Eighteen years ago, Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster called his friend Tom Scharpling, who had a radio show on New Jersey noncommercial station WFMU, and pretended to be an oblivious music critic named Ronald Thomas Clontle. Clontle had supposedly written a book called Rock, Rot & Rule: The Ultimate Argument Settler, and for the next 47 minutes, he and Scharpling—who was in on the joke—discussed which acts rocked, rotted, or ruled. Clontle’s criteria were so bizarre and confounding, and his knowledge of music so clearly impaired, that many listeners who didn’t realize what was happening called in to argue with him. “Madness invented ska,” he said. Neil Young and David Bowie? They rotted because they’d made too many changes. The Beatles merely rocked: “They wrote a lot of bad songs.”
In spring 2014, the Numero Group approached Scharpling and Wurster about putting together a box set—a grand capstone for The Best Show. Curating it required the two of them to survey their massive body of work for the first time. “It was a herculean effort that just seemed to take from May until September,” says Wurster. “We didn’t really know our calls that well—we’d write them and perform them, but they were forgotten about the next week.” The 16-CD set Scharpling & Wurster: The Best of the Best Show, which contains 75 calls, comes out May 12.
Regardless of broadcast medium, The Best Show works like a classic call-in program. If you’ve ever heard Howard Stern or Jim Rome, then you know its basic structure. Scharpling plays up his ordinary good-natured irascibility, banging on about whatever has his hackles up that day. He vents at callers, at associate producer Mike Lisk, or at the “mutants” at his local Panera. At some point, Wurster calls up in character, often as someone from Newbridge. Located somewhere in the Garden State near Philadelphia, Newbridge is akin to Springfield on The Simpsons. Notable residents include Power-Pop Pop-Pop (the dictatorial leader of the town’s power-pop scene), Zachary Brimstead Esq. (an overweight enthusiast of barbershop music), Timmy von Trimble (the two-inch racist), and Reggie Monroe (who was kicked off Survivor for getting caught doing pants stuff).
During a break from WFMU in the late 90s, Scharpling says, he thought to himself, “If this show is going to come back, let’s have it be what we did with ‘Rock, Rot & Rule.’” Wurster agreed, and The Best Show on WFMU debuted in October 2000. Scharpling also began writing for Monk, cocreated by fellow WFMU DJ Andy Breckman; he worked on the show for its entire run (from 2002 till 2009) and served as executive producer for seasons five though eight. Wurster started taking other jobs after Superchunk slowed down in the early 2000s; he drummed on Rocket From the Crypt‘s 2001 Group Sounds, joined the Mountain Goats, toured with Bob Mould, and backed Katy Perry at the 2009 MTV Music Video Awards, among other things.
“He’s this great pot for us to pour all these weird things into,” says Scharpling. “He’s so much fun to me because he’s a dreamer. As much as he does terrible things, he’s still just this guy who’s got these aspirations for something bigger. Like Ralph Kramden, but evil. Well, not evil, but he’ll go to new depths that Ralph Kramden wouldn’t.”
“I definitely missed doing the show,” says Wurster, “but being away from it made me realize how much time we put into it.” As fans got used to life without The Best Show, though, Scharpling was already quietly plotting to bring it back. “It was great to get a break from the show, to take stock of what it was and what we had done,” he says. “But I knew the show wasn’t done—just the version of the show that was on WFMU. There was still more show to do!”
