August 3, 2004
Tom talks to:
- A listener to his 1997-era show who is disappointed that Tom doesn't play the same opening music and cool jazz bed music anymore. Tom upbraids him for not wanting anything to change in seven years. The listener never calls back in.
- Pay Byrne (as Pat Byrne, from Verona, NY) calls in and not for the first time leaves a long fan message (through Tom) on Matt Walsh's answering machine.
- Andy Earles twice - once in his last appearance as the Party Doctor and once as a man who is trying to reach Troubleshooter Tom DiMartino and who has been taken advantage of by an increasingly outrageous set of scammers.
- Captain Jack, Petey and a crazy-sounding woman named Alicia. They drive him over the edge and he has them talk to each other in the background while he sings "All By Myself" half a dozen times, leading into "Tusk" to end the show.
I'm continuing to listen to the shows backward - it's really interesting to hear the ends of things and then hearing them form in reverse. The end of 2004/beginning of 2005 featured a lot of Tom singing sad songs (mostly Elton John, but also Eric Carmen and other artists) to himself. It makes for fantastic radio but it couldn't have been much fun.
This era is a little after I became aware of the show and started posting on the message boards (FOTBoard Mark II, the blue one). I listened to just the Jon Wurster calls for a long time - I didn't actually listen to the full show regularly until about 2010.