Scharpling & Wurster are an unusual comedy team; they’re hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t already heard of them. Their work largely relies on a giant esoteric in-joke, and a dated one at that. This means that I will struggle to explain why I think their best work is essential comedy, and why it’s worth the effort it takes to grasp what their comedy is about.
First, you’re going to need a little background about the indie rock of the 90s, and you should immediately understand that I’m not the best person to explain all that. But I’m also not the worst; I was close enough to it to be a fellow traveler, but far enough from it to have some perspective on its role in rock history.
The 90s are a tricky period in rock history to assess, in retrospect. This is because the mainstream record industry mostly ignored what was going on in the independent rock scene. In the wake of Nirvana, the Seattle sound got a few acts into the mainstream, and at least one very left-field group (Sonic Youth) was a major label phenomenon at least for a little while.
But there was a fertile landscape of indie artists operating under the radar at that time, much broader and richer than the small sample embraced by the major labels. I worked in a record store through 1994, and had various friends who were in touring indie acts; they kept me relatively informed about what was going on in that world. As a fan of older music, including a ton that has little to do with rock from any period, I wasn’t the most sympathetic ear for the grousing I sometimes heard from indie musicians. There was a sense among some in that world that their generation’s rock was just as good as the overrated popular stuff of the past; I recall a co-worker peevishly dismissing the Beatles, who were enjoying an early example of their many rediscovery periods at the time. “I don’t get what all the fuss is about. The Beatles were so long ago,” he said. Now we are as far from the 90s as we were from the 60s at that point, and I find myself in the odd position of championing a cause that was once somewhat at odds with what I perceived as the rock tradition.
I do think that the 90s indie rock scene was a golden period; an infrastructure of performance venues and small labels had been growing since the 1980s, and by the time Nirvana hit, the indie world had room for a large and varied crazy-quilt of artists. Many of these acts were very inventive, and there was an enthusiastic audience for them. Young music fans today may quibble with me, but it was arguably the last time a grassroots movement of that magnitude happened in rock.
Unfortunately, the aboveground infrastructure of labels and rock “journalism” that began in the 1960s didn’t readily adapt to the new musical language; some acts (Replacements, Sonic Youth, etc.) were grudgingly allowed to get a foot in the door, and the Seattle grunge scene inspired the same wild level of over-celebration that the Athens scene benefited from when REM had hit a few years earlier, but this left a large number of interesting rock artists in the dust of the record store hipster ghetto.
That’s some background for you. The important thing isn’t for me to give you a ton of information about the indie bands of that period; I’m trying to give a sense of the indie-rock aggrieved-outsider psychology that informed the comedy world of Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster. Tom was a radio DJ who loved the 90s indie stuff, and he was among those frustrated that bands like Superchunk weren’t widely appreciated the way earlier icons like the Kinks had been. Jon, a drummer, was actually in Superchunk, a key band of the era, and he has played with many artists who were in their prime then.
The two of them established a sketch comedy formula that generated a huge amount of material. Jon would call in to Tom’s radio show, using a fake name. Tom was the straight man in their act; they co-wrote the material, but Jon’s job was playing all these ridiculous characters. Tom had to react to all of it, and his endearingly credulous persona was essential to the success of their sketches. He was often irritated or disgusted with what he was hearing, but that just added to the suspension of disbelief. (Early on, at least, there were listeners that didn’t realize they were hearing comedy; sometimes listeners would call in to get mad at Jon’s characters.)
I have a soft spot for comedy history’s “straight men,” because they never get enough credit. Jon Wurster is a comic genius whose weird energy drove their performances, but it would never have worked if Tom hadn’t been so good as the normal guy getting gradually more horrified and outraged at the crazy talk he’s hearing. When I first started listening to them, I focused on Jon‘s nutty delivery, but when I go back to material I’ve already enjoyed, Tom provides a lot of my favorite moments. Straight man work is a thankless job, and I’ve never heard anyone do it better than Tom. After a few days of bingeing their recordings, even just thinking of the way Tom says “horrible” makes me laugh.
They were sort of an indie rock version of Bob and Ray, the legendary radio comedians who used a similar formula. I’ve loved the Bob and Ray “man interviews lunatic” approach since I first discovered them as a teen in the 80s, and Scharpling and Wurster’s work speaks to me. I’ve got a mountain of it here in my archive, around 90 of their conversations, many of which are quite lengthy. I’m thankful to my friend Dave Van Allen for introducing me to them when he posted their classic bit “Power Pop Pop Pop.” I’ve rarely laughed harder at any comedy routine, but I would not want the job of trying to provide historical footnotes to help someone understand the strange and very specific rock phenomenon they were satirizing.
When I bought a vinyl collection of Lenny Bruce’s best comedy routines, back in the early 80s, the liner notes included a long glossary of historical references that popped up in Bruce’s material. At the time, Bruce’s recordings were only two decades old, but some of them would have required insider awareness of current entertainment industry and political figures for even his contemporary audience to get his jokes.
