THE BEST OF THE BEST SHOW

"The Best Show on WFMU" is a cult phenomenon, but nothing about The Best of the Best Show feels closed off or for-fans-only, even given an overstuffed deluxe-package treatment that feels aimed directly at the diehards.

Newbridge, the fictional New Jersey suburb invented by Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster, is a town run on hubris and populated by people who either don't know or refuse to believe that they're deluded failures. That blend of reliable comedy tropes can drive inspiration for a long time, and when Tom Scharpling announced in 2013 that "The Best Show on WFMU" was coming to an end, the general consensus was that it was going out on top. Scharpling's alternately cranky and enthusiastic rapport with his callers and the inspired regular-Joe insight of the monologues woven in with them demonstrated his mastery of the radio comedy format, while the extended bits Scharpling did with Superchunk drummer and top-flight weirdo Jon Wurster made it the stuff of legend. This was the kind of phenomenon that sustained a more-or-less-weekly show over 12-plus years, which means their "greatest hits" collection is a sixteen-disc, 20-plus hour box set—with a bonus USB stick that includes another 4 ¾-hours' worth of material—that still could be described as "scraping the surface."

That's a lot of mileage to get out of just two people, though the trick is that these people actually represent multitudes. Wurster's weirdly sympathetic call-in characters, co-created and co-written with Scharpling, are exercises in gradual-reveal lunacy that ramp up a conversation until both Scharpling and the listener are left repeating Wurster's ludicrous claims ("you are two inches tall") and malaprops ("laser beans") with a bewildered disbelief. Over the course of a call that can stretch past the 20- or 30-minute mark, a friendly conversation mutates into a series of escalating threats, an arrogant display of untouchability that eventually crumbles to reveal the hapless loser beneath, or, as the origin-point "Rock, Rot & Rule" perfectly revealed, a self-proclaimed expert revealing just how arbitrary and flimsy his knowledge really is. It's comedy that breaks down just how funny it can be to hear somebody with way too much self-confidence obliviously dig his own grave.

It's a cult phenomenon, but nothing about The Best of the Best Show feels closed off or for-fans-only, even given an overstuffed deluxe-package treatment that feels aimed directly at the diehards. The diehards might even find an excuse or two to gripe about omissions (where's "The Chippert Report" and its daring exposé of Davenport, Iowa's "toilet rock" scene?), but what's included is definitive and varied enough to draw in both entry-level listeners and longtime fans who snapped up all their previous collections on Stereolaffs. (www.pitchfork.com)