TMBG Needs a New Dial-A-Song Machine

Ashileedo writes "Thought this was interesting. They Might Be Giants is down to their last Dial-A-Song machine, a Record-A-Call 675 circa 1983. For those who don't know, They Might Be Giants has a phone number you can call and listen to various recordings they've done" ...which is an American institution, in continual operation since the 1980s. (718)387-6962. "They're open to computer-based answering machines that can handle multiple files easily. Read more about it at theymightbegiants.com." They appeal to "the more technically minded fold out there -- if you know of any over the counter kick ass computer based answering machines that can handle multiple files easily, we're all ears!"

Comments

Re:Found a possible toolkit

[SquadBoy]

Could something like this work to build it. I can't wait to get home and play with it. I'm serious here lets build it, install it and give it to them. These boys used the term "geek rock" over 5 years ago this alone makes them worthy of our time and effort.

Possible project

[Gen-GNU]

This is a possible project for some (including myself) who have looked for a way to give something back to the free software movement.

I personally have looked for an area that needs attention, (i.e. I don't want to write yet another text editor, etc). I don't know of any answering machine type software for Linux.

If anyone is truly interested in a project to do this, or knows of one that is already going, let me know.

Re:I've done this with vgetty.

[Detritus]

DTMF detection isn't THAT hard to do,

Reliable DTMF detection is harder than you think. There is a TelCo test tape available for this purpose. From what I've heard, most DTMF decoders have difficulty with the test tape.

Dial-a-joke lines

[Reality Master 101]

This reminded me of an old joke line from the early 80s in the Orange County, CA area called Zygot, and I wondered if they were still around. I found this page, which documents a whole slew of the old joke lines, and has a lot of the old material on-line.

If anyone has fond memories of the old dial-a-joke recordings, you might find them here.

--

Dial-A-Song-Man

[bonzoesc]

Dial-a-song, Dial-a-song;
Our dial-a-song won't work for long;
Served us well, don't get me wrong;
I like pong, Dial-a-song.

Slashdot man, Slashdot man;
Killing dial-a-song is his plan;
Posting our number like so much spam;
Bastardly man, Slashdot man;

That's all I feel like beating out.

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

They DONT WANT computerised solutions

[Travis Fisher]

Ummm, if you read www.theymightbegiants.com down to the bottom of the page, you'll see that TMBG has tried and had reliability problems with computerized answering systems. Remember, these guys don't want a hack, they want something that can take slashdot sized loads and is easy to keep up:

Yes, after months of pure frustration with our computer based system, John and John have returned to the analog scene of the phone machine, and although the songs don't change as frequently, they are fresh fresh fresh and now we have a two song policy so you get more songs with every call.

I think the point is they want simple, effective, and reliable. No fancy voice-navigated nested menuing solutions required, just something that will work for literaly decades without dieing.

Re:Why help them, they haven't helped us?

[Rader]

Glad to see someone on slashdot got that right.

TMBG & The Offspring are a couple of the few better-known bands that have done a great job moving to the internet EARLY.

maybe TMBG wouldn't mind about Napster so much, if they would do a few things that The Offspring do: such as merchandise, tour dates (and maybe tour!) etc. Of course, maybe TMBG could start selling Napster t-shirts like The Offspring did! What a great sense of humor!

Rader

Re:I've done this with vgetty.

[Fjord]

The current Dial-a-Song is running on a crappy answering machine. In the liner notes for the album "Then", They describe how the sound of their music changed when they started Dial-a-Song, because they realized that certain sounds did not carry well over the phone lines: base and high pitch noises cause distortion, etc. Because of this, They began authoring music that would sound good over a phone line from their answering machine. At first, They had to do this by trial an error (TMBG is mostly an experimental band, anyways), but eventually They developed a sound out of it.

So, no, TMBG doesn't need powerful equipment backing this. They never have before and they don't need it now.

Re:Why help them, they haven't helped us?

[Rambo]

Try emusic.com for no less than nine albums of theirs in MP3 format. Not free, but not horribly expensive either ($8.99 USD). The coolest thing about emusic is their subscription service, which for as little as $10 a month you can download all you want. I have it and it's great. Oh, and the URL for the TMBG page on emusic is he re.

Re:Why help them, they haven't helped us?

[rjh]

TMBG is a great band. But, they have publically decried Napster and P2P in general. Why should we help them with something that is run 1980's technology?

1. They aren't anti-Napster, nor anti-P2P. What they are against is the dilution of their own online community. When people download TMBG MP3s from Napster, they miss out on the large online community of TMBG fans, which TMBG has put a lot of effort into building. TMBG has little problem with fans sharing songs; TMBG has a big problem with Napster building their online community at the cost of TMBG's online community.

2. Why should we help them out? Because we're geeks. Because we like fixing problems. Because we think that maybe, just maybe, the world would be a better place if things worked right. There's an old axiom about courtesy--you aren't courteous to other people because they're superior people, but because you are. The same applies to helping others.

Re:Who gives a rat's petooty about TMBG?

[hugg]

TMBG is to nerds what the Grateful Dead was to ... well, deadheads :) They are also one of the few big acts who have embraced MP3s as a distribution mechanism (I've bought 2 of their albums online). They sing songs about robots and Belgian painters. In my mind, they are perfect Slashdot material!!

P.S. they do not wear big suits.

ThinkGeek.com has a good system

[TheLer]

ThinkGeek.com has a cool system where the music when you're on hold is played from an mp3 machine and a webpage is dynamically generated telling what songs are playing and what's up next, etc. I believe that the perl script they wrote to do this is released under the GPL.

Sometimes you by Force overwhelmed are.

Not free (as in beer or speach)

[Sawbones]

And in runs on WinTel machines but, but Call Center might work. Heck, most "digital answering machine" software would do, wouldn't it? Granted, it couldn't play differing files and you'd want to set it to not record.

Dunno, but a possibilty.

Debba-da-dong-dong-da-dee-da-debba-debba-debba-d a-dong-dong -da-dee-da-d ebba-D world destruction, Over and ovature, N do I need apostrophie, T need this torture :)

Zzzzzzzzygot

[antizeus]

I remember that. It was run by Brian W. Feedback, who also ran a comment line called "Feedback". I used to call comment lines a lot back then. You'd call up one line an listen to a looped tape of the comments of a bunch of other callers. Then you could call up an answering machine and leave your own comment. Then your comment might make it into the following week's tape.

Comment lines were awesome. They were like BBS's for people without computers. Hell, I even used them when I did have a computer (and one of those fancy 300 baud modems). There were a bunch of them in Southern California -- Feedback, Observatory, Phun Phone, etc. I don't know if they caught on in other parts of the country/world.

Re:Why help them, they haven't helped us?

[The Night Watchman]

TMBG is a great band. But, they have publically decried Napster and P2P in general. Why should we help them with something that is run 1980's technology? It seems to me that they are just trying to boost their online image with this sort of stunt.

Well, I was going to reply more thoughtfully, but it looks like others have beaten me to it. What I would like to point out is that TMBG does not resort to "stunts" in order to boost its online image. What they have done is given a free concert in Irving Plaza, which was broadcast live on the Internet via EMusic.com, simply to plug their latest album, "Long Tall Weekend", which was, mind you, entirely in MP3 format. TMBG has quite an online image. If they wanted to boost it, they'd do it, and they'd do it well.

/* Steve */

Re:I just listened...

[Anonymous Coward]

Meet Rich Stallman
GNU's famous programmer
Wipe him off and shake his hand
Appreciate the man

Maybe something like Fax On Demand

[eap]

In the place I used to work, we had one of those fax on demand phone systems. Users could call in, press a few buttons, and have a fax sent to themselves.

I don't see how having music streamed over the phone line would be any harder. It would probably be easier.

On a related topic, I have been wanting to create an answering device running off a PC with a voice/CID modem which I can program to ring/not ring, play a certian message, or reroute calls based on time of call and caller ID data.

Basically, I'd like certain people to always be able to get in touch with me, but I don't want to leave my ringer on and get woken up at 6AM by some bozo trying to dial the Paper Warehouse.

Can anyone tell me if this would be possible with inexpensive hardware and a PC running Linux?

Re:I've done this with vgetty.

[SubtleNuance]

$10 voice modem ain't gonna sell many albums

That would be relevant if you werent listening to MP3s via the $0.02 tinny-speaker via the copper phonelines. I dont think HI-FI/quality output is necessary when the weakest link in the system is definatley out of there control...

Egads

[Dannon]

Talk about Life imitating Humor...

I chuckled at this post, then went to look at my Segfault Slashbox. The newest item: Answering Machine Subjected to DDoS Attacks.

---

great

[wishus]

great.. now the /. effect will take out their last machine.

good thinking!
---

Re:Oh my GAWD! They GET IT?

[Skid]

They've "got it" since a little after many /. readers were first eating solid foods. :)
--
These are *MY* opinions.

Your Older then you ever were

[kingkai27]

To quoteth They Might Be Giants, "You're older then you ever were, and now your'e even older. And now your even older, and now your even older."
You know, after reading this, your older then you ever were. And now your even older.
Rock 'n Roll, Not Pop 'n Soul

*beep beep beep beep beep beep...*

[krog]

the website is fine, but the phone number is Slashdotted!

Re:*beep beep beep beep beep beep...*

[Engelbot]

heh . . . it's been slashdotted since something like 1995. "Always free, often busy," as one of their records put it.

dial-a-song costs

[john_heidemann]

You forgot the slogan of dial-a-song: "It's free if you call from work"

Oh my GAWD! They GET IT?

[jabber01]

TMBG actually GET it?
They're giving their music away? Sure, it's over the phone, but still.. It's not a 967 number..

Would they be willing to stream over the net, using a Linux box with free mp3s?

Let me run right out and buy a few of their albums!

The REAL jabber has the /. user id: 13196

Praxon

[manimal]

If you've got some cash, Praxon makes a phone system that will do just about anything.

I've done this with vgetty.

[bmetz]

I've done a dial-in mp3 server with vgetty before. You typed in the first 4 digits of the band's name, then it used Viavoice Outloud to generate a band list, then you chose the right band, then it would tell you the available songs, then you chose a song, and then it streamed the mp3 out of the phone. It's very trivial to implement. It's a $10 voice modem off eBay, a spare pentium, and 2 hours installing vgetty and writing a 100-line perl script.

If anyone is serious about wanting to do it this way I can provide assistance: bmetz (@) yahoo.com

Re:I've done this with vgetty.

[SClitheroe]

A $10 voice modem ain't gonna sell many albums...you need some real telephony hardware, like a Dialogic board, which can handle multiple lines, and has great (professional) sound quality to boot. A four line card can be had for about $200, if I remember correctly.

Re:I've done this with vgetty.

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

You don't need a DSP, just a simple D/A and A/D conversion. As long as the conversion isn't horribly inaccurate (doubtful, even cheapo CD players do well on this), you can do almost anything in software. DTMF detection isn't THAT hard to do, and recording/playing back audio is just a matter of moving bits around. Also 64kbps isn't very hard to deal with with a decent speed machine. You can't get higher quality than that, the phone switches only sample 8 bits every 125 microseconds (8000X/sec) and send theat digital data around.

Well I am sure they HAD one machine left.

[twjordan]

That machine is probably melting down as we speak, eating its magnetic tape and spewing fire all over the band.

Maybe they'll write a song about it: "Slashdot set my house on fire"

It could be a duet with Hemos.

Tony

Re:Well I am sure they HAD one machine left.

[PurpleBob]

I hope they're reading this, because once they get an idea for a title, it seems they do everything possible to make it a song.

I mean, where else would titles like "She Thinks She's Edith Head", "Siftin'", and "Someone Keeps Moving My Chair" come from?
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.

Re:Backing down...

[Rader]

Well I love TMBG, but will admit I understand what you're saying, and not surprised you said it!!! Come on everyone, you have to admit that TMBG is some zany music. And it's definately an acquired taste. And that's why we like it. Especially if you just pick a random song --hell, you never know which one he listened to.