In short, Bruce’s references demanded a lot of his audience, and even his most broadly comedic work tends to perplex newcomers today. Scharpling and Wurster were targeting an even more esoteric audience than Bruce did; a lot of their jokes require you to have extensive knowledge of pop culture both mainstream and obscure.
So, that has to be established right away. Sotmetimes, at this historical and cultural remove, the references can baffle you. But most of the time, their comedy technique works beautifully despite the in-joke tsunami they give you. It’s not even inside baseball, it’s more like inside badminton.
There are several comedy devices they use again and again, and these are worth studying if you’re planning to do some comedic writing. Some devices they use to prolong a bit are extraordinarily effective at the job; people may differ on the strength of certain characters and premises, but it’s worth noting that when a bit works for you, it can go very long indeed and continue to click. I like to compare the Scharpling/Wurster ability to stretch a comedy bit with the track record of SNL, where a funny premise or character can lose me early on— even when I’m initially hooked. It’s rare for an SNL sketch to develop the way these bits do.
Sometimes one of these bits will keep upping the ante, and the craziness of what the character is saying keeps building and building. Other times they just keep generating more great variations, and Tom’s reactions keep increasing dynamically because of the cumulative effect of the sheer volume of absurd gags. The “Tom From The Future” sketch goes over an hour, and the gags don’t really get bigger, after a while; they just keep hitting you in waves. This is where Wurster’s ability to remain earnest while spouting an endless torrent of abject nonsense gets showcased. You can hear him do this again and again in most of their sketches, but the longer ones are like long Coltrane saxophone solos; it’s the feeling of being on a long road trip with a lot to see outside the car.
My favorite of their joke construction devices is when Wurster reveals a new detail that takes a moment to sink in; it’s always tossed off, and Tom has to then chip away at it before it becomes clear how much this new information has cranked up the absurdity of whatever nonsense Jon is trafficking.
Here are a few of their sketches.
Normally the stuff I post is old enough that I don’t worry overmuch about copyright restrictions, but this is different. Substack is under the radar enough that I doubt I’ll get in trouble, but these two comedy masters are still alive and presumably still struggling to make a buck out of their work. If you enjoy this material, I encourage you to buy some of it. All the bits I’m posting are available on iTunes, and you can still get the immense box set on CD and thumb drive if you shop around. Search for “Scharpling and Wurster,” which gets you fastest to their comedy. The sketches aired on Tom’s music program, The Best Show, and searching for that gets you to various online incarnations of it. As far as I can tell, the comedy material is mostly archival now, but feel free to comment if you discover I’m wrong about this.
The box set isn’t cheap, but it’s got a lavish book and a huge amount of recordings. The downloadable material is a mix of stuff that’s on that box and stuff they left out. (Note: the material is hit or miss. Some bits are only modestly successful, and some lose me even though I get the references. You have to really really love rock and roll to like absolutely all of their stuff. I’m snobbish about rock, but I also get tired of it, and jokes about the guy who replaced Joe Perry in Aerosmith don’t crack me up as much as they might work for some people. But I do love comedy, and the best material by these guys is essential. Once you get hooked, even the ones that don’t land are still interesting, and they help you see why the best ones are so epic.
Here’s a bit called Hippy Johnny. This one is notable because it doesn’t require any pop culture knowledge more strenuous than a superficial familiarity with the Grateful Dead.
“Mother 13” is a bit that appears to have evolved. Its first iteration, which I haven’t included, is a satire of the phony corporate rock music that has often jostled the interesting grassroots stuff out of the limelight. This phenomenon began in the 1950s, hit its stride in the 1970s, and metastasized in the 90s so egregiously that it has arguably been the norm in rock ever since. As usual, any readers who know more than I do about current music are welcome to push back against my prejudiced thesis.
The two followup Mother 13 sketches are included here. They perfectly illustrate two big subtexts of Scharpling and Wurster comedy— the giant con game that is the American entertainment industry, and the appalling bad behavior of celebrities and pseudo-celebrities that is generated in its ugly wake.
It helps if you recognize the various musicians mentioned in these bits, but it’s not a dealbreaker if you don’t. The real dealbreaker is that this is dark and scathing satire; the premise has this unlistenable corporate band doing a concert on the peak of Mount Everest, and broadcasting it online.
It goes wrong. Toward the end of the sketch, we have Clarence Clemons resorting to cannibalism (because he’s forgotten the expedition has many promotional energy bars left) and eating the face of Dane Cook’s younger brother. If this doesn’t strike you as comical, consider yourself warned.
Mother 13… The First Rock Band On Mount Everest (parts one and two)
Long Live Hippy Johnny.
I wont quibble. "It was arguably the last time a grassroots movement of that magnitude happened in rock."
Also, more music journalists should use the phrase " in the dust of the record store hipster ghetto."
I haven't listened to the Best Show on WFMU in years, but it always was a blast, even if I rarely listened for all three hours. Despite it being the best show on WFMU, Vicki Bennet's Do or DIY is still my favorite show on the station.
Thanks for selecting some good bits. Didn't know about the box set... I always thought the intro to the Best show was super awesome.
#radiosnotdead