cheap music
2:03: Bronwyn vouches for Kate 1 and Kate 2
2:11: Kate 2 is quizzed on her preciociously eccentric musical tastes
2:16: music: Cheap Trick, “‘ELO Kiddies”, The Von Bondies, “Lack of Communication”, Cherry Valence, “Tobacco Road”, The La-di-das, “How Is the Air Up There”, The Need, “The Green Manalishi”, The Tazmanians, “Baby”; back announce; Tom promotes the impending Teen Girl Night (and pizza!)
2:40: Vanilla Hot Box Grits [AE], up-and-coming banjuitar player, promotes his tour and his manager/producer/promoter, Roger Tamblyn
2:45: Tom doesn’t care what you think about Teen Girl Night, ’cause it’s happening anyway, but he wants to hear from the Greasy Kid Stuff crew to mock them about demographics; Tom hangs up on Max, a foul-mouthed Greasy Kid Stuff fan
2:49: Trish from Trapper Keeper thinks Teen Girl Night will be awesome; Tom is sickened by the foul-mouthed Max
2:56: caller thinks Tom sounds like he wants someone to call in; Tom says no, he’s a creepy hermit
2:57: Belinda from Greasy Kid Stuff insists “Max” can’t be a GKS fan; Tom wants her to do the GKS outro for his show but is horribly confused by it, then hangs up on her

10.09.2001

No show

10.16.2001

Teen Girl Night! Kate 1, Kate 2, and Teeny/Nadia take over Best Show, spinning tunes and fielding calls. Tom asks how the girls started listening to WFMU and teaches them how to properly hang up on unruly callers

10.23.2001 [Best Show Uncovered Vol. 1]

[theme, music: Hypnolovewheel, “Model Railroad”, The Turtles, “House on the Hill”, Outrageous Cherry, “Where Do I Go When You Dream?”, Vincent Gallo, “Honey Bunny”]
Start: Tom clarifies exactly how much time is left in the show; Tom believes he deserves some kind of award for promoting/enduring Teen Girl Night; tonight is Grown-Up Night!; Tom promotes call screener Dave to Associate; back announce
0:10: email from Mark in LA says Tom’s okay but the Teen Girls “rock”; Tom reviews his web site and mocks his coverage of the new Ian Anderson solo album
[a sales rep from Consolidated Ball Bearings [JW] accidentally calls Tom, thinking he’s leaving a message for a colleague (“Consolidated Ball Bearings”, New Hope for the Ape-Eared)]
0:11: Tom discusses the “big rock concert” at Madison Square Garden, and Paul McCartney’s new “tough guy” song; Chris in Toronto (via email) wants more “real” interviews like Tony Torgvort; Tom promises more interviews and an old fashioned variety show; Mark (via email) offers to send Tom the new Ian Anderson CD so he can judge for himself
0:15: Tom skewers the Vanity Fair music issue; email; Bronwyn (via email) warns Tom not to make fun of his “onanistic shut-in listeners”; Vanity Fair‘s horrifying photo shoot; Tom promotes anti-Parrothead discrimination; Jimmy Buffet’s overall hideousness; Tom wants to hear from Parrotheads or people who know Parrotheads and hate them; email; Tom spills his sody
[music: Fireballs of Freedom, “Fryin’ Up”, The Briefs, “Poor and Weird”,  The Nerves, “Ten Feet Tall”, The Dirtbombs, “Got to Give it Up”]
0:33: back announce; Tom wishes his show was opposite According to Jim, but that’s the price of being The Best Show on WFMU; Tom predicts Tracy McGrady will win NBA MVP; Tom bet a colleague an exorbitant amount of money that his audience knows video games, asks for the best Playstation tennis game; Glenn Jones (via email) urges Tom to continue to mock his audience, shut-in and otherwise; more email; FOT cards and an official web site are a-comin’; how on earth George Hamilton wound up in The Godfather Part III?
0:45: Roger Tamblyn [AE] calls back to promote more huge tours and festivals involving obscure late 80s/early 90s college rock acts like Poi Dog Pondering and Grant Lee Buffalo; he also has added spoken word to his tours, but has a wide definition of constitutes spoken word (such as Elayne Boosler and Steve Guttenberg); Roger explains his odd Canadian/British/Ozarkian accent and says Tom should soon hear from the Bela Fleck disciple/banjuitar player extraordinaire, Vanilla Hot Box Grits;
1:08: Tom recaps the show so far; email; none of the teen girls have called in this week, and Tom feels used
1:12: Anthony doesn’t get The Strokes; Tom attempts to explain them
1:17: Kate One had a bad day at school; she had a good time on Teen Girl Night but “is not really one for sharing”
1:19: caller thinks Michael Jordan will win MVP; for such a ridiculous statement, Tom forces him to say “I know nothing, and Tom knows everything”; caller compares the Teen Girls’ ingratitude to Wild in the Streets; Tom unmasks him as the caller who called in last week and said Tom should get out of the girls’ way, GOMPs him; FOT announcements and more email; Julie (via email) thinks Tom’s mockery of Parrotheads is offensive to avian-Americans
1:24: caller cites a recent hypocrisy of a local retired judge caught for solicitation; Tom invokes …And Justice for All but caller hangs up before Tom can really get going; Colleen (via email) wants to know if Canadian girls can be FOTs–of course!; Tom compares this show to a sherbert; more email
1:29: caller responds to previous caller with a tale of getting off a solicitation rap; Tom probes him for details and he had been seeking prostitutes while having troubles with his wife; Tom wants to know if he can tell his wife all about it on the air because it would make great radio
[music: Oneida, “Still Remember Hiding in the Stones”, Neutral Milk Hotel, “Everything Is”, The Rolling Stones, “Salt of the Earth”, Dan Melchior’s Broke Review, “War All the Time”, Faman, “Hurry”]
1:37: back announce; Tom will call the number inscribed on the cover of WFMU’s copy of Beggars Banquet; an emailed smart-aleck answer to Tom’s “best tennis video game” question
1:44: caller reports playing a FIFA soccer video game for 9 hours straight and an interactive soccer arcade game; Tom counters with his first encounter with Dance Dance Revolution, which is either the dumbest or greatest thing he’s ever seen; Tom assumes caller’s “thing” is smoking weed, but he says he can’t because he’s on probation for drinking and driving; Tom wants to talk to his parole officer because he clearly has not learned his lesson, mocks him for the use of the phrase “pool hall”
1:50: John says he works at EA Sports; Tom tests him by asking what EA’s slogan is; John insists there’s no tennis game for Playstation; Tom tries to finagle some free games, get John to admit the worst game he’s worked on; Tom can’t get a Playstation 2 because his mommy won’t let him, and also the Colecovision is coming back!
1:57: Vanilla Hot Box Grits [AE] calls in, has some misgivings about Roger Tamblyn as a manager
2:04: snotty emailer writes back with an insulting email; more email
2:06: caller is disgusted by earlier caller who talked about soliciting prostitutes; he’s a postal worker who works nights; Tom wants to know if he’s worried about the ‘thrax, which he is enough to write a letter to his Congressman; caller abruptly hangs up on Tom
2:09: emailer suggests a few tennis video games; another angry email; outro

10.30.2001

Start: intro, Tom listens to the ambient sounds of the building, music:
The La-Di-Das, “Don’t You Stand in My Way”, The Lazy Cowgirls,
“Loretta”, The Briefs, “Where Did He Go”, Mad3 “Jack the Violence”, The Electric Eels, “Cyclotron”, Oneida, “All Arounder”; back announce; who can tell Tom what’s going on this weekend?
0:23: caller correctly identifies the event as the WFMU Record
Fair but gets GOMPed when he says he’s not going; Tom promos the Record Fair
0:29: It’s Mischief Night! Tom wants to hear from mischief makers past and present
0:36: music: The Mops, “San Francisco Nights”, The Desperate
Bicycles, “Grief is Very Private”, The Outrageous Cherry, “Eclipse”,
Neil Michael Hagerty, “Whiplash in Park”, Syd Barrett, “Dark Globe”;
back announce; Tom wants to hear from mischief makers
0:59: Dave says he’s up for mischief but gets too dirty for Tom’s
taste; Jack in Vermont says (via email) Mischief Night is called Cabbage Night up there, almost got caught spilling grease on his principal’s car; Tom paints his picture of an ideal Mischief Night show and gets into a confusing imaginary phone conversation with himself; Tom “updates” listeners on the World Series game taking place at that moment
1:08: music: Vincent Gallo, “Honey Bunny”, Portastatic, “When You
Crashed”, Mark Robinson, “Wonderful”, Old Time Relijun, “Vampire
Sushi”; back announce; Canadian emailer is unaware of Mischief Night; another Canadian emailer wants to hear Tom use the word “girth” more; Tom shares web site updates
1:36: caller from Denver wants to cause pandemonium by rearranging trash cans; Tom tries to guess what they call Mischief Night in Denver (“Rocky Vandals Night?”)
1:43: Gabriel thinks kids don’t know how to cause proper mischief
these days, gives possibly dangerous shaving-cream-can-modification tips; Tom encourages him to recapture his lost adolescence, preferably by attacking his boss
1:51: caller on his way to Pathmark was inspired by the previous caller; Tom wants him to arm all the kids in his neighborhood with eggs and shaving cream
1:55: caller with terrible connection recommends a safer shaving-cream-can-modification method; Tom envisions him being beaten/killed by local kids, develops the plot to his smash hit movie Mischief Night City; they discuss the intrinsic fear of older kids on Mischief Night
2:01: Henry insists on calling Tom Tommy, talks about abusing Vietnam vets on “Gate Night”, gets very abusive; Tom threatens to beat up Henry and his 80-year-old father, pretend-hangs-up on him
2:05: caller discusses the horrifying Pizza Bomb; Tom tries to make him feel retroactively guilty, hangs up on him when his tale turns scatological
2:10: Chris T discusses gentlemanly rock DJ/sports talk show host Richard Neer and the history of WPLJ, shares his chalk-filled Mischief Night memories
2:17: Jason calls from Yankee Stadium during Game 3 of the World Series, shares the phone with Carlo and April; Tom wants to talk to a random Yankee fan; Tom talks to Yankee fan Nicole in exaggerated DJ voice; Tom asks April and Carlo to bring him a game-worn jersey, then requests a shirt that says YANKEES SUCK; Tom wants to hear Carlo sing along with “YMCA”
2:26: Jonas from Seattle is quizzed on what happened to the Mariners’ mojo, discusses his “Egg Night” shenanigans
2:31: Natalie/Kate 1 talks to Tom and Nadia
2:34: Scott recalls stretching plastic wrap across the street to confuse/scare drivers; paint-removal procedures are discussed
2:42: music: Ted Shred, “[?]”, The Clone Defects, “Not as Good as Gold”; back announce
2:53: Tom is joined by “Record Fair czar” Mike Lupica; Tom quizzes him in the guise of a total Record Fair novice
3:01: caller reports a false Todd Rundgren sighting at a previous WFMU Record Fair
3:02: Small Change chips in with some Detroit-related Devils Night memories; a discussion of sports-related rioting; outro

11.06.2001

Start: intro, music: Velvet Underground, “What Goes On”, [?],
The Human Switchboard, “Say No to Saturday’s Girl”, Uncle Wiggly, “The Anthichrist Fan Club”, Hypnolovewheel, “Cows”; back announce
0:27: Owen wants to know if Tom ever found Jim Pepper’s “Witchytaito”; Tom suggests he pool his money and re-release the album himself, get rich, and donate lots of money to WFMU; Owen gets GOMPed when he suggests he might donate to a program other than the Best Show
0:33: Tom recalls the early days of The Best Show and how various events conspired to keep it off people’s radar; updates on the Jersey gubernatorial race; Tom reports his grab bag finds
0:40: Just Kate (formerly Kate 2) reports her disappointment at not finding any Noise Toys albums at the Record Fair; Tom grills her on what she does for money
0:45: Tom talks about his strange relationship with the Yankees
0:47: “Linda” spotted three failed romances at the Record Fair but successfully avoided them; Tom grills her about her real identity and the identities of her former paramours
0:52: Chris thinks he can last more than a week with “Linda”; Tom wants to make a love connection for the two of them
0:59: “Linda” is back on the line but has trouble putting Chris on the air at the same time; a brief interruption from A Very Depressed Office Worker [AE] with a bad phone connection; Chris gets on the line but sasses Tom, so he pulls the plug on the love connection; Tom tells the lovebirds to email him and he’ll set it up that way
1:03: Paul Crenshaw, a Very Depressed Office Worker [AE] calls back with an update on his horrific work situation; the abuse is now more subtle and psychological; Tom thinks, if Paul won’t leave his job, he should play the game by his abusers’ rules
1:27: music: Chrome Cranks, “Dark Room”, The Scientists, “Swampland”, The Clone Defects, “Little Ms. Laurie”, The Cheater Slicks, “Arm Yourself”; love connection email update; Tom berates himself into back announcing the set; Tom wants Record Fair wrap-up tales; gubernatorial updates; Tom wants to hear from Yankee fans and Yankee haters; Tom relates his Willy Wonka-esque find at the Record Fair
1:52: a horrible old-man impersonator is declared the worst caller in the show’s history, gets GOMPed
1:55: not-fake-voice caller loved his grab bag, says Tom shut him out in foosball; Tom says anyone who beat him at foosball was cheating; caller sings the lyrics to the old Hulk cartoon; TV-Pixx is discussed
2:01: Tom reads pro-Yankee email, ponders the psychology of Mets and Yankees fans
2:04: Paul wants to speak on behalf of Mets fans, but gets sidetracked with an in-depth discussion of Cannonball Run; eventually they discuss Met fandom, Bob Murphy, and halls of fame; who won The Cannonball Run?
2:18: caller knows one of the female racers won The Cannonball Run, but he’s not sure who; in the future, Tom wants to flush callers when hangs up on them
2:19: caller can describe The Cannonball Run winner but not name her; Tom declares Cannonball Run the greatest movie ever made; discussion of classic Cannonball scenes, the grossly inferior Cannonball Run II, the awesomely named screenwriter Brock Yates, and the oppressively slow pace of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
2:30: Tom needs callers to test out a new show feature
2:31: Nadia calls in; Tom wants to have her Sweet 16 party on the air; Nadia gets flushed
2:35: caller and Tom discuss the disturbing Jack Elam character in Cannonball Run; Tom flushes him when he wants to know who won The Cannonball Run
2:37: music: Dan Melchior’s Broke Review, “You Know that I Will”, Oneida, “Rose and Licorice”, Volcano Suns, “What’s Happening to Me”, Volcano Suns, “Shriney”, T. Rex, “Children of the Revolution”; back announce; Tom previews his upcoming interview with a Nostradamus scholar; Cannonball Run– and Yankees-related email; Tom recalls Corvette Summer; Tom reads some awful Cannonball Run Amazon user reviews; outro

11.13.2001

Start: intro, music: Tim Buckley, “Danang”, Vincent Gallo, “Honey Bunny”, Mark Robinson, “Wonderful”, Unrest, “Imperial”; Tom previews his interview a Nostradamus scholar; back announce; this is the warm-up/tune-up portion of the show; is everyone watching Undeclared?; Tom starts to count down to music but is interrupted by a phone call
0:34: caller wants to know how good the Scooby-Doo trailer is; Tom wants callers to test out the phone system
0:37: Natalie (formerly Kate 1) calls in; Tom wants to know where his promised package is
0:39: caller wants more info on Tenacious D
0:42: Todd (“the Newman of my show”) gets cut off for toilet talk
0:43: music: Bobby Conn, “Pumper”, The Buff Medways, “No Mercy”, The Strokes vs. Christina Aguilera, “Stroke of Genius”, Governor, “Break a Promise to Myself”; back announce
1:06: interview with John Hogue, Nostradamus scholar, who mostly discusses 9/11-related prophecies; calls from listeners
2:00: a caller [JW] wants to know if Nostradamus predicted the famous 80s documentary about himself, gets a bit abusive
2:02: the interview continues, more calls
3:01: outro

11.20.2001

Start: intro; Tom promises a new high-tech opening soon, as well as FOT materials; music: Sonic Youth: “Rain King”, The Moodists, “Gone Dead”, The Groundhogs, “Man Trouble”, The Scientists, “Blood Red River”; Tom compares his call screener to Cerberus, back announce; preview of interview with Michael Azzerad; Tom still wants to set up a blind date between “Linda” and one lucky guy; who was the matchmaker in Fiddler on the Roof? (it wasn’t “Steve”)
0:25: caller thinks his name was “Tevay”; Tom commands him to sing “Matchmaker”; hangs up when Tom demands his name
0:27: driving caller corrects the pronunciation (and role) of Tevye; he sings “Sunrise, Sunset” even at the possible expense of his life; Tom wants to know if there’s a Golden Grahams connection to Fiddler, wants caller to verbally/physically abuse a Parkway tollbooth operator
0:30: caller correctly identifies Yenta as the matchmaker, cannot sing a selection from Fiddler (or anything else); Tom cajoles him into a duet of “Meet the Mets”; Tom wants to know his Thanksgiving plans and who he hates the most in his family; caller plans to bond with his family over a viewing of the original Planet of the Apes saga
0:35: Rick Malko [AE] is angry at Tom over some unpleasant fusion jazz and Billy Squire-related purchases at the WFMU Record Fair and on eBay; Tom seriously doubts that he is the responsible party; Rick has several unflattering descriptions of Tom (“You don’t look kinda like a cross between Judge Reinhold and Rip Taylor?”)
0:47: caller on his way to a bar wonders if “The Freakies Tree Song” was part of Fiddler on the Roof; Tom wants him to walk into the bar talking very loudly on is cell phone
0:49: caller claims to have bought monkeys from Tom on eBay; Tom GOMPS him (copyright 2001)
0:50: medical consultant who’s spent 10 years in the Middle East thinks the US should be proud of its quick post-9/11 response; Tom gently GOMPs him (copyright 2001), wonders if the copyright notice dilutes the power of the GOMPing; Tom discusses classic phone banishment techniques
1:00: music: Amps for Christ, “Scotland the Brave/Ditches”, Outrageous Cherry, “Tracy”; back announce; email
1:09: Kacper talks about a presentation he made about The Best Show at Brooklyn College; he’s interrupted by an aggressive caller
1:11: Greg Baron, Smirnoff Ice District Manager [JB], wants to send Tom a crate of Smirnoff Ice because he mentioned the product on the show; Greg names a plethora of mixed drinks involving Smirnoff Ice, which get suddenly anti-Semitic [Best Show Gems, 08.24.2009]
1:42: Eric and a room of giggly teens want to talk about GameCube, introduce Tom to the teen slang “hasu”; Tom berates them into a terrible rendition of “Baby One More Time”
1:46: caller won’t tell what town in Jersey he’s visiting for Thanksgiving, Tom demands to know as a matter of principle, then GOMPs him (copyright 2001)
1:48: caller reports playing a car game on GameCube, which Tom mistakes for a card game (“Nascar Solitaire?”); caller counted 78 mentions of Smirnoff Ice during just one segment of Greg Baron’s call; Tom reminisces about the classic Intellivision game “George Plimpton’s World of Adventure”
1:52: music: Beat Happening, “The Other Side”, Badfinger, “Sometimes”; back announce; Tom insists he has no idea if Greg Baron was really a rep from Smirnoff Ice
2:03: Tom tries to establish a love connection between “Linda” and Chris
2:26: Tom has a strange conversation with the voice in his head, wants Kacper to call back and promises to settle out of court for the unauthorized clips he played during his report; is this shaping up as one of the best Best Shows ever? if so, how can Tom torpedo it in the next half hour? Tom still has no proof that Greg Baron was a real Smirnoff Ice rep; email from Cameron: how was Tom able to call up a Britney Spears song so quickly?
2:31: Steve wants to know when the teen girls from Teen Girl Night
will get their own show; Tom wants to know which relative he hates the most, dares him to jump on his sleeping wife’s bed a la George Jefferson
2:37: Tom vows to proceed with his lawsuit against Kacper, and Dave the Call Screener for some reason, and all of his listeners
2:39: music: The Pete Best Combo, “I Don’t Know Why I Do”, Superchunk, “Tie a Rope to the Back of the Bus”, The Pastels, “Zooom”, The Buff Medways, “No Mercy”; back announce; more pleas for Kacper to call in; more disavowals of Greg Baron; a description of Dave’s swift and brutal call screening sword; Tom fantasizes about FOT events, like going to an arcade and playing air hockey
2:57: JJ McClure suggests a face-off against the IBJ; more Cannonball Run discussion
3:04: outro

