WATERMELON WORKERS » JULY 13, 2011
Sometimes in life, a laugh is an American necessity. You can't just sit around and listen to David Bowie albums all day; eventually, you're going to want to wipe all the feces off of your turntable and have yourself a smile. At times like these, we have to thank our stucky Lars for humormen like WFMU radio DJ Tom Scharpling and Superchunk/Caitlin Cary/Connells/Jay Farrar/Hazeldine/George Huntley/Pinetops/Portastatic/Rocket From The Crypt/Marah drummer Jon Wurster.
They do a little funny thing together that happens as follows: Tom goes on the air to host a program called "The Best Show On WFMU" and Jon calls him on the air using the voice and persona of a made-up character -- playing a role, if you will. Tom and Jon have discussed this character beforehand, so Tom knows exactly what is going to happen. It's the WFMU listener who's "in the dark"!
The key thing to note here is that Jon Wurster is one of the most quick-witted "comedians" on the drumming circuit today. Tom generally plays a fantastic straight man as well (and actually EXCELS in a few of the segments, particularly the "Tom's Daddy" sketch to be discussed later), but Jon is ear-bendingly sharp and hilarious. Not only are his voices and personas chuckly good from the getgo -- he's incredibly quick to respond to callers' comments with lines that are even funnier than the pre-planned ones. Here's just one example, so you'll see what I'm talking about. This exchange occurs when Jon's rock critic character Ronald Thomas Clontle is attempting to defend his argument that Madness invented ska:
