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Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
91–100 of 141 posts
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#92> The number itself was probably made-up: it's too short and the area code doesn't seem valid. 44 is the country code for the UK.
Author here. Yep, 44 is the UK country code. The problem I got stuck on is that the rest of the number, 1831, didn't make sense. I assumed the number was complete, since it had the right start and stop signalling (KP1/KF). It's not long enough to be a London telephone number, and, today, I think London numbers start with 020. The UK numbering plan has changed several times since 1980, but I couldn't find a time betwe…
> It's not long enough to be a London telephone number, and, today, I think London numbers start with 020.
I used to work with telephony until 2011. While I worked in Sweden, I am sure this applies for UK, too.
There is no standard in phone number lengths, you can have all sorts of prefixed series, so for example if the area code is "1", then the number 0 could be routed to a destination.
So 04410 is theoretically valid.
Back then we even had 3-digit short form numbers (like 911) that we had to specifically deal with each phone operator for keeping.
It was used for pricey phone dating.
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
A London number at the time would be from the UK (01) eee nnnn where e is the exchange[1] and n is just a number, and the 01 can be omitted if you're in the 01 area. For intentional calls it would be (+44) 1 eee nnnn, as you omit the initial 0 that on an internal UK call is an indication you're dialling an STD[2] number and not a local number. There doesn't seem to have been an 831 exchange at the time[3], so as note…
> and that ruined the Live and Kicking phone number jingle I thought I was the only one that had that number burned into my memory for all time! I’m glad, for my sake at least, to hear I’m not the only one.
0181 811 8181
Edit: Thinking about it I think was was Going Lives number?
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#94So we know a couple of digits and the splice points. We also know the date. Phone numbers used to be public back then. It would be fun to grep for the pattern in the matching phone book to see if someone in Pink Floyd's circles comes up. Only problem is to get hold of a digital version of the phone book. It strikes me as odd how hard it is to retrieve information that used to be so ubiquitous. Not too long ago police…
Cassiepaper posted an interview[0] elsewhere in this discussion that says it was James Guthrie's flat in London (James Guthrie being their producer and engineer).
[0] https://www.brain-damage.co.uk/other-related-interviews/jame...
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Author here. Yep, 44 is the UK country code. The problem I got stuck on is that the rest of the number, 1831, didn't make sense. I assumed the number was complete, since it had the right start and stop signalling (KP1/KF). It's not long enough to be a London telephone number, and, today, I think London numbers start with 020. The UK numbering plan has changed several times since 1980, but I couldn't find a time betwe…
> It's not long enough to be a London telephone number, and, today, I think London numbers start with 020. I used to work with telephony until 2011. While I worked in Sweden, I am sure this applies for UK, too. There is no standard in phone number lengths, you can have all sorts of prefixed series, so for example if the area code is "1", then the number 0 could be routed to a destination. So 04410 is theoretically va…
Except in the US, and a handful of other countries who do have fixed length numbering plans.
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was wondering if they ever figured out who the operator was? I couldn’t find anything about her through my Googling. Seems like she should have some credit in the album for her brilliant contribution
The session singer who did "The Great Gig in the Sky" vocals on The Dark Side of the Moon famously got £30. She later sued and got an undisclosed settlement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clare_Torry
Great documentary about the backup singers that became iconic on rock songs and yet made next to nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWyUJcA8Zfo
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#97Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#98Earlier 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.
Alternatively, treating the “random telephone operator” as a prop and forcing them to be part of your project without consent is troubling.
In the time, and given the nature, it is harmless. Certainly compared to modern attempts at pranks, advertised to the world instantly on SocMed.
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#99Related: Pink Floyd's 'The Wall': A Complete Analysis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42402981
Information society has dial tones too....
Re: Decoding the telephony signals in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most good albums have one song that was never released as a single, that’s just for the fans. So even beyond the “story” the album contaminates, they miss important chapters. Anyone who talks about Tears for Fears, a side conversation about The Working Hour will start. Throwing Copper had five or six singles released over almost three years, but Pillar of Davidson is still my favorite song from that album, and one of…
For me that's very often the 7th song on an LP and usually starts its second side
Wow, I remember noticing this same thing back when I was exploring a lot of different artists. On streaming sites often a bands top songs will be ones that came out recently, or a collab they did with a more popular band, or a track that for whatever reason appealed to a wider audience. But those aren’t what you really want to hear if you’re trying to decide if you like that band. My strategy would instead be to go find either the bands earliest studio album or the oldest album that is well represented in their top tracks and skip to track 7. I never thought about why, but it definitely works.