The Close Read is a careful look at a component part of a thing we love—a single song, a chapter, a scene, an ingredient—often with some helpful commentary from the creators themselves. In this instalment, Bethlehem Shoals considers the greatness of Scharpling and Wurster's "Power Pop Pop Pop" call from The Best Show, annotated by Tom Scharpling.
In the fictional city of Newbridge, New Jersey, “why” is a constant refrain. When it comes from Philly Boy Roy, The Gorch, or Pat Sajak’s made-up brother, Mike—just a few of the dozens of roles played with lurid self-confidence by Jon Wurster—it’s a rhetorical challenge: “why.” The crazy world of Newbridge is the only world there is and we just have to deal.
Then there’s incredulous “why?!” from straight-man Tom Scharpling. For over a decade, Scharpling has hosted The Best Show, a three-hour program of call-ins, monologues, and music that serves as a vehicle for these bits. Scharpling, who somehow both exists as a part of Newbridge and an outside observer, is forever baffled by the tenants of the place that the two have lovingly, caustically, and tirelessly built over the last decade or so.1
Scharpling can’t believe what he’s hearing. Is Timmy Von Trimble really a two-inch-tall White Supremacist? Is that a dog or a person talking? At the same time, Wurster’s characters are so matter-of-fact in their absurdity that they’re taken aback by Tom’s skepticism.2
With every call, Scharpling and Wurster will Newbridge—its denizens, its lore, its geography, and even its relevance to real-life figures such as Bruce Springsteen—into existence. That tenacity is also why we have The Best of the Best Show, a mammoth box that collects 16 CDs worth of Wurster calls into Scharpling’s The Best Show (formerly a radio show on WFMU, now its own digital entity). The lavish package is as towering and detail-oriented as the material, an undertaking that treats Scharpling and Wurster’s years of work with the utmost seriousness while retaining their all-important sense of mischief and instability. Scharpling and Wurster aren’t just a brand of humor unto themselves or jokesters who invented a place out of thin air. Their output is a fractured, scurrilous, uproarious, cynical, and in its own way, unflinchingly honest picture of life in pop-culture-addled, sub-city America.3
Newbridge may be absurd as all get-out, but as opposed to the play-acting of Garrison Keillor, it feels lived-in and abundant. This is what it means to build a world that, however far out it may venture, never fails to peek into our own.
It’s nearly impossible to pick one quintessential call. Do you go with a pillar of the community like Roy, whose allegiance to the City of Brotherly Love borders on fanaticism? How about “Big Bill and Little Bill,” where a father, son, and dog with identical voices bicker with each other and Scharpling? Maybe it’s the saga of the aforementioned and reprehensible Mike Sajak, or “G.G. Land,”4
the crown jewel of Scharpling and Wurster’s long-running fascination with scuzz-punk auteur G.G. Allin? At some point, it’s a matter of personal taste. But, if pressed, I’d go with “Power Pop Pop Pop” from May 22, 2007.5
It starts simply enough: a nameless caller wants to request a song. Before Scharpling gets a chance to explain that he’s done playing music for the night, the caller rattles off a string of bands that may or may not be real. Music is key to Scharpling and Wurster’s humor, as they draw little distinction drawn between big names like Bruce Springsteen, fringe types like Allin, and made-up artists like Denny Leonard and the Lemons or The Zoom.6
They poke fun at snobbery by blurring the line between obscurity and bullshit.
What this guy really wants is to promote Popstrastrophe 2007, an annual festival. “Power Pop Pop Pop” is an extended riff on a sub-genre of lean, propulsive rock that skews bright—but no one’s in a rush to explain this. As usual, Tom, who is somehow both himself and a resident of Newbridge, gamely plays along. He knows, and we know he knows, but the last thing any of us wants is for him to break the spell of lunacy.7
These bits build and grow; they draw you in gradually, sometimes never really resolving themselves. The denizens of Newbridge are so convinced that what they have to say matters that Scharpling (and the listeners) are forced to humor them. There’s something admirable about that level of self-delusion.
