The Good Show

The Good Show is a weekly radio show originating from KTCU-FM in Fort Worth, Texas on Sunday nights between 9 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. Central Time. The show specializes in playing under-appreciated music, mostly indie rock and its variants, but sometimes from other genres, including older rock, Americana, IDM, jazz and even classical music. It also broadcasts comedy, often written and performed by The Good Show personnel themselves.

The show first broadcast on October 14, 2000, featuring the original duo of Tom Urquhart and Chris Bellomy. It now boasts the two original co-hosts plus two other contributors, Tony Diaz and Neil Schnell.

History

Urquhart and Bellomy were childhood friends, meeting in summer 1976 and attending middle school and Arlington Heights High School together. They remained friends after graduation, working for a time as night auditors at the same hotel, and later recording musical parody under the name Lee Harvey Deutschendorf. When Urquhart resumed his college career at Texas Christian University, he eventually began broadcasting a modern rock show between 9 a.m. and noon on Saturday mornings in early 1998. He claims that he chose this shift because students of normal college age would never seek to take an early shift on Saturdays. This turned out to be absolutely correct, as he would hold that shift through 2003.

Later in 1998, Urquhart was joined by his friend and TCU employee Steve Levering to assist with the Saturday morning show. Eventually, this show came to be known as the Tom and Steve Show, gaining critical acclaim for its mix of indie rock and electronica. After two years, though, the partnership began showing signs of strain, with Levering becoming increasingly interested in electronica and other ethereal music, and Urquhart being resistant to taking the show further in that direction. In summer 2000, Urquhart began collaborating with Bellomy (who, at Urquhart's suggestion, had begun volunteering at the station, broadcasting under the show name "Modern Rock Radio Meltdown") on the concept that would eventually become The Good Show. Urquhart and Levering would terminate their partnership by October, with Levering going on to broadcast the innovative "Forward, Not Straight" show on KTCU soon thereafter. Urquhart kept the Saturday morning timeslot and The Good Show was soon born.

The Good Show remained on Saturday mornings through the end of 2003, moving to Sunday nights in January 2004 as a way to make booking live interviews and performances with local artists easier (Saturday mornings often being very difficult after late Friday night shows). Around the same time, Tony Diaz, a recent visiting performer on the show as a member of the band Goodwin, began returning to visit the show each week, adding over-the-top comic energy to Urquhart and Bellomy's dry humor. By spring 2004 he was regarded as the third co-host.

The show continued in this trio configuration until fall 2004, when the band Velvet Love Box visited for the first time. VLB member Neil Schnell, a long-time friend of Diaz, had co-hosted the show once before in Bellomy's absence, and was intrigued by the improvisational production of the show. Meanwhile, the show members were entertained by Schnell's incisive dry wit and sympathetic musical taste. He joined the cast by December 2004, contributing the macabre ode to awful music, The Bad Show.

Name

In summer 2000, anticipating the dissolution of the Tom and Steve Show, Urquhart and Bellomy decided to choose a show name that wouldn't be tied by necessity to its charter hosts, thus making the franchise seem more stable whenever a co-host would take time off and a guest co-host brought in. (Though not considered at the time, this also paved the way for the eventual additions of Diaz and Schnell as full co-hosts in their own right.) Several names were considered for the show and then discarded, being names that the hosts figured would seem funny for a short time and then contrived thereafter. "The Good Show" was eventually chosen for several reasons: it was simultaneously brash and modest, reflecting the hosts' love of such paradoxes; it differentiated the show from the mainstream of commercial radio merely by dint of being "good" (hence making a statement about the quality of commercial radio); and it was sufficiently memorable.

Artist of the Week

From the beginning, the show has dedicated a block of time, starting at 10:30, for local music. (The 10:30 start time, along with 9:00 start time of the show itself, remained the same when the show moved from Saturday mornings to Sunday nights.) In the early days of the show, this was usually a 15-minute block in which an act's work would be featured simply by playing several tracks in succession from CD. Over time, the show more often began attracting musicians to visit the show for interviews and live performances. One band, the Baptist Generals, recorded their performance and included it in an EP release which was later recommended by John Peel of the BBC. This is as close as the show ever has come to any widespread notoriety.

Other artists who have appeared and/or performed live on the Good Show include:

* Todd Lewis (both in support of Toadies and the Burden Brothers
* Baboon
* Will Johnson (of centro-matic)
* Chatterton
* Chomsky
* The BAcksliders
* Deadman
* Pleasure Club
* The Theater Fire

Note that this list is far from comprehensive.

Comedy, etc.

The current formatics of the show call for comedy to play at 10 p.m., 11 p.m., and midnight each show (though the formatics of this show are extremely elastic). Often, this comedy is political in nature, both in re-broadcasted and original material. The original comedy typically features the impersonation talents of Tony Diaz, who routinely plays George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, James Lipton (under the name "James Pimpton") and David Lee Roth (for the "Diamond Davy and Goliath" series). Typically, the original comedy skits are written and directed by Chris Bellomy, with occasional script outlines (skits are typically improvised) coming from Diaz and friend of the show John Christie (who also participated as voice talent while exiled from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina).

Awards

The Good Show has received numerous awards from local media, especially from the "Fort Worth Weekly" and the "Dallas Observer." The co-hosts most famously remain perplexed both by their annual nomination for "Best Radio Show That Plays Local Music" in the "Observer's" Music Awards, despite KTCU's signal failing to reach much of Dallas; and for the show's annual failure to actually win the award.

References

External links

* [http://goodshow.net/ Official site]
* [http://www.myspace.com/goodshow/ Profile] on MySpace
* [http://www.ktcu.tcu.edu/ktcu/ KTCU]
* [http://fwweekly.com/content.asp?article=257 Cover story] about the show in the "Fort Worth Weekly"