I'm sure a large percentage of you out there got hooked when the catchy "Instanbul" song became popular in 1991...A much easier way to transition yourself into their music.

On a funnier note: You know how radio stations some times try to brag how hot they are... and they'll play small clips of hard-hitting songs they play? One station I know used to do this ad all the time for themselves: "This is isn't X-music (play some god-alwful slow song)...THIS is X-Music: (play some headbanger music) "
Well one day they were playing this clip, and they put a TMBG song as the 'bad' music! I almost had to pull over from laughing so hard. And dammit, I liked that song!

Rader

Possible (linux-based) Solutions

[cduffy]

Asterisk (www.asteriskpbx.com) - Works best with Adtran hardware, if you can afford it. Sorta works with the Internet {Phone|Line}Jack, but those have a higher price-per-line (not that Adtran's hw is cheap either).

Bayonne (www.voxilla.org/bayonne/) - GNU's official telephony project. Supports Pika, Acculab and Voicetronix hardware, and anything with support for linux's kernel-based telephony driver. I haven't used it, but probably a better place to start than Asterisk.

None of the hardware for this stuff is cheap -- I hope the folks working on this project have some cash to plunk down.

Random message playback

[philos]

A possible solution exists using RandomWav! with Tobit's David. This would allow many simultaneous callers, multiple mailboxes, unlimited message (song) length, announce only mailboxes, and random message (song) selection.

As with every computer integration solution, there are possible drawbacks.

First, it seems a bit like taking a drink out of a firehose. Tobit's David is a full messaging platform, not just an answering machine software.

Second, the RandomWav! .DLL was written for an older version of David (5.2) and all of the documentation is in German.
But hey, what else is new?

Or, as the (Freetranslation.com translated) web site of RandomWav! puts it best:
"To the good fortune, the Skript-Engine of David can be expanded, under Windows NT mithilfe by DLLs, whose functions in the Skripten can be used. Exactly here our Utility jumps into the Bresche: it is a DLL, lauffähig under Windows NT 4.0, that includes a function to the accidental selection of a file that corresponds to a delivered pattern. They can program so mithilfe of the Skript-Editors within David an Anrufbeantworter, that the Anrufer with an accidentally selected greeting delights! For which things can yet be used entirely to one side of of Messaging and Anrufbeantwortern this function, remains leave your imagination."
Good luck. :-)

- philos

Re:Why help them, they haven't helped us?

[xinit]

When did Napster become a qualifying factor in helping someone. If that were the case, I wouldn't cross the street to help a napster kiddie.

However, since that ISN'T the case, TMBG has done an awful lot for their fans; cheap / free concerts, give-away electronic versions of songs, freely available dial-a-song (except the toll cost), and they DO sell their music online in mp3 format - if I'm not mistaken, it's THEM selling it, not a big name label (I could be wrong there).

It's really not much different from a friend who's deeply into the Microsoft world asking for my help on recommending him a new component DVD player. I should refuse to help him because his OS has DVD playing support and mine doesn't?

Oh yah, and that whole 80s technology thing... trés passé. Off the top of my head, I've seen /. stories on Atari handhelds, various emulations of old tech, and basic old hacking of 80s equipment here in the past month.

So, anyways, my basic point is this; put up or shut up. If the 80s tech they've been using for the past ~20 years is such crap, perhaps you con offer up a better Linux based telephony solution? Oh right... emerging tech...

first time

[Cire]

I think this the first time a phone number has been slashdotted.

Re:Why help them, they haven't helped us?

[bmongar]

For years TMBG has given music on their web sites. They want fans to hear their musice, especially that which isn't mainstream enough to make it onto their albums (that says a lot). Their problem with P2P is that it disconnects fans from the band. They would like to see people coming to their web site to get music, they can then see concert and album announcements. All that is missed when Napserting for Why the Sun Shines

They have always had a good online presence, ehy released an entire album internet only. Why help them because they are cool.

Check out mvm

[Anne Marie]

No need to reinvent the wheel: mvm will handle their needs including multiple simultaneous connections.