11.27.2001

Start: very long, drawn-out intro, music: Mission of Burma, “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver”, The Minutemen, “The Glory of Man”, Husker Du, “Whatever”, Dinosaur Jr., “Sludgefeast”; Tom discusses The Best Show co-producers and board of directors; back announce; Tom is still waiting for Kacper to call back
0:23: Matt wants to talk about Rogue Squadron for the GameCube, in which Star Wars characters apparently fly biplanes; Tom is completely stumped and confused, then GOMPs him
0:26: Kacper talks about the report he delivered on The Best Show
at Brooklyn College and his strange campus radio show; Tom wants him to bring his entire class down to WFMU
0:44: music: Beat Happening, “Secret”, The Replacements,
“Unsatisfied”, Sonic Youth, “Expressway to Yr Skull”, Mudhoney, “This Gift”; back announce
1:04: interview with Michael Azzerad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life, about the indie rock movement circa 1981-1991; calls from listeners
1:43: caller [JW] wants to know why Azzerad’s book had no mentions of Wire Train, promotes his Wire Train fan site with an insanely long URL
1:44: interview and calls continue
2:15: music: Black Flag, “Black Coffee”, Husker Du, “Blah Blah Blah”, Minor Threat, “Out of Step”, Fugazi, “Latin Roots”, Minutemen, “This Ain’t No Picnic”, Big Black, “Jordan Minnesota”; back announce
2:32: Matt and another teen caller explain the origin of hasu, further confuse Tom about the aims/gameplay of Rogue Squadron; Tom wants to know if they get beat up at school
2:36: caller contrasts indie stuff of the late 70s-early 80s to the “cool stuff” from now (“You mean Slipknot?”); Tom insists he’s winning the war against home taping; caller declares himself anti-hasu, wants to fight the Hasu Kids; Tom grills him on his road test failure and his straight-edged-ness
2:44: Tom marvels at pre-dawn Black Friday insanity
2:46: Tom tries to get another teen caller to focus; teen thinks he could beat up the anti-hasu kid; Tom tries to schedule a fight between them
2:49: caller wants to know about Tom’s holiday shopping progress
2:52: caller wants to know why Tom’s show has been taken over by violent kids; they discuss an earlier caller’s absurd contention that nothing was going on in NYC in the early 80s; Tom insists he and call screener Dave are hasu
2:57: straight-edge/anti-hasu kid says he had no intention to fight anyone, but now he has to fight because the hasu kids have questioned his integrity; Tom again vows to set up a fight between the two camps with some inventive blunt instruments
2:59: Tom tries to convince a high school student that he will soon be saying hasu; Tom says he will train the hasu and anti-hasu kids in crane style before the fight, or force them to do his household
chores
3:02: outro; Tom promises a “secret present” for his listeners next week

12.04.2001

Start: brief intro, music: The Moodists, “Gone Dead”
0:05: Tom is very excited about announcing WFMU’s Artist of the Year; runners-up: The White Stripes, The Strokes, Hermann Nitsch, and Clinic; the winner: Billy Joel!
0:11: Tom spins some Billy Joel: “Piano Man”, “Tell Her About It”, “Pressure”, “Only the Good Die Young”, “Baby Grand”
0:33: Tom will deliver the tribute to Billy Joel that the listeners
demanded, over bed music of Joel’s classical compositions; Tom reads an email, seemingly oblivious to its negative tone
0:36: Jeffrey Osborne [AE] talks about opening up for Billy Joel, describes him as “a bit of a sourpuss”
0:38: caller says Billy Joel is definitely not hasu
0:39: caller wants to know when the WFMU Artist of the Year poll was taken
0:42: caller wants to know why Tom hates his audience so much; Tom insists he’s just playing what the audience wants to hear, reads pro-BJ email to prove his point
0:44: Scott thinks Tom should follow up Billy Joel with Tom Waits;
Tom says no; Tom wants to hear Billy Joel stories from the listeners
0:47: caller talks about serving Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley at his bar in Nantucket
0:49: Paul talks about a DJ who lost a bet because he thought “Piano Man” was done by the Beatles; Tom reads hasu-related email; another emailer points out that Billy Joel is currently leading another WFMU poll about who to vote out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
0:53: more Billy Joel: “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (live), “Big Shot”, “Allentown”, “A Matter of Trust”; Tom reads some anti-BJ email
1:17: caller appreciates the Billy Joel tribute
1:18: Bobby tells story about meeting a roadie BJ fired mid-tour and abandoned in Connecticut; more email
1:22: caller talks about eerie Billy Joel-related dream
1:25: caller talks about seeing Billy Joel guest with Garth Brooks in Central Park
1:26: Danny Phipps [JW], drummer for Glass Houses, “America’s best-loved Billy Joel tribute band, according to the readers of Turnstiles magazine”, talks about his group’s triumphs; Glass House-head Brad Pitney [JB] calls in to heap praise on the band and promote his own one-man Billy Joel tribute; Brad sings his own rendition of “Captain Jack,” which deeply offends Danny [Best Show Gems, 3/18/13]
2:14: caller liked Brad’s rendition of “Captain Jack”, gets GOMPed when he says he’s “not done”
2:15: caller loved the interview with Danny Phipps
2:16: Chris Rhea [AE] wants to wish Billy Joel a happy birthday, even though it’s not his birthday; talks about almost working with BJ on a Garfield record
2:19: more BJ email
2:20: Anti-Hasu Kid calls back to find out when he’s gonna fight the Hasu Kid; can they fight in a cage?; he also wants to fight Billy Joel
2:23: more BJ: “Miami 2012”, “Travellin’ Prayer”, “Dance to the Music”, “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, “Big Man on Mulberry Street”
2:49: Donnie Van Zandt of 38 Special [AE] isn’t too fond of Billy Joel, promotes his holiday album “Wild Eyed Christmas Nights”
2:53: Tom can’t believe people doubt the poll results
2:55: caller reports meeting someone who supposedly wrote “Just the Way You Are”, thinks Tom’s listeners are secretly Billy Joel fans
3:01: more BJ to close out the show: “My Life”

12.11.2001

Start: time-killing intro; music: The Groundhogs, “Man Trouble”, The White Stripes, “Party of Special Things to Do”, The Buff Medways, “Don’t Give Up on Love”, Thee Stash, “Should I Stay or Should I Go”; back announce; Tom announces A Night of a Thousand Shoutouts!
0:20: caller wants a FOT update, wants to watch the Hasu/Anti-Hasu fight, has some shoutouts; Tom wants a bell SFX for every shoutout; brief GOMP
0:25: caller wants to know if Tom really believed the Nostradamus guy and also wants to talk about god, which Tom finds an extremely boring subject
0:28: caller has many shoutouts
0:29: caller worries that Tom won’t get to a thousand shoutouts; Tom says the song “Shout” is about shoutouts; Tom grills him on holiday gifts, promises to find out what his friend wants for Christmas
0:34: caller gives Tom a shoutout, among others
0:35: Brandon also has a shoutout for Tom and his screencaller Dave
0:37: Hasu Kid and Anti-Hasu Kid (Brandon) square off in a debate
as Tom gives points, then devises a Christmas-themed fight in a vacant lot involving glue guns and nail guns; the loser will be left for dead (“This could be the best Christmas ever! Unless, of course, one of you dies in the fight.”); Brandon expects sneakiness from Tom
0:53: caller fires off ten quick shoutouts
0:55: “Tyrone” only gets one shoutout because he’s doing a fake voice
0:56: dude who did a bong hit on the air wants to join FOT but has wonky email, wants to know why Tom didn’t GOMP the Smirnoff Ice guy; Tom says he was entranced
0:58: Joe tells Tom what he wants for Christmas: a turntable
1:00: toilet mouth caller gets GOMPed, though his obscenity confuses Tom
1:02: caller thinks the Hasu Kid will whip the Anti-Hasu Kid; Tom says he can bench 850 pounds; Tom adds some more deadly/tricky elements to the upcoming fight; Tom wants to talk to caller’s parents because they let him watch Gladiator, briefly hassles kid’s dad before being hung up on
1:08: Joe calls back to give shoutouts and specify what kind of turntable he wants
1:09: friend of Brandon wants to know how the nail gun and glue gun could be used; Tom says he’ll get a generator introduces him to the magical world of credit cards, says Brandon’s friend can watch the fight from the roof of a nearby movie theatre
1:12: music: Stiplicon, “True”, Donna Summer, “Dree’s Cassette”,
Dymaxion, “MME Commander”, Buffalo Springfield, “Expecting to Fly”, Brother JT, “Child of the Sun”; back announce
1:35: screaming caller is thwarted by Tom’s quick fingers; Tom grills Dave to find out what the caller told him before going on the air; Tom says no kids for the rest of the show; Tom thinks he might fall short of a thousand shoutouts; Tom gives a shoutout to a sewing club that listens to The Best Show; emailer wants to know if Tom is skeptical of religion or horoscopes
1:41: Romeo from Brooklyn gives many FIT-related shoutouts, talks about his awesome tat design, then gets hung up on for (presumably) toilet talk
1:43: “Bob” wants assistance in getting a Secret Santa gift for a co-worker
1:44: Ryan wants to give shoutouts to his bandmates in Stro; Tom offers to manage the band, then kicks Ryan out of the band when he fails at a duet of “Let it Be”; Ryan threatens to join Hova’s Heroes, but Tom says they’ve broken up because they were holding their meetings in a phone booth
1:59: Ronnie [JW] says he’s coming back, hangs up; Tom fears it’s Hot Rockin’ Ronnie
1:59: Tom dismisses one caller for listening to the radio at the same time, and another for being too young (19)
2:03: caller makes inferences about Tom’s girlfriend; Dave says the caller was cagey but got on the air anyway
2:05: caller wants to know what her boyfriend wants for Christmas; should Tom shake down the boyfriend to find out what she’s getting?
2:10: caller wants gift for stepfather who despises him, gets GOMPed for toilet talk
2:13: Don from Buffalo is hung up on for insisting he’s 43
2:13: email from Hova: last Hova’s Heroes meeting was held in a Volkswagen, not a phone booth; more email shoutouts
2:15: Don calls back to prove his 43-year-old bona fides, wants to give a shoutout to all WFMU listeners; Tom quizzes Don’s wife on her dislike of WFMU and what she wants for Christmas; Tom tells Don she wants gold and jewels
2:24: Tim needs to get a Christmas present for his wife, can spend 10 grand on her
2:25: Lodrys, boyfriend of girl who called earlier, is quizzed on what he wants for Christmas; Tom tells her his girlfriend thinks he’s getting fat
2:29: caller thinks Tom needs to play more “underground” punk rock like Save the Day; Save the Day immediately becomes Tom’s least favorite band
2:30: Officer Tom thinks Jersey City needs to hire more
firefighters; he instructs Tom on what to do (and what not to do) when pulled over, which involves references to Star Wars and Phantasm; Tom gets a card from Officer Tom that will help him out if he’s ever stopped by a cop, even if he’s leaving a murder scene covered in blood
2:51: music: Fugazi, “Hello Morning”, Nicki Sudden, “New York”, Cobra Verde, “Modified Frankenstein”; back announce, outro

12.18.2001

No show

12.25.2001

No show

A potentially explosive collection of verbal irritants