They Might Be Giants - Dial A Song

Posted At : April 11, 2007 10:31 PM
Related Categories: music, Crazy

A group of us are going to see They Might Be Giants in a few weeks at The Stone Church. I am a fan of TMBG and am really looking forward to it. For my Birthday last Friday Jen bought me a CD with 20+ of their songs. It is titled Dial a Song. I am embarased to say I had no idea what the reference was for. After reading up a bit I am just floored about what they did with an answering machine in the 80's.

It seems that shortly after they started as a band bad luck had befallen them. They were unable to play out much and had wanted an outlet for their creative ideas. The answering machine had just come into popularity and so they thought it would be a great (genius!) idea to record snippets of their song ideas on it, and just let it play for those that called in. They published the phone number in ads for local Brooklen/NYC papers and became near instant celebraties. The number is (718) 387-6962 and is still going today. They call it Dial a Song.

Since an answering machine only answers one call at a time it is hard to get in. I have tried many times but I still haven't gotten through. Some long time fans claim 500 unique recordings. The band in their 20 year collection claim that they had to alter their song structure and recordings to meet the needs of the tape. Keep it somewhat short, put vocals up front, no long sustained tones as it caused the machine to hang up.

Is this the earliest case for something akin to a podcast? I wonder how many answering machines they have gone through?

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OMG, I dialed their Dial-a-Song once in the mid-Eighties! I think I got the number from the mini-CD single (remember those?) of "Don't Let's Start. Love TMBG!

# Posted By Lyn | 4/11/07 9:15 PM

Hah, thats great. It just rings and rings for me right now. I need to try it again tomorrow maybe.

# Posted By Joshua | 4/11/07 9:26 PM

I'm also a (long time) TMBG fan and remember seeing an interview with them a few years ago in which they talked about this. That kind of creativity is amazing to me.

# Posted By Rob Wilkerson | 4/12/07 8:22 AM

Can't say I'm a fan but thats a really cool piece of marketing!

PS like the new design!

# Posted By kola | 4/12/07 9:11 AM

Thanks Kola. I see you have a nice new design as well.

I have more to do on the design, but it is working pretty well so far. Now I just need to spread the word and get others to know about my blog. According to Feedburner I have 30-50 subscribers and would really like to grow that number.

# Posted By Joshua Cyr | 4/12/07 2:35 PM

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