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Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
131–140 of 141 posts
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#132Soon after the album came out, a morning DJ on one of the FM rock stations in Syracuse NY figured out the number and called it. They had a brief conversation before being hung up on. The DJ would play that conversation from time to time on the air.
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#133Hilarious. As a teen I knew that sequence sounded exactly like MF signaling one would expect on an international call. It was common knowledge of high school hackers that it had recently been straightforward to use a "blue box" to make free calls using that kind of tone but that it was quite difficult by 1985 or so to find places in the network where it would work inside CONUS.
(Phreakers in the late 1980s were frequently "carders" who stole MCI account numbers by methods such as systematic dialing, not to mention my favorite tactic of taking over an answering machine to change the message to "this number accepts all third party and collect calls" which will strike terror into a dentist office or church or other victim when they find out)
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean... I'm not troubled by it, but as a person who has worked in a job where I received direct calls from the public that I had no choice but to deal with it, I am definitely annoyed on behalf of the operator. It's not the worst thing in the world, but... wow, what an annoying day. Can you imagine six months later, you hear your most annoying day at work played on an album?!
As a former telephone operator from this era who spent most shifts frantically bubbling scantrons as business men rattled off their calling card numbers and call numbers at lighting speed, I would have been delighted by this break in routine.
"one ringy dingy... two ringy dingies" - Zanni probably
for the uninitiated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT4__Nz5HWY
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternatively, treating the “random telephone operator” as a prop and forcing them to be part of your project without consent is troubling.
Excessive empathy is not a virtue.
It's not actually empathy when the motivation is just to criticize someone else.
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#136Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
The first words on Pink Floyd’s The Wall are “… we came in?”. The last words on the album are “Isn’t this where …”.
If memory serves, I believe record players that could flip the records were contemporary to the release of The Wall. My parents didn’t have a flipper but they had a player that could play a stack of records and The Wall was the first or second LP try bought to play on it. That definitely works on an auto reversing tape deck, which it looks like existed for fifteen years prior.
The Wall is a double album though.
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#138Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#139Young Lust is the song where this operator is heard. Not being an audiophile, it took me some time to figure out the specific song. My brother had The Wall album, and I enjoyed it, but I never listened to it on my own. I went back and listened to it again for the context. I really enjoy music but I don't listen to it as often I'd like. I think part of the reason is that I have difficulty concentrating when there is a…
I have the same issue. When I turn music on, I can't stop focusing on it and losing track of whatever intellectual task I'm on. The only thing I can listen to while writing/reading is white noise or nature sounds type of thing. Also, having a show play in the background while I do something else like many people love to do? I can't do it.
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Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's cool to hear how that came together as an improvisation. It recalls a simpler time when a major album (or movie, TV show, etc) could just feature your neighbor and a random telephone operator without signing releases and clearing rights. It also gave Chris Fitzmorris (the neighbor) one of the greatest "random cool thing that happened to me" stories ever.
Musicians still release samples without clearing them
Confidently incorrect.
“Grant Upright Music vs. Warner Bros” almost completely killed any creative use of sampling on official releases, which is why the only place you still see it consistently is mixtapes. Think 50 Cent’s “The Undertaker”.