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Apr 29, 2015 Scharpling & Wurster By Hays Davis

Where Orson Welles pranked radio listeners many decades ago into believing that an alien invasion was underway, Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster spent years bending pop culture through a prism of fake phone calls to amuse, puzzle, unsettle, and sometimes drive their audience to angry distraction. With Scharpling (a writer/producer for the USA Network show Monk) as the host of The Best Show on free-form radio station WFMU, Wurster (drummer for Superchunk and others) would dial in as one of his many characters and upend the proceedings.

The Best of The Best Show gathers 75 of the duo’s calls spanning 20 hours on 16 CDs, along with extras that include a USB drive containing additional material. Highlights include “Rock, Rot and Rule,” with callers up in arms over Wurster’s music critic; “Power Pop Pop Pop,” which delves into the secret, sinister world of a power-pop Svengali; and a writer pulling back the curtain on the Boss in “The Springsteen Book.” (www.scharplingandwurster.com)

Author rating: 8/10