Scharpling isn’t just there to listen. He anchors and reorganizes things to keep the listeners (and Wurster) from falling off the deep end. Tom gives us his opinion on power pop and, in the process, sheds some light on what the hell they’re actually talking about. Scharpling points out that too much power pop gets repetitive, which is when our caller drops the bomb: “What if Quad P heard you?” Quad P, he explains, is short for Power Pop Pop Pop, “the number one power pop guy in America. He considers himself the President of power pop.”8
Power Pop Pop Pop may not be the most important Scharpling-Wurster character, or even the funniest, but few have been as markedly bizarre. The caller explains that Power Pop Pop Pop rides around town in a sidecar and thus can only go down hills (“He’s got an entire lifestyle based around only being able to go downhill”), and when you enter his house, the Power Pop Palace, you have to put on Beatle boots—he even keeps a size 14.5 around, in case “any pro ballers show up.”9
He wrote a 1,200-page oral history of the Flamin’ Groovies’ “Shake Some Action.” He derides “drug music” and considers even much of Big Star—probably the best known of any power pop act—too far-out. For Power Pop Pop Pop, all but a handful of Big Star songs are “art rock.”10
But there’s a dark side here. Despite the silliness of Newbridge, it’s also a haven for schemers, outsiders, and perverts. There’s the constant threat of aggression; calls very often end with someone threatening to assault or murder Scharpling, or themselves being killed off; there was even a long-running thread about laser-whipping, which was as silly as it was brutal.11
Then there’s the casual skeeziness of many Newbridgites; one of Wurster’s signatures is a skin-crawling use of the word “erotic.” We’re being asked to laugh at the absolute worst aspects of humanity—lechery, corruption, incompetence, murder, and exploitation—while admitting that this repulsion is all too familiar.
As it turns out, Power Pop Pop Pop is a “power pop dictator” known around town as “Pol Pop.”12
He uses his vast wealth to enforce ridiculously strict guidelines for “textbook power pop.” He’s prone to violence, especially using “the popper,” a small handgun shaped like a Rickenbacker bass that fires hard rocks of “concentrated garbage.”13
There’s a special popper for women, which Scharpling refuses to hear about. The Power Pop Palace has a sex dungeon called “The Lair.” Oh, and for good measure, the call touches on the scene’s reluctant love for The Resistance—purveyors of “White Power pop.”14
But the crux of the call, the reason we’re laughing even as we recoil, is when Scharpling finally cracks, reminding us that “this music is all about falling in love and having a good time and enjoying your life!” We are hearing about a monster and sadist against a backdrop of harmony vocals and jangly guitars. The contrast between darkness and light is almost as ridiculous as the caller’s nonchalance about it. Newbridge is at once sinister and goofy because, however obliviously, Wurster’s characters take all things in stride. To some degree, we all do, as we spend much of our lives trying to assimilate bad, bad things, whether in the news around us or in our own very real experiences. We do so with cynicism, repression, and other ways of downplaying just how rotten the world is.15
Scharpling and Wurster drag debauchery, corruption, stupidity, and general creepiness out into the light and, well, make light of it. It’s high-level satire; queasy subject matter is the kind of cosmic joke that’s both devastating and laughable.
For all of the earnestness of Newbridge’s denizens and the shock value of these calls, large-scale irony might be Scharpling and Wurster’s greatest strength. If Newbridge is made believable, there’s also a distinct possibility that everything these callers say is a lie; they’re so clearly marked as ridiculous people with all sorts of ulterior motives that expecting them to tell the truth is a stretch.16
In “Power Pop Pop Pop,” the caller admits he’s had a few glasses of wine, deliberately calling into question just how reliable a narrator he is, compounding the fact that we’re hearing all this information second-hand from a guy who, right from the jump, has established himself as an unreasonable power pop fanatic. For all we know, he’s merely spreading rumors about Power Pop Pop Pop, or—as is revealed in a later installment—pushing his own agenda.17
What makes “Power Pop Pop Pop” such a riveting listen is that mix of micro and macro, of outlying riffs and a strong arc. There are colorful nods to other Newbridge characters, like the debauched Judge Montgomery Davies or rogue cop Officer Harrups. Yet as this whole saga unfolds over 40 minutes, Power Pop Pop Pop himself changes, going from laughable to pitiable and then from unsettling to reprehensible. Just when the call plateaus, there’s another twist that compounds the lunacy. As sprawling as Scharpling and Wurster’s humor can be at times, there’s always a highly calculated structure at play.18
Wurster’s characters never waver or doubt their own existence; Scharpling, too, is willing to go along for the ride even he wishes he could turn away. There’s always Newbridge. And at the end of each call, it always feels like